# Pan — Fifty-One Tales character guide

> Pan in Fifty-One Tales by Lord Dunsany.

**Role:** major

**Also known as:** Horned Pan, memorable Pan, O Pan

**First appearance:** 0002-the-death-of-pan

## Snapshot

The horned god of woods and wildness, mourned as dead by builders and enlightened folk — yet seen laughing at his own tomb at evening.

## Who they are

Pan is the collection's great absent presence, the old god whose death the modern world commemorates with a carved tomb and self-congratulation. Builders raise his monument, some weep for him and others revile him, and the enlightened gather to deplore his wicked age. But he slips out of the forest like a shadow, sees the tomb, and laughs — a tension between official mourning and living survival that haunts the tales of flowers and cities.

## Relationships

### [Charon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/characters/charon)

_professional_

Charon and Pan have a professional relationship as ferryman of the dead and god of the wild, occasionally crossing paths in the underworld's borders.

## In the story

### [The Death of Pan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters/the-death-of-pan)

Found stiff and still by travellers, but leaps up at the laughter of Arcadian maidens.

### [The Prayer of the Flowers](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters/the-prayer-of-the-flowers)

Pan hears the flowers' prayer and reproves them from Arcady, promising that the industrial blight will not last.

### [The Return of the Exiles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters/the-return-of-the-exiles)

The one-eyed man with a spear is implied to be Pan, lamenting the loss of human sacrifice and the passing of ancient rites.

### [The Tomb of Pan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters/the-tomb-of-pan)

Pan is the subject of the tomb; he is believed dead by the enlightened people, but he appears at evening and laughs upon seeing the monument.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/characters/pan
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/characters