In dramatic literary history, tragedies are a form through which dark elements in human motivation, character and decision making are explored. Often the tragedy revolves around the flaw of its main character, known as the tragic hero. The hero may have a tragic flaw such as egoistic hubris, or fate may deem that he must suffer, as if from a mixture of personal failing and fortune's curse. In a tragedy, terrible, profoundly earth shattering things will occur, turning the normal world completely upside down. Forces are unleashed which cannot be contained; violence undoes order and justice. Justice and order, if re-established, are only achieved through a cathartic cleansing. In Faust (Parts One and Two) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a late 18th/early 19th century play, Goethe employs elements of classical tragic vision to explore the fall (and redemption) of Dr. Faustus. Faustus is one of the most learned men in his society, and as the play tells us at the beginning, a favorite of God dud to his dedication, in life, to learning, teaching and helping others. Though he has human frailties, the Lord admires him: “A good man with his groping intuitions/Still knows the path that is true and fit.” (Goethe: 6) It is up to Mephistopheles to try to convince God, through a wager, reminiscent of the wager in the Old Testament story of Job, that Faust shall “eat – and greedily” the dust of evil and temptation. (Goethe: 6)
[...] He admonishes himself, an unspecified misery/Should throw your life so out of gear?/Instead of the living natural world/For which God made all men his sons/You hold a reeking moldering court/Among assorted skeletons.” (Faust: 10) This is Faust talking to himself in a monologue, as if to someone else; as if he is a third person, not an integrated personality. The play's tragic arc is such that, in order for him to become integrated in personality, he will have to explore the physical dark side of more base earthly pleasures, experience deep regrets and disappointments, in realms and matters of the heart, that he has not experienced as a scholar and idealist. [...]
[...] The combination of these events, coupled with the brother of Gretchen, Valentine, being killed in a sword battle between himself, Faust and Mephistopheles, in an attempt to fight for her and the family's honor, makes Gretchen go mad. She is accused of being the murderer of her mother; she drowns her baby and is imprisoned, awaiting execution. Faust, gloomily, deciding he must save her, guilty at what he has done, realizes his part in Gretchen's downfall, saying, long unwonted trembling seizes me,/The woe of all mankind seizes me fast,/It is here she lives, behind these dripping walls,/Her crime was but a dream too good to last.” (Goethe: 136) Thus, the moral of the tale is that one should not always wish for certain things, they may not turn out as one imagines; especially when they contain much lying, trickery and base motive. [...]
[...] Faust is torn between his desire to sleep with Gretchen, and, in the better side of himself which still emerges through the fog of spells and witchcraft, a growing love for her. He is torn between his desire for fulfilling earthly pleasures, and his desire to commit suicide, which continues unabated. Now his suicidal tendencies revolve around what he calls his “lovesick dream”. (Goethe: 68) The sublime of nature is juxtaposed in the final scenes of Act 1 with the love for Gretchen; what is revealed is the way in which Faust in part abandons Gretchen the more that she falls deeper into love with him. [...]
[...] All along he has, in various ways, attacked and resisted the devils; both the inner ones and the demons of evil and temptation. In conclusion unlike a classic tragedy, Goethe's Faust shows that man can be redeemed; and that life towards spiritual union with the Divine, is a long and arduous epic journey. The seeds have to be planted; and to reap them a man has to experience both the heights of union with Nature and the mystical, and plunge to the depths of depravity. [...]
[...] It is only through this journey into the underworld, figuratively and literally (especially in Faust Part II, where he goes into the Underworld to bring back Helen of Troy from the formless mystical Mothers of ancient times). (Faust, Part II) He becomes like other great epic heroes before him Odysseus in Homer, or Hercules of Greek mythology a man who has, in order to get what he wants, undergo trials and labors that are beyond the possibility of mere mortals. [...]
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