Now I don’t want to get super religious here to offend
anyone in the class, but I analyzed the end of this story through a religious
mindset. As I read the story through the end, the one message I got out of it
was that the whole story was a religious message that Marlowe was trying to
convey to the readers. That message is: whatever you do to stray from God, He
will always take you back and protect you. The devil will strike at you in your
times of vulnerability and make you believe that God cannot save you.
The scholars tried to tell Faustus
to repent many times, but each time he was almost convinced, Lucifer or
Mephastophilis pulled him further back. Scholar 2 said, “…Faustus, look up to
heaven; remember God’s mercies are infinite.” To that, the damned Faustus
replied, ”But Faustus’ offense can never be pardoned!” At this point in the
story, Faustus has already ‘sold himself to the devil’ for lack of a better
phrase, and refused to acknowledge that God could still save him. Then with all
the fear in the world of going to Hell, Faustus realized they may have been
right and tried to beg for a small amount of mercy from God. He wanted his term
in Hell to be cut short, so at least at some point he would be saved. One of Faustus’ last phrases was “My God, my God,
look not so fierce on me!” He realized that he could have been saved by God and
finally relies on Him to save his soul. This also is a good example of how
Faustus failed his mission of becoming God-like and ended up relying solely on
God to save him, but that’s another blog post worth of ideas.
Although the story concludes
without us knowing if God will lessen his time in Hell, it is a powerful
message that promotes the power and selfless love and forgiveness of God.
Questions: What was Helen of Greece’s
purpose in this story besides being an object of beauty (maybe I just missed
this)? What parallels can we draw between Faustus and God (because Faustus very
much wanted to be a God-like figure)?
I really enjoyed reading you post and was captured by your comparisons. As far as your question I felt Faustus and God really have little to no connection in the play (as I perceived it) because although God is mentioned often or implied, the god-like figure never does appear and has a chance to represent themselves, therefore I felt the connection between God and Faustus really did not have a lot besides from what was implied; power, but even that was a much different type Faustus was messing around with. Did you to find it amusing how often spirits were mentioned but this god-like figure never even appeared, not even at the end of the book when if there ever was a time to represent god (by saving Faustus) he still did not appear, why do you think the author did that? Another question to think about is the parallels between Faustus and the devil, the things they were both greedy for and how that lead them to be very similar figures in the end. I also like your quotes you used they really highlight the point about religion which I had never put much thought about of in this play.
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