Faust: Difference between revisions

Faust is a real person that was born around 1480 in the small town of Knittlingen. He must of had some formal education and is likely that he spent a number of years as a wandering scholar, although it now seems certain that he styled himself as a 'Doctor' without having any right to the title (Smeed 1). He practiced magic and was proficient at hypnotism. He even casted a horoscope for the Bishop of Bamberg in 1520. He caught peoples attention where ever he went with his flamboyant personality. Tradition has it that he died in Staufen in 1540 or 1541; the house in which this is supposed to have happened is now an inn (Smeed 2).

This parallel sets the entire stage for the play.  God and the Devil (Mephistopheles) make a bet about the fate of Job (Faust) if God removes his protection from around him and allows the Devil to use whatever means he wants to tempt him.

Line 95 “Dust he will eat..”

Faust tells the spirit that comes to visit him that “We’re equals, I know” (282) expressing his feelings of equal rank to the spirit being.  Mephistopheles feels that humans “act more beastly than beast ever do” (46).  The parallel made between the two lines shows a direct connection between how Mephistopheles feels that man should be condemned to the same fate as he is.

Mephistopheles makes a reference to the curse that was placed upon Adam to till the ground and he would now have to work very hard for food which was at one time given to him in the garden of Eden.  Mephistopheles uses it as a threat to Faust who immediately says that it is “not my sort of thing, humbling myself to work with a spade” (2155-2156).  Fear is used in this case to get Faust to do what Mephistopheles wants him to do.  He uses Fasut’s fear that he will be returned to the same life as he had before which would be a condemnation or punishment.

Faust misinterprets the quote.  He is saying that he was made in the image of God when the quote clearly refers to the God using the plural pronouns us and our when referring to the image. This parallel is both two fold.  During the Romantic period writers would contemplate their singular relationship to God and the universe.  It also would explain why Faust and Mephistopheles see the position of man very differently.

This line is important because Mephistopheles is speaking to a young, fresh, impressionable student.  As he did in the story of Eve, the devil is uses the word gray which is a word meaning some confusion, doubt or haziness as when he told Eve in the bible that God had lied to her and it was not as cut and dry as God had said.  This is the same way he is speaking with the college student saying that choosing another path will be better or the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

At this verse Mephistopheles writes in the student’s book an encouragement, the very same encouragement he gave Eve was according to the bible to eat from the tree.  With the college student he uses this same statement in the sense of seeking out knowledge which is two fold corresponding with the two natures that exist with in man.

[[Category:World Literature]]

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust, Part 1. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. Vol. 2. 8th Ed. Trans. Martin Greenberg. Sarah Lawall, et al, eds. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. [All primary text citations are taken from this edition unless otherwise noted.]

 

Smeed, J.W. Faust in Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 1971.