Cheating death

For other uses of the phrase, see Cheating Death (disambiguation).

The medieval painting of Death playing chess from Täby Church in Sweden.

The phrase cheating death is commonly used to describe the manner in which a person avoids a possibly fatal event or who prolongs their life in spite of considerable odds. A person who cures themselves of cancer without chemotherapy, a person who avoids by a narrow margin falling off a cliff or building or being shot or stabbed, or a person who survives hospitalization in critical condition in spite of a poor prognosis from doctors all might be described as having "cheated death". In Greek mythology, Sisyphus cheats death by tricking Persephone to let him return to the world from Tartarus.

Although it is difficult to find information about the origin of the phrase, it may be related to anthropomorphism of death, more commonly known in English-speaking cultures as the Grim Reaper. Such personification has also led to a wide variety of pop-culture references, perhaps most notably being the depiction of death in Ingmar Bergman's film The Seventh Seal, in which a knight proposes a wager with death over a game of chess. In the film the knight comments that he knows death plays chess because he's seen it in paintings, possibly in reference to a medieval painting of death playing chess which hangs in Täby Church in Sweden. Playing chess offers the knight an opportunity to cheat. The popularity of Bergman's film has resulted in many parodies and may be responsible for the popularity of the idiom "cheating death". Cheating death is also a recurring theme in the Final Destination film series.