Cousin And Kindred Character Analysis

Along with dealing with the sacred Death, Everyman had to also encounter demonic characters as all do throughout their lives, portraying performing objects. Thus, making him more relatable to the audience members viewing the morality play. The dramaturge personifies the characters as performing objects throughout the play. These characters portray aspects of Everyman as a person throughout the play. The dramaturge portrays the characters that Everyman encounters to be friends of his but are really impersonating the seven deadly sins, which undertake interest in dark play. The characters Cousin and Kindred are representative of Gluttony and Lechery of the seven deadly sins. Van Laan states; “Gluttony and Lechery, two sins which, as here, are normally coupled in medieval accounts. These two sins reappear in the refusals of Cousin and Kindred” (Van Laan 469). Kindred …show more content…
(Everyman 360-64)
Kindred is portraying lechery here with offering his maid who is there to be “nice”, which can mean that she would be more than a companion to Everyman on his journey. Audience members can assume that by Kindred having a maid, that the maid was giving into the lecherous desires of Kindred and preforming sexual favors for him.
Everyman himself is also representative of pride one of the seven deadly sins, thus portraying that Everyman himself is performing a secular role. In the beginning of the play Everyman believes that he can persuade Death into not taking him at that time, as he was not ready to go. However, Everyman being representative of all people soon learns that there is nothing that he can say that can persuade Death. Everyman plays into the idea of performative structure as a character in which he represents Avarice. He offers God “…a thousand pound…” (122). Thus playing into the idea of Everyman showing aspects of avarice by offering material objects for his own individual gain. Van Laan