Sometimes the Devil, or at least one of his most trusted minions, is truly in the details. In Christopher Marlowe's play The Tragic Tale of Doctor Faustus, the most compelling hero is not the eponymous main character. Doctor Faustus, with his puerile selfishness and self-centered complaints, is as guilty of exaggeration as any character Marlowe ever wrote. Not only does he die, but he also loses the possibility of redemption and is taken to Hell for eternity. Yet this alone does not make him a tragic hero, especially since the text contains a much more compelling one: the demon Mephistophilis. This essay will show that, of the two characters, Mephistopheles is the more virtuous, noble, and understanding. He does not deteriorate morally over the course of the play as Faustus does, and is completely loyal within the bounds of his contract. Furthermore, having been an angel and having actually experienced the delights of Heaven, Mephistopheles is the one whose fall is greatest and most tragic. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Christopher Marlowe's work is based on the story of the self-styled philosopher and soothsayer named Faust, who died suddenly in 1540 under very mysterious circumstances. Rumors soon spread that the supernatural being from whom Faust had obtained his magical powers had come to take him under the terms of their contractual agreement. Faust stories began appearing as early as 1587, primarily to serve as a warning to people who might otherwise delve too deeply into the new Renaissance area of ​​study known as "science." Marlowe published two versions of his work: one in 1604 and a heavily edited and censored version in 1616. This essay will focus on the 1604 version. Marlowe's work can only be understood in the context of a telling of Judeo-Christian mythology. According to ancient tradition, there was an omnipotent and omniscient God who created the universe and everything in it. Among God's creations were angels and archangels, who occupied Heaven. An archangel, who goes by various names including Satan and Lucifer, led a rebellion against God. For this, he and his followers were kicked out of Heaven. They then sought revenge by corrupting God's dearest and most beloved creation: humanity. John Milton, in his epic poem Paradise Lost, tells the story more evocatively and descriptively than any narrator before or since. Indeed, Marlowe's work contains multiple references and allusions to both Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, which tells the Gospel story in which humanity is redeemed through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. According to the Judeo-Christian tradition, God's power and capacity for forgiveness are infinite. Human beings can sin – that is, not maintain ideal behavior or behave contrary to God's will – and be forgiven no matter what, provided they truly believe and trust in God and repent by rejecting and expressing remorse for their previous conduct . If they do so, after death they will be rewarded with a pleasant afterlife with God in Heaven. Otherwise, hell awaits. According to tradition, some sort of afterlife is obligatory because every human being possesses a unique, immortal essence known as a soul that survives the death of the body. The plot of The Tragic Tale of Doctor Faustus revolves around the decision of a German scholar to sell his soul to Lucifer in exchange for twenty years of service from the demon Mephistopheles, who shares with him knowledge and powers far beyond mortal capabilities . Faust is condemned not because he renounced God to make a pact with the Devil, nor because ofvarious vices and sins in which he subsequently indulged for twenty-four years, but because he refuses to repent and ask for forgiveness. He is condemned because he believes, until the end, that God will not forgive him. Mercy is readily available if one asks for it and sincerely repents. In fact, he is told several times throughout the play that if he trusts in God neither Lucifer nor any of his servants will be able to harm him. The key idea in this tragedy is that God's capacity for forgiveness is infinite. God is capable of forgiving Faustus and actually prefers forgiveness. Yet Faustus' belief that he has committed a crime that exceeds God's capacity for mercy prevents him from asking for it. This fierce irony is the turning point of the entire plot. At the beginning of the play, John Faustus is an elderly man of letters who has learned and mastered every form of knowledge that the university has to offer. He has learned logic and made great advances in medicine, but feels as if the profession is beneath him. He is also bored by law and divinity. He desires further intellectual challenges, along with profit, power and fame. So he decides to dabble in black magic. He sends for two of his colleagues known to have dabbled in the art and they teach him how to summon a demon. Faust expresses a desire to use his power to do great things: improve the fortifications of his native Wertenberg (sic), drive out the foreign prince from the country, dress all the students in beautiful clothes, and reign as king over all of Germany. However, when Mephistopheles appears and begins to speak, Faust can for the first time be compared to another character of substance. Just as Milton's Satan appears more excellent and noble than any other character in Paradise Lost, including God, so Marlowe's Mephistopheles overshadows Faust. Compared to the demon, who speaks honestly and candidly and whose sincere sorrow at having lost access to Paradise is evident, Faustus appears arrogant, ignorant, greedy, and overconfident. Mephistophilis promptly responds to Faustus' initial questions and actually gives him more information than he asks for. It was not Faustus's (non-existent) magician's skill that summoned the demon, but his verbal diatribe against God. Not particularly limited by the laws of physics, demons apparently respond to people about to be damned as an addicted feline responds to grass cat, only faster and with less inherent loss of dignity. Mephistopheles explains that he only showed up because he thought he had a chance at protecting Faustus' soul. He does: Faustus wants to make a deal. But first there is a discussion that reveals the extent of Faustus' arrogance. On the topic of Hell and damnation, Mephistopheles speaks freely. He admits that he was a follower of Lucifer during the rebellion and that he later shared his exile. Explain that Hell is not limited to a specific place. Although he stands before Faustus, he is actually in Hell simply because it is not Heaven: “Well, this is Hell, nor am I out of it. Do you believe that I, who have seen the face of God and have tasted the eternal joys of Paradise, am not tormented by ten thousand hells in being deprived of eternal bliss?" (1) The first line of this quote is a reference to Paradise Lost , where the character Satan says, “From where I fly is hell, I myself am hell.” (2) Having been banished from Heaven, Mephistopheles has lost the highest, best, and most beautiful thing in the universe. Nothing can replace it, so there is nothing that can console or comfort him. Mephistopheles' pain is sincere, yet Faustus pricks him and suggests that he learn "manly fortitude." Despising the joys of Heaven, Faustus offers Lucifer a deal : twenty-four years oldof service to Mephistopheles in exchange for his soul, the immortal Mephistopheles is willing to carry out any errand and suffer any humiliation. Damnation taught Mephistopheles the meaning of both pain and humility. Although he is extremely powerful and can take a variety of forms, move instantly across the Earth, change one thing into another, and make corporeal spirits appear or disappear at will. , cannot re-enter the Kingdom of Heaven. He remains loyal and obedient to Lucifer, whose permission he requires before committing to a contract with Faustus. With his leader's approval, Mephistophilis agrees to serve Faustus for twenty-four years. During this period, he fulfills every desire and desire of the human within the limits set by Lucifer. He runs errands to fetch and deliver fruit, creates spirits in the likeness of long-dead people, helps Faustus play a prank on the Pope, and helps Faustus swindle a horse dealer out of money. Although Mephistopheles has no patience with fools - he throws firecrackers at Ralph and Robin and turns them into animals - he tolerates Faustus because he has a contract with him and expects to collect his soul. Despite being told, explicitly, that Hell is real... and by someone who has direct personal experience: Fausto refuses to believe it even though Mephistopheles assures him that he suffers as much as a mortal would suffer. After the magician gives up his soul, he disingenuously asks about Hell again. Mephistopheles gives the same answer: it is wherever the damned souls are. Despite the clear evidence that Hell is real, Faust continues to claim that he believes it is a fairy tale. Speaking of himself in the third person as if he were already a king, Faustus says he "confuses Hell in the Elysée" (3) and expects to spend eternity in conversation with the ancient Greek philosophers. Before the contract is signed, Mephistopheles is willing to talk to Faust about God. Yet, after the contract is signed, he will not. He refuses to answer Faustus' question about who created the world, although he readily provides the scholar with books on the movement of the planets and other sciences. This is not because Mephistopheles doesn't know the answer. He is simply making sure that Faustus doesn't think so much about God that he convinces himself to repent. He comes very close to doing so, blaming Mephistopheles for tempting him to give up his soul. The fact that Faustus rewrites the past in this way is significant: while the demon takes responsibility for his actions, decisions and subsequent damnation, the human does not. Mephistopheles leaves briefly to return with Lucifer, during which the Evil Angel and the Good Angel give Faustus conflicting advice. It turns out that the good Angel is right: if Faustus repents and asks God for mercy, the contract is canceled by Lucifer and Mephistopheles. he will not be able to touch Faustus' soul. Then they reappear to scold Fausto and to distract him from anything that might remind him of sanctity. When Fausto asks for a wife, Mephistopheles, well aware that marriage is a sacrament and a sacred vow made before God, insists on finding him concubines instead. When he wants to go to Rome, Mephistopheles discourages him until he expresses a desire to play pranks on him. The demon is patient with Faust, who gradually begins to deteriorate. Unlike Faust, Mephistopheles does not deteriorate morally over the course of the play. Faust begins with lofty ideas: uncover hidden scientific facts, provide college students with comfortable clothing, and drive out a foreign ruler to establish a peaceful, unified kingdom in Germany with himself as a benevolent ruler. He soon becomes glutted with knowledge, but instead of embarking on his original plans to make the world a better place, he begins to be self-indulgent. Maybe it's therevision of the Seven Deadly Sins personified, or perhaps it is simply a flaw in his character, but Faustus loses sight of his noble goals. Later in the book, he is shown not as a king but as a traveling magician who visits the courts of various rulers and members of the nobility to amuse and entertain them. Although he has Mephistopheles punish a knight who publicly calls him a swindler, Faust turns out to be exactly that: at the end of the play, he is swindling a horse-dealer out of money by selling him a bale of hay enchanted to look and act like a horse. This moral degradation does not apply to Mephistopheles. He willingly submits to Faustus's increasingly childish requests and errands, but has no real tolerance for stupid or short-sighted behavior. He obeys Faustus solely to keep his end of the bargain and to distract him from repenting and being forgiven by God. In fact, whenever Faustus finds himself thinking about the heavens, or what he wants, Mephistopheles' job is to keep Faustus from repenting so that God can regain his soul. He does this through distractions, threats and other means. Yet his distractions are only successful because Faustus believes he has damned himself beyond the point of redemption, even though there is no such thing since, as the Second Scholar says, "the mercies of God are infinite." (4) As long as Faustus believes he is trapped... he is. Yet Mephistopheles makes the same mistake. If God's mercy is infinite, then God should be able to forgive any sin or offense, even as great as that of Mephistopheles. But even after thousands of years, the demon does not think of asking for forgiveness. Mephistopheles, unlike Faustus, knows what he has lost. Faustus makes the decision to sell his soul and give up all hope of Heaven without having any personal experience. Nor can Faustus, who is an old man of letters but who begins the play having lived only one life, truly appreciate what eternity is like. Not so for Mephistopheles, who had to fall even further. While Faust had the opportunity to repent during his lifetime, Mephistopheles – who is immortal – had at least thousands of years to do the same. If he repented, no unusual harm could befall him, for his greatest agony is due to separation from God. Even his leader, Lucifer, cannot invent anything more devastating. The fact that Mephistopheles also does not try to repent and save himself is the greatest tragedy of the story. Faustus dies and goes to Hell without having experienced Heaven, and so, although his fate is horrible, at least he is not tormented by the grandeur of what he has lost. Not so for the noble Mephistopheles, who vividly remembers what is now denied to him. Because he believes he is damned and beyond redemption, he is. The demon, despite his vast knowledge and awareness, has not yet understood what infinite mercy truly means. Believing that he can understand and predict God's will, and believing that he has surpassed God's (infinite) capacity for mercy, Mephistopheles is as much a prisoner of his own errors and misunderstandings as Faust. Fausto, unlike Mephistopheles, is not a particularly sympathetic character but people still try to save him. The Good Angel and the Old Man tell him about divinity, as do the scholars. They desperately try to save him and divert him from his unreasonableness before it's too late. No one makes the slightest effort to save Mephistopheles by making him see reason: he is completely without support or assistance during the course of the play despite his merits as a sentient being. After the failed rebellion, Mephistopheles fell from grace and died spiritually in the company of legions of.