Trying to walk in Doctor Faustus's shoes

I am finding Doctor Faustus to be the hardest book that we have read for class yet. If anyone agrees with this view point let me know in the comments please! I think it may be because of the play write style, something that I never got into, but I have had an extremely hard time understand and following all of the different characters in each scene. One thing that I did understand though was our discussion in class about Faustus and why he would decide to sign his soul away to the devil in the first place. I wanted to continue that discussion on the blog because I had been thinking, what if Faustus has nothing to live for anymore but his own amusement. Say he has no family, no wife, and no connections that hold him to this earth. What can be done in a situation like that? I am not saying that I agree with the idea of making friends with the devil- certainly not, but if I were to put myself in his shoes I can almost see his thought process. He is a bit egoistical I think, to dismiss various subject matters of the world without a second thought. “This study fits a mercenary drudge Who aims at nothing but external trash, Too servile and illiberal for me.” (32-34) But his dismal to me means that he has already given thought to these studies and they hold no interest for him because all they can really lend him is knowledge. What he really wants is a connection into the magical world. What would you do if you had nothing in the world worth living for besides your own amusement (assuming that Faustus has nothing to connect with)?

Euthanasia in Utopia: Good or Bad?

So in class we talked about the different traits of Utopia and whether they were good or bad and why. One of the more talked about and controversial traits we touched upon was how euthanasia was allowed in Utopia. Euthanasia had been written on both the good trait side and the bad trait side of the classroom. We talked about it in some detail, but our time was limited so we had to move on to the next thing. I don't know if anyone here is against euthanasia, but I'm all for it. If a person is in pain and has no hope of recovery, he/she might as well be dead, and to let them suffer like that is just inhumane. I honestly don't see why euthanasia was put on the bad trait side of the classroom. Unless you're like, religious or something, I understand I guess.

So euthanasia works the same way in Utopia as I hope it would here on planet Earth. If someone's sick, dying, and a burden to the community, they can choose to go out with dignity, or not, and still be taken care of. That's the beauty of Utopia, you have the choice to live or die when you might as well be dead.

One thing that rubbed me the wrong way was how Utopia chooses deals with suicides. From page 71, "But the suicide, who takes his own life without the approval of priests and senate, they consider unworthy either of earth or fire, and throw his body, unburied and disgraced, into a bog."

...

That's just so screwed up, right? I mean, the fact that someone living in Utopia has to get approval from the church or the government to kill themselves, is just ridiculous. Utopia seems like an unrealistically nice place, but there are a lot of things that make it come off as downright creepy. Like dumping suicides into a bog, that's pretty creepy, right? Everyone being required by law to wait till marriage to have sex, creepy. All of the cities being identical and everyone wearing the same clothes, creepy.

It's like something out of the Twilight Zone. This seemingly perfect community has it's creepy side after all. Maybe I'm reading too much into this. Maybe I'm just too used to living in the real world, because I don't really like Utopia, save for a few traits its people have, like their desire for learning, how euthanasia is allowed and how all religions are accepted (except ones without gods apparently). But what does everyone else think? Do you like Utopia? Or do you find it creepy like I do?

Dr. Faustus, Middle English an Ichabod Crane

I'm not sure if anyone else watches the show Sleepy Hollow, but last night's episode included a heavy dose of Middle English, and Tom Mison, and Middle English. Needless to say, I enjoyed it immensely.

 

Ichabod Crane

Now to the task at hand, Dr. Faustus. First impressions are that this play is going to be predictable. The appearance of the Good Angel and Bad Demon on his figurative shoulder before every bad decision leads me to believe that regardless of how far astray Faustus goes or how depraved his behavior will become, in the end he will be forgiven. Given the time period, this would have been nearly blasphemous, but the benefit of four hundred plus years of similar story lines has jaded me just a bit. 

Why a Utopia cannot exist.

     The word "utopia" as we said in class represents not only a perfect society, but a society that can never exist. Why is this? People should be able to get along perfectly, right? Well, think about it logically--has there ever been a time within history or even the society that we live in today in which people do not quarrel? The answer is an overwhelming "NO!" A perfect example of this is our government and the shut down that it is still in today. People, no matter how hard we try or how good we think we can be, are not perfect which therefore means that the perfect society cannot exist. Thomas More knew this full well when he was writing this book as well. He knew that it could not exist being that he was a lawyer as well as a Christian. Lawyers deal with people that mess up (that is why there would be no need for them in his utopian society), and a big part of Christianity is that humans are sinful. We cannot be perfect, and that is one reason why we need religion in the first place. More knew that perfection was impossible, yet people still crave it. So one of his goals through this book was not for people to strive for perfection within society, but rather to strive for harmony within society. Strive for the unachievable, and maybe we will reach the achievable.

Thomas Moore and his Utopia... is it different from the one he wrote about?

     Thomas More proposed very radical ideas in his book Utopia, and one very interesting idea is that of the freedom of religion. Citizens were not required to become a part of any religion; they were not required to pay tithes to the local church. Commitment to any religion was not required at all. This is interesting coming from the work of More though; he was an extremely devout Christian like we talked about in class. (I will never forget the grotesqueness of the horse hair that he piously wore under everything.) That being said, most devout Christians believe that everyone should also be a Christian and that everyone should be as committed as they were. Christians today still reach out to places all over the world. However, More decided to let people choose whether or not they wanted to be a Christian in his Utopian society. This is ultimately because the freedom of choice also allows people to see who are truly devout in their faith and those that are not. If it is required to go to church, anyone can pretend to know more about their faith because they hear about it every weekend. But if it is not required, people can no longer pretend as well as they used to. The freedom of religion allows for God to be the judge of someone's heart, not man. This is ultimately what I believe More longs for in the end.

Editted vs. Non-editted Chaucer

     Although this is a couple weeks after we finished reading The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, there is something that I would like to bring attention to. While reading the "Wife of Bath's Prologue," there were many more vulgar statements there that I had not read when I read this book in high school my senior year. I had no idea how much the Wife of Bath used sex or the withholding of sex to get what she wanted from her husbands (and the older ones in particular). That was not mentioned in the version of the tales that I read in high school whatsoever, but should it have been?
     There are many reasons why editors make older pieces of literature more "kid-friendly." One reason would be so that children should be sheltered from the vulgarity of "adult living." Sex, drugs, and alcohol are too risqué of subjects to be discussed in classrooms. But isn't that the point of classes especially at a high school--to be exposed in a safe setting to temptations that will present later in life?
     I am currently interning at a high school with a teacher that has both seniors and freshmen. There is an astounding difference between the two age groups with both physical as well as intellectual maturity. It is understandable that the freshmen are not reading to controversial of pieces, but my mentor challenges the seniors by giving them essays on controversial topics. The point of teaching English is not simply to give students a broader range of vocabulary and read some cool books, but to use pieces of literature to make them think, debate, and decide upon real life issues such as drugs, sex, and alcohol. Because of this, it is my opinion that when it comes to taking British Literature in one's senior year of high school, there should not be an edited version. If Chaucer wanted the tone of the piece to be less vulgar, he would have written it that way. What are your thoughts? Should the vulgarity of Chaucer's tales be saved until a college literature course or should it be exposed to one in high school?

Utopia and The Republic

So anyone who has read Plato's The Republic will I'm sure note the similar idea between Utopia as Moore puts it and the "ideal city" created by Socrates and his fellow philosophers as a city soul metaphor in The Republic.

I actually used Utopia to help me write a paper for my philosophy class (Plato's Republic). Yes, it is actually an entire semester dedicated to one book of Plato's work, because it is genuinely that difficult to grasp. Moving on, having not read the entire book of Utopia, this may be an unfair question to pose. BUT! I wanted to look into where I would rather live: Moore's Utopia or Plato's Kallipolis.

Utopia is pretty sweet mainly of course because of the six hour work days. Who can complain about that? This means everything must be super efficient because they don't require working after actual work hours, so everything gets done. There is freedom of religion, democratic ideas even though there is a single prince ruler, etc. Great!

In Kallipolis, there are a million and a half concepts that seem great at first. Then you spend a semester with Dr. Reichard and you realize that nothing in the ideal city is ideal at all. And then you question yourself, or is it? And then finally you come to the conclusion that you have no idea what Plato wants you to think he thinks and you vow to never take another philosophy course again. But! Without that course I would have no purpose in making this blog post. The Kallipolis seems great because it believes each person is best suited to do a job. However, they must do that job. Women have awesome rights and although they are seen as the "weaker sex," they are still seen as capable. The city is fully functional because each part of society does their part, and they do it better than any one else could. Therefore, the city is in perfect harmony because all the parts work together.


However, even though I haven't studied the rest of Utopia to see where it goes wrong as I have with The Republic, one thing makes me lean towards Utopia anyway. The fact that Utopians, country or city goers, swap with each other so they can learn both ways of life. Everyone in this manner gets to experience everything. In Plato's republic, it is all aligned around the principle of specialization: you do what you were meant to do and what you are best suited for, regardless of what that may be. A carpenter is solely a carpenter, because he is best suited for carpenting. A guardian is solely a guardian because he or she is best suited for guarding the city. There is no freedom of choice in this city. Now, taken that it is a metaphor for the soul the comparison of the two may not be ideal. However, the city was created to be ideal regardless of its purpose.

Just a comparison I've made between the two courses. If I read further into Moore's Utopia I would probably have more to say or possibly a shift of opinion, but until then, Thomas Moore>Plato.