Another example of Mephistopheles ruinin' some lives (though Faustus had it coming)

SWOOSH

That's the sound of us traveling back in time to when I originally meant to post this, while we were reading Doctor Faustus. (It's interesting to me how many of us continue to post about this play. We all have so much to say that didn't fit into our class time!)

Anyway, what I was thinking about the whole time we wee learning about this play, was the album by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, "Beethoven's Last Night." (Yes, they do have albums that have music other than Christmas.)

This album is a concept album which means that it tells a single story through the songs. It also comes with a booklet where you can read the story along with it.

The premise of this story is that it is Beethoven's last night on earth. He is going to die that night (though he doesn't know this at the beginning.) He is working on his tenth symphony when he is visited by Mephistopheles who tells him that he has come to collect his soul. he then makes him to offer that if Beethoven gives Mephistopheles all his music and allows him to wipe the memory of his compositions off the face of the earth, he will give him back his soul. The story is about Beethoven trying to decide what he wants.

Obviously this story of making contracts with the devil is a popular one, since we see it so often throughout literature. In the Canterbury Tales, there's also a story of a man meeting with the devil.

You can read the basic story here.

This song is called "Mephistopheles" and is sung by- you guessed it- Mephistopheles as he introduces himself:

And in this next video you can listen to the whole album (which you totally don't have to but there's some musical masterpieces in there (in my opinion of course!)

My favorite is "Mephistopheles' Return," in case you were wondering :)

Faustus's Fear of the Question Mark

     Originally as I read Doctor Faustus in a the literal sense, I was genuinely bothered and perplexed by Faustus's act of selling his soul to the devil. I couldn't imagine what drove him to go to such extreme measures. Eventually, I found peace in a more figurative reading, but I also settled on the idea that Faustus just couldn't handle uncertainty.

     This uncertainty that Faustus tries to shake begins as soon as he signs the bloodily- instated contract.  What does he do immediately? He asks about Hell – he wants to know about something unknown.  Faustus must have been aware that, in Heaven, souls would be privy to “knowing all,” but he wasn't willing to wait to find out if he'd ever even get there. So Faustus decides to find another route to a state of “enlightenment:” through the devil.

     Now I know I mentioned this a few weeks back when we were actively discussing this play, but I never completely voiced my final thoughts on the subject.  And the more I think about it, the more I believe that, given what we learn about Faustus's character, this scholarly character was not keen on anything abstract or ambiguous.  After all, as an intelligent fellow in the business of learning, it would seem easy for him to neglect to leave room for the spiritual aspect of faith. And this proves to be what ultimately ends up getting him into trouble.

    Faustus displays a lack of faith inasmuch he refuses to trust that God would allow his salvation before his “great sin” (the contract), but also after.  He fails to believe God will protect him should he attempt to repent; and although the demons threaten to tear him apart should he try to flee Hades's grasp, was this not that his final fate anyway? What did he have to lose? He had Heaven to gain if his redemption was accepted and only to fall back on his future in Hell if not!

     In this piece, it is clear that well-educated and intelligent Faustus aspires to know all.  It is no fluke these characteristics are present for they are vital for his character development.  To use a cliché, knowledge is power to Faustus.  He believes he can take authorial power over his fate, taking it into his own hands. But in the end, does Faustus believe that eliminating uncertainty is really worth the cost?

Sin & Salvation as it Pertains to Faustus's Contract

     So, as I read Doctor Faustus, I found myself wondering what exactly was meant by the act of selling one's soul to the Devil. What does this “transaction” so-to-speak precisely entail? For one thing, Faustus obviously deliberately turns away from God and essentially “does business” with the devil. But what do these satanic dealings mean in terms of his salvation in the long run? If continued without repentance, we assume he's guaranteed a spot in Hell. And according to the play, he is indeed eternally damned.  Moreover the “contract,” which is signed with blood, seemingly signifies a level of permanence. Yet doesn't every contract have its own set of loopholes? Furthermore, if this deal with the devil is permanent and Faustus's fate is sealed, why did we discuss mercy in class? And why are we asking ourselves when Faustus reaches the “point of no return” (where not even God will take him back) in this tale? All this leads me to believe that this “contract” is only as “good” as the parties involved make it.  So if one wanted out (eg: a repentant Faustus), it would have been nullified.  After all, we're led to believe God is all-merciful if we are penitent. . .right?

     

     With all this said and done, though, my burning question in terms of this text still remains: what is the difference between our idea of sin and Faustus's contract with the devil? We know that Faustus's contract with the devil is a sin (the act of turning away from God), but is not sin a sort of contract with the devil? Are they not one and the same? Is the contract not simply the state of being in sin? If it is, I would venture to argue that Faustus's soul was salvable up until his death should he have repented his sins – his dealings with the devil himself.   If God is a forgiving entity as He is indicated to be, why should Faustus's actions have been unforgivable. . . unless it was he who wasn't able to forgive himself.  

Battle of the Conscience (aka The Shoulder Angels)

http://static.someecards.com/someecards.png

Some of the most intriguing characters for me, in Doctor Faustus, were the good and bad angels acting as Faustus' conscience. I picture the shoulder angel's on his shoulder battling out the right and wrong choice, in this case they are battling over Faustus' soul. Every time these angels appear it is at a point where Faustus is debating whether he can repent his sins and contract with the devil. The Good Angel tries to get Faustus to repent, while the Bad Angel influences him that it is too late to repent and be forgiven.

So, that is the big question in Doctor Faustus; When is it too late to save your soul, and repent your sins? Based on his story, Doctor Faustus seems to be getting played by the Bad Angel. He believes that it is too late to repent his sins, but doesn't that seem obvious? Why wouldn't the Bad angel want him to believe that? Isn't that what they do? It's evil's way of controlling and manipulating a victim. On the other hand, the Good Angel tries to tell Doctor Faustus, that he is able to repent his sins, but he chooses to believe the Bad Angel instead. My interpretation of Faustus' actions, his dismissal of the good and the acceptance of the bad, is that maybe he was all to willing to be affected by evil. Faustus made the decision based on what he really wanted more than what he probably believed.

How easy it is to be influenced by the Bad Angel. We use these "shoulder angels" in our modern to represent the conscience, Watching that inner battle is interesting, and often, in our, time comical. Like Faustus, the Bad Angel often is the winner, who easily persuades the villain or character to make the bad choice. In this video, from The Emperor's New Groove, once again the Bad Angel wins out, but the battle a fight between the two angel's are one of my favorite representations of the conscience battling. While most the time the visual aids we get are a little funny, Faustus' consequence is tragic, with the payment being the loss of his soul and the decent into Hell.

http://youtu.be/RK5n-X-Jlbk

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I'm going to chuck us back to Faustus for a bit. Sorry to those who have already moved on. On the subject of God totally forgiving Faustus and being all 'come on back to the flock bro', I just don't see it happening. I realise God is meant to be this great forgiving dude but I also think he's a business man. Faustus made is contract with Lucifer and I think God would honour that. He'd be sad about the whole business, for a like a second, because let's face it, he's a busy dude, but I think he'd moved on pretty quickly. In my reading of the story Faustus was lost to God the second he signed that contract. Sorry bro, you sold your soul to the devil for twenty-four years of fun.

On that note, Faustus is sooo lame. Sure a prank here and there (a la his early pranks, not the cruel ones of later years) is okay if you have infinite power but you have infinite power! Do something great! I don't care if that great thing is also terrible (hello he-who-must-not-be-named). Just do something that makes a difference. Why screw over the poor guys you run into when you could cure the plague (again). You could make scientific or philosophical breakthroughs. Instead you spend your remaining 24 years dicking around like an overgrown frat boy? Come on man.

Faustus the scum canoe

We talked a lot about the moment when Faustus could no longer redeem himself in the play, and I could be the jerk that says, "Well of course it was as soon as he signed the contract," but I do agree that if that wasn't the point, then I feel like it had to be when he turned from playing silly Pope pranks to just being a bully with no sense of reward.

In the very beginning, when Faustus makes the plan to sell his soul for some lame prize that he doesn't think through, he's visited by his shoulder angels. And every time these characters show up, I can only think of one thing--Kronk from Emperor's New Groove.

While Kronk's situation is a much more light-hearted one, (oh no, I don't want to kill the now-llama Emperor anymore!) I feel like the exchange is fairly similar. I don't believe the angels in either case really help make a decision. Kronk, while he works for the evil, ancient Ezma, he's generally a good guy at heart and I'm sure he would have saved Kusco regardless of whether or not his shoulder angels showed up.
And in the case of Faustus, I'm pretty sure, regardless of the arguments his shoulder angels make, he would have chosen the "path that rocks" (or you know, the path of eternal damnation). And that's not to say that Faustus started off as a bad person so clearly he'd make the bad choice, but I feel like he is also too prideful to turn back on his decision. Especially once he goes so far as signing the contract even though his own blood was trying to stop that from happening.
And so he takes a silly deal where he gets 24-years of cool magic for cool pranks, but he really just becomes a huge jerk at the end. In the beginning his pranks could be seen as fairly good, especially since they were against such nasty people. But then he moves on to pranking these innocent people that have done no wrong towards Faustus nor anyone else. And at the point I feel like he shouldn't have the opportunity to redeem himself. He's had four acts or so to do that, and instead he falls more and more prey to the "evilness" of the Devil.
So sure, Faustus could really redeem himself up until fairly close to the end of the play, but I'm not so sure if he would have taken God up on the offer. He was given the chance so many times and never took it, so his call for redemption when he was literally being dragged into hell seemed like such a pointless cry for help.
It's like the boy who cried wolf, except in this case he put off redemption and put off redemption until the time came where he realised the weight of his decision, but God was so totally over it at the point that he wasn't going to help Faustus.

Faustus' Last Monologue

Well, we all knew how this play would end, didn't we? It's no surprise to anyone that Faustus would be getting his one-way ticket into Hell in due time. What we might have not predicted was the way that he handled his imminent damnation. Throughout the entire play we're shown this character who, despite his astounding naivety, is fairly level-headed, at least at first.

As the play progresses, so does Faustus' own personality deteriorate. His pranks are petty, if slightly harmless, but it isn't long before they descend into being downright cruel. Yet despite Faustus' cruelty in his mischief, he still manages to retain that same child-like haughtiness and, in a very light sense of the word, innocence.

This all seems to crumble apart come the last hour of his life on line 140 in Act V scene 2. Upon completely isolating himself from everyone around him, Faustus starts to do the one thing that so many of the characters had begged him to do before, pray for salvation. Up until this very point he has done nothing but shield his true self behind a facade of either curious indifference or boredom.

I don't know about you guys, but this was probably the first time that I've felt legitimately bad for Faustus. I've been sympathetic of his loneliness, sure, but reading his final cry for help being directed towards Mephistophilis of all people, one of the ones dragging him into Hell, really sucker punched me in the gut, and it made me really dearly Faustus cared for him, just in his own selfish way.

Anyone else feel differently about Faustus after this?

Faustus the Fool

I feel bad for Faustus at the end of the play. I understand that he signed his soul over to the devil, but he was just so helpless at the end. Despite his flaws, I pity him. Or maybe I pity him because of his flaws.
He just had this hope that when he signed his soul over, he would live this awesome life, but I don't think that happened. He plays pranks on the Pope, gives a guy some horns and let's someone take his leg. That just doesn't seem like the grand life Faustus had in mind.
In the last act, it seems like Faustus is still doing the basic magic tricks he was in the beginning of the play. The scholars want to see Helen of Greece, so Faustus makes her appear. I just feel like Faustus didn't really live a life worth giving up his soul for. If he knows he's going to Hell, why didn't he live it up?
We were asked where we think Faustus can no longer receive mercy, and I think that point comes after Faustus sends away the old man and the three scholars who visit him. After the old man leaves, Faustus plans to pledge himself to the devil once again. Faustus says, "Torment, sweet friend, that base and aged man/that durst dissuade me from thy Lucifer" (81, 82-83). The old man is trying to help Faustus be worthy of heaven again, but he just brushes it aside.
After this, Faustus talks about how Mephostophilis robbed him of the joys of heaven, but he doesn't really do anything about. The fact that he waits an hour before he is to be taken to Hell to beg God for forgiveness doesn't really help his situation. If he wanted to be saved, he should have done it sooner.
I feel bad for him because Hell is described in a very terrifying way, but he should have tried to redeem himself a lot sooner if he didn't want to spend eternity there.

Faustus: Expectations vs. Reality

So I think that when Faustus makes his deal with Mephistophilis, he's expecting the rest of his 24 years to be really dramatic. Something sort of like this:

However, what we end up seeing in Acts 3 & 4 are mostly a bunch of juvenile pranks. And they're not even particularly funny, like this one:

So what's up with Faustus? Why doesn't he make the most of the power he's been given? Why settle for a bunch of silly mischief? How are his pranks and the use (or not) of his power connected to his descent into despair? Is he just trying to distract himself?

I'd be very curious to hear what you guys think, either in comments or in posts of your own.

I can't handle you, Doctor Faustus

This is just based off of the class discussion last week, but I still just...I can't find it in me yet to like Doctor Faustus. I guess I can see where the hearts break and pity sets in for a guy who just wants a friend, but I mean. Come on there are plenty of ways to make friends that don't involve getting into bed with necromancy and calling forth a demon from Hell to follow you around for 24 years.

I guess his first monologue already really turned me off from him. He doesn't want to be a doctor anymore because he isn't getting the praises and "celebrity status" he feels he deserves for his work? Last time I checked, you should going into that field because you like to help people, not because you want to be awarded for it. I'm just not sorry that he doesn't feel he's being rewarded enough for doing his job. Especially when it's a job where I feel like the reward should be saving someone's life. So being a doctor is out the window. But then he throws out Law because...it's "too servile" for him. So he doesn't want to go unnoticed in his work, but he also doesn't to serve other people...so he turns next to the dark arts of Necromancy (a logical jump, I'm sure).

And then, with his new found love of demons and waking the dead, Faustus decides he's going to call forth a devil so he can become the King of Germany or some such nonsense. Because I guess if you can't make your own friends, you have to make people to be your friend, right (that's how that works, right?)? So some Latin words and loud shouting later, he calls forth this demon who seems less than ecstatic to be there, and asks for 24 years of this demon's servitude in exchange for his soul. His soul!

I feel like 24 years of forced friendship isn't worth an eternity of Damnation. So sure, his loneliness pulls at my heartstrings for maybe 5 minutes. Because then he turns around and makes this half-assed deal with Lucifer. It's like he called up Mephostophilis and simply picked 24 years because it was a lucky number on his fortune cookie that afternoon.

I just can't fathom ever making this deal, no matter how lonely I got. And if he had nothing to live for, you'd think he would use this deal with the hefty price tag of "one soul in eternal damnation" to make his life, I don't know...worth something to him? Not 24 measly years of control over a demon and a steak dinner.

Doctor Faustus just wants a friend!

After reading the first two acts of this, disturbing?, play I can actually say I feel bad for Doctor Faustus. At first, I didn't like this guy and I definitely didn't like his ego. He's accomplished so much and helped so many people, yet he still wants more. Envy and greed are clearly two sins friendly to Doctor F. 

I can relate to Doctor Faustus's sudden emptiness. He doesn't have anything, or more importantly anyone, to live for. Sure you should always do things for yourself, it's the first rule of self-esteem; and lesbihonest, Doctor F. Has no problem boasting about himself.

Besides that, he's alone. No one is there to tell him they're proud of him or anything. No wonder he's having this self absorbing crisis. 

I can relate to this fully, but I would not sell my soul just because I'm upset. That's what ice cream or a bottle of liquor are for! Instead he sells his soul and is given a demon, Mephostophilis. He has this demon for exactly twenty four years, (I don't know why twenty four) in service.  Despite the fact Doctor Faustus sold his soul, he does however gets what I think he needed most. A friend. Even though he is a demon and doesn't really fit with the ideals of the definition of "friendship", he is still there for Doctor Faustus.