His intellect is so topsy-turvy that Faustus is unable to believe in anything. He does not even believe that death exists. This is paradoxical since the pact was originally made to escape death. Even though his aim was to conquer death, he also maintains that death does not exist.
Marlowe is using this paradoxical situation to show that Faustus' logical or reasoning powers are rapidly dwindling into insignificance as a result of his pact with the devil. Although Faustus asserts that he wants a godlike power over the world, he spends all of his time satisfying his senses. Instead of noble discussions about the nature of heaven and hell, Faustus suddenly begins to feel lascivious and wants a wife.
He now wants to yield to coarse physical desires rather than search for ultimate knowledge. Faustus does not realize that he is being cheated out of all that he was promised.
He is unable to have a wife as he demands for marriage is a condition sanctified by God. Later in the scene, he is also denied knowledge that he was promised. He expected to have all of his questions about the universe answered, but when he asks who made the world, he is refused an answer.
Previous Scene 4. Next Scene 6. Removing book from your Reading List will also remove any bookmarked pages associated with this title. He ended his life acknowledging that he would trade all the knowledge he had for salvation. So Faustus sold his soul to the devil in order to gain knowledge. Did that make him evil?
Christopher Marlowe took painstaking precautions so that Faustus would not be lumped in with the other "bad guys" of the world. The easy way for him to build his character would have been to make Faustus evil through and through.
Instead Marlowe took the time to make Faustus a good person with flaws. He used evil means to an end, but he was not a wholly evil man. That makes him a tragic hero--not wholly evil, but damned anyway.
That is not an inherent aspect of the ancient tale. But Faustus thinks that if hell affords the freedom to walk about doing things like Mephistophilis, then he will gladly be damned. He then asks for the fairest maiden in Germany to have as a wife. Mephistophilis tries to discourage Faustus, but without success. Because of Faustus' insistence, Mephistophilis goes off and returns with a devil dressed like a woman.
Faustus is repulsed. Mephistophilis explains that marriage is just ceremonial, and that Faustus should not think about it. Rather, he can have a different woman every morning. Mephistophilis offers Faustus a book of spells that can create gold, control weather, and bring forth men in armor. Faustus asks Mephistophilis for a book that can raise spirits, a book that shows the motions of the heavenly bodies, and a book that shows all the plants on the earth. Browse all BookRags Book Notes. Copyrights Dr.
Faustus from BookRags. All rights reserved. Toggle navigation. Sign Up. Sign In. Get Dr. Faustus from Amazon. View the Study Pack. This play is not simply about the evils of joining forces with the devil, rather, it is a story that beautifully illustrates to the reader that things are not always what they appear, that people are gloriously complex, and that no one can be shoved into a preconceived little slot.
Faustus sells his soul to the devil in order to gain the powers of a deity. Usually when a character makes any kind of a pact with the devil, he is immediately written off by both the reader and author as a "bad guy. Faustus sold his soul to the devil, but his motives for doing so and his actions afterward do not fit nicely into the characterization of a "bad guy.
In lines of the first scene Faustus gives the reader an idea of why he wants to sell his soul. He wants material wealth. He wants knowledge. And he wants power. We expect bad guys to want power and money; we expect villains to be power-hungry maniacs.
Offsetting these typical wants, however, Faustus also wants knowledge, separating him from other classic villains. A wise man once said "Listen to what a man says. Watch what he does. Believe what he does. Faustus wants knowledge. The search for knowledge has always been considered a noble one. To this day people set out on the quest for knowledge, sacrificing money, time--often their entire lives.
That is one of the precautions that Marlowe took in building his play. He made realistic characters, who are neither wholly good or wholly evil, that people could relate to, and have sympathy for. The search from knowledge fuels Faustus.
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