Doctor Faustus

Christopher Marlowe
Doctor Faustus, a well-respected German scholar, grows dissatisfied with the limits of traditional forms of
knowledgelogic, medicine, law, and religionand decides that he wants to learn to practice magic. His
friends Valdes and Cornelius instruct him in the black arts, and he begins his new career as a magician by
summoning up Mephastophilis, a devil. Despite Mephastophiliss warnings about the horrors of hell, Faustus
tells the devil to return to his master, Lucifer, with an offer of Faustuss soul in exchange for twenty-four years
of service from Mephastophilis. Meanwhile, Wagner, Faustuss servant, has picked up some magical ability and
uses it to press a clown named Robin into his service.
Mephastophilis returns to Faustus with word that Lucifer has accepted Faustuss offer. Faustus experiences
some misgivings and wonders if he should repent and save his soul; in the end, though, he agrees to the deal,
signing it with his blood. As soon as he does so, the words Homo fuge, Latin for O man, fly, appear
branded on his arm. Faustus again has second thoughts, but Mephastophilis bestows rich gifts on him and gives
him a book of spells to learn. Later, Mephastophilis answers all of his questions about the nature of the world,
refusing to answer only when Faustus asks him who made the universe. This refusal prompts yet another bout
of misgivings in Faustus, but Mephastophilis and Lucifer bring in personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins to
prance about in front of Faustus, and he is impressed enough to quiet his doubts.
Armed with his new powers and attended by Mephastophilis, Faustus begins to travel. He goes to the popes
court in Rome, makes himself invisible, and plays a series of tricks. He disrupts the popes banquet by stealing
food and boxing the popes ears. Following this incident, he travels through the courts of Europe, with his fame
spreading as he goes. Eventually, he is invited to the court of the German emperor, Charles V (the enemy of the
pope), who asks Faustus to allow him to see Alexander the Great, the famed fourth-century b.c. Macedonian
king and conqueror. Faustus conjures up an image of Alexander, and Charles is suitably impressed. A knight
scoffs at Faustuss powers, and Faustus chastises him by making antlers sprout from his head. Furious, the
knight vows revenge.
Meanwhile, Robin, Wagners clown, has picked up some magic on his own, and with his fellow stablehand,
Rafe, he undergoes a number of comic misadventures. At one point, he manages to summon Mephastophilis,
who threatens to turn Robin and Rafe into animals (or perhaps even does transform them; the text isnt clear) to
punish them for their foolishness.
Faustus then goes on with his travels, playing a trick on a horse-courser along the way. Faustus sells him a
horse that turns into a heap of straw when ridden into a river. Eventually, Faustus is invited to the court of the
Duke of Vanholt, where he performs various feats. The horse-courser shows up there, along with Robin, a man
named Dick (Rafe in the A text), and various others who have fallen victim to Faustuss trickery. But Faustus
casts spells on them and sends them on their way, to the amusement of the duke and duchess.
As the twenty-four years of his deal with Lucifer come to a close, Faustus begins to dread his impending death.
He has Mephastophilis call up Helen of Troy, the famous beauty from the ancient world, and uses her presence
to impress a group of scholars. An old man urges Faustus to repent, but Faustus drives him away. Faustus
summons Helen again and exclaims rapturously about her beauty. But time is growing short. Faustus tells the
scholars about his pact, and they are horror-stricken and resolve to pray for him. On the final night before the
expiration of the twenty-four years, Faustus is overcome by fear and remorse. He begs for mercy, but it is too
late. At midnight, a host of devils appears and carries his soul off to hell. In the morning, the scholars find
Faustuss limbs and decide to hold a funeral for him.
Analysis of Major Characters

Faustus
Faustus is the protagonist and tragic hero of Marlowes play. He is a contradictory character, capable of
tremendous eloquence and possessing awesome ambition, yet prone to a strange, almost willful blindness and a
willingness to waste powers that he has gained at great cost. When we first meet Faustus, he is just preparing to
embark on his career as a magician, and while we already anticipate that things will turn out badly (the
Choruss introduction, if nothing else, prepares us), there is nonetheless a grandeur to Faustus as he
contemplates all the marvels that his magical powers will produce. He imagines piling up wealth from the four
corners of the globe, reshaping the map of Europe (both politically and physically), and gaining access to every
scrap of knowledge about the universe. He is an arrogant, self-aggrandizing man, but his ambitions are so grand
that we cannot help being impressed, and we even feel sympathetic toward him. He represents the spirit of the
Renaissance, with its rejection of the medieval, God-centered universe, and its embrace of human possibility.
Faustus, at least early on in his acquisition of magic, is the personification of possibility.
But Faustus also possesses an obtuseness that becomes apparent during his bargaining sessions with
Mephastophilis. Having decided that a pact with the devil is the only way to fulfill his ambitions, Faustus then
blinds himself happily to what such a pact actually means. Sometimes he tells himself that hell is not so bad and
that one needs only fortitude; at other times, even while conversing with Mephastophilis, he remarks to the
disbelieving demon that he does not actually believe hell exists. Meanwhile, despite his lack of concern about
the prospect of eternal damnation, -Faustus is also beset with doubts from the beginning, setting a pattern
for the play in which he repeatedly approaches repentance only to pull back at the last moment. Why he fails to
repent is unclear: -sometimes it seems a matter of pride and continuing ambition, sometimes a conviction that
God will not hear his plea. Other times, it seems that Mephastophilis simply bullies him away from repenting.
Bullying Faustus is less difficult than it might seem, because Marlowe, after setting his protagonist up as a
grandly tragic figure of sweeping visions and immense ambitions, spends the middle scenes revealing Faustuss
true, petty nature. Once Faustus gains his long-desired powers, he does not know what to do with them.
Marlowe suggests that this uncertainty stems, in part, from the fact that desire for knowledge leads inexorably
toward God, whom Faustus has renounced. But, more generally, absolute power corrupts Faustus: once he can
do everything, he no longer wants to do anything. Instead, he traipses around Europe, playing tricks on yokels
and performing conjuring acts to impress various heads of state. He uses his incredible gifts for what is
essentially trifling entertainment. The fields of possibility narrow gradually, as he visits ever more minor nobles
and performs ever more unimportant magic tricks, until the Faustus of the first few scenes is entirely swallowed
up in mediocrity. Only in the final scene is Faustus rescued from mediocrity, as the knowledge of his impending
doom restores his earlier gift of powerful rhetoric, and he regains his sweeping sense of vision. Now, however,
the vision that he sees is of hell looming up to swallow him. Marlowe uses much of his finest poetry to describe
Faustuss final hours, during which Faustuss desire for repentance finally wins out, although too late. Still,
Faustus is restored to his earlier grandeur in his closing speech, with its hurried rush from idea to idea and its
despairing, Renaissance-renouncing last line, Ill burn my books! He becomes once again a tragic hero, a
great man undone because his ambitions have butted up against the law of God.

Mephastophilis
The character of Mephastophilis (spelled Mephistophilis or Mephistopheles by other authors) is one of the first
in a long tradition of sympathetic literary devils, which includes figures like John Miltons Satan in Paradise
Lost and Johann von Goethes Mephistophilis in the nineteenth-century poem Faust. Marlowes
Mephastophilis is particularly interesting because he has mixed motives. On the one hand, from his first
appearance he clearly intends to act as an agent of Faustuss damnation. Indeed, he openly admits it, telling
Faustus that when we hear one rack the name of God, / Abjure the Scriptures and his savior Christ, / We fly in
hope to get his glorious soul (3.4749). It is Mephastophilis who witnesses Faustuss pact with Lucifer, and it
is he who, throughout the play, steps in whenever Faustus considers repentance to cajole or threaten him into
staying loyal to hell.
Yet there is an odd ambivalence in Mephastophilis. He seeks to damn Faustus, but he himself is damned and
speaks freely of the horrors of hell. In a famous passage, when Faustus remarks that the devil seems to be free
of hell at a particular moment, Mephastophilis insists,

[w]hy this is hell, nor am I out of it.

Thinkst thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
(3.7680)
Again, when Faustus blithelyand absurdly, given that he is speaking to a demondeclares that he does not
believe in hell, Mephastophilis groans and insists that hell is, indeed, real and terrible, as Faustus comes to
know soon enough. Before the pact is sealed, Mephastophilis actually warns Faustus against making the deal
with Lucifer. In an odd way, one can almost sense that part of Mephastophilis does not want Faustus to make
the same mistakes that he made. But, of course, Faustus does so anyway, which makes him and Mephastophilis
kindred spirits. It is appropriate that these two figures dominate Marlowes play, for they are two overly proud
spirits doomed to hell.
Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Sin, Redemption, and Damnation

Insofar as Doctor Faustus is a Christian play, it deals with the themes at the heart of Christianitys
understanding of the world. First, there is the idea of sin, which Christianity defines as acts contrary to the will
of God. In making a pact with Lucifer, Faustus commits what is in a sense the ultimate sin: not only does he
disobey God, but he consciously and even eagerly renounces obedience to him, choosing instead to swear
allegiance to the devil. In a Christian framework, however, even the worst deed can be forgiven through the
redemptive power of Jesus Christ, Gods son, who, according to Christian belief, died on the cross for
humankinds sins. Thus, however terrible Faustuss pact with Lucifer may be, the possibility of redemption is
always open to him. All that he needs to do, theoretically, is ask God for forgiveness. The play offers countless
moments in which Faustus considers doing just that, urged on by the good angel on his shoulder or by the old
man in scene 12both of whom can be seen either as emissaries of God, personifications of Faustuss
conscience, or both.
Each time, Faustus decides to remain loyal to hell rather than seek heaven. In the Christian framework, this
turning away from God condemns him to spend an eternity in hell. Only at the end of his life does Faustus
desire to repent, and, in the final scene, he cries out to Christ to redeem him. But it is too late for him to repent.
In creating this moment in which Faustus is still alive but incapable of being redeemed, Marlowe steps outside
the Christian worldview in order to maximize the dramatic power of the final scene. Having inhabited a
Christian world for the entire play, Faustus spends his final moments in a slightly different universe, where
redemption is no longer possible and where certain sins cannot be forgiven.

The Conflict Between Medieval and Renaissance Values

Scholar R.M. Dawkins famously remarked that Doctor Faustus tells the story of a Renaissance man who had
to pay the medieval price for being one. While slightly simplistic, this quotation does get at the heart of one of
the plays central themes: the clash between the medieval world and the world of the emerging Renaissance.
The medieval world placed God at the center of existence and shunted aside man and the natural world. The
Renaissance was a movement that began in Italy in the fifteenth century and soon spread throughout Europe,
carrying with it a new emphasis on the individual, on classical learning, and on scientific inquiry into the nature
of the world. In the medieval academy, theology was the queen of the sciences. In the Renaissance, though,
secular matters took center stage.
Faustus, despite being a magician rather than a scientist (a blurred distinction in the sixteenth century),
explicitly rejects the medieval model. In his opening speech in scene 1, he goes through every field of

scholarship, beginning with logic and proceeding through medicine, law, and theology, quoting an ancient
authority for each: Aristotle on logic, Galen on medicine, the Byzantine emperor Justinian on law, and the Bible
on religion. In the medieval model, tradition and authority, not individual inquiry, were key. But in this
soliloquy, Faustus considers and rejects this medieval way of thinking. He resolves, in full Renaissance spirit, to
accept no limits, traditions, or authorities in his quest for knowledge, wealth, and power.
The plays attitude toward the clash between medieval and Renaissance values is ambiguous. Marlowe seems
hostile toward the ambitions of Faustus, and, as Dawkins notes, he keeps his tragic hero squarely in the
medieval world, where eternal damnation is the price of human pride. Yet Marlowe himself was no pious
traditionalist, and it is tempting to see in Faustusas many readers havea hero of the new modern world, a
world free of God, religion, and the limits that these imposed on humanity. Faustus may pay a medieval price,
this reading suggests, but his successors will go further than he and suffer less, as we have in modern times. On
the other hand, the disappointment and mediocrity that follow Faustuss pact with the devil, as he descends
from grand ambitions to petty conjuring tricks, might suggest a contrasting interpretation. Marlowe may be
suggesting that the new, modern spirit, though ambitious and glittering, will lead only to a Faustian dead end.

Power as a Corrupting Influence

Early in the play, before he agrees to the pact with Lucifer, Faustus is full of ideas for how to use the power that
he seeks. He imagines piling up great wealth, but he also aspires to plumb the mysteries of the universe and to
remake the map of Europe. Though they may not be entirely admirable, these plans are ambitious and inspire
awe, if not sympathy. They lend a grandeur to Faustuss schemes and make his quest for personal power seem
almost heroic, a sense that is reinforced by the eloquence of his early soliloquies.
Once Faustus actually gains the practically limitless power that he so desires, however, his horizons seem to
narrow. Everything is possible to him, but his ambition is somehow sapped. Instead of the grand designs that he
contemplates early on, he contents himself with performing conjuring tricks for kings and noblemen and takes a
strange delight in using his magic to play practical jokes on simple folks. It is not that power has corrupted
Faustus by making him evil: indeed, Faustuss behavior after he sells his soul hardly rises to the level of true
wickedness. Rather, gaining absolute power corrupts Faustus by making him mediocre and by transforming his
boundless ambition into a meaningless delight in petty celebrity.
In the Christian framework of the play, one can argue that true greatness can be achieved only with Gods
blessing. By cutting himself off from the creator of the universe, Faustus is condemned to mediocrity. He has
gained the whole world, but he does not know what to do with it.

The Divided Nature of Man

Faustus is constantly undecided about whether he should repent and return to God or continue to follow his pact
with Lucifer. His internal struggle goes on throughout the play, as part of him of wants to do good and serve
God, but part of him (the dominant part, it seems) lusts after the power that Mephastophilis promises. The good
angel and the evil angel, both of whom appear at Faustuss shoulder in order to urge him in different directions,
symbolize this struggle. While these angels may be intended as an actual pair of supernatural beings, they
clearly represent Faustuss divided will, which compels Faustus to commit to Mephastophilis but also to
question this commitment continually.

Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the texts
major themes.

Magic and the Supernatural

The supernatural pervades Doctor Faustus, appearing everywhere in the story. Angels and devils flit about,
magic spells are cast, dragons pull chariots (albeit offstage), and even fools like the two ostlers, Robin and
Rafe, can learn enough magic to summon demons. Still, it is worth noting that nothing terribly significant is
accomplished through magic. Faustus plays tricks on people, conjures up grapes, and explores the cosmos on a

dragon, but he does not fundamentally reshape the world. The magic power that Mephastophilis grants him is
more like a toy than an awesome, earth-shaking ability. Furthermore, the real drama of the play, despite all the
supernatural frills and pyrotechnics, takes place within Faustuss vacillating mind and soul, as he first sells his
soul to Lucifer and then considers repenting. In this sense, the magic is almost incidental to the real story of
Faustuss struggle with himself, which Marlowe intended not as a fantastical battle but rather as a realistic
portrait of a human being with a will divided between good and evil.

Practical Jokes
Once he gains his awesome powers, Faustus does not use them to do great deeds. Instead, he delights in playing
tricks on people: he makes horns sprout from the knights head and sells the horse-courser an enchanted horse.
Such magical practical jokes seem to be Faustuss chief amusement, and Marlowe uses them to illustrate
Faustuss decline from a great, prideful scholar into a bored, mediocre magician with no higher ambition than to
have a laugh at the expense of a collection of simpletons.

Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Blood
Blood plays multiple symbolic roles in the play. When Faustus signs away his soul, he signs in blood,
symbolizing the permanent and supernatural nature of this pact. His blood congeals on the page, however,
symbolizing, perhaps, his own bodys revolt against what he intends to do. Meanwhile, Christs blood, which
Faustus says he sees running across the sky during his terrible last night, symbolizes the sacrifice that Jesus,
according to Christian belief, made on the cross; this sacrifice opened the way for humankind to repent its sins
and be saved. Faustus, of course, in his proud folly, fails to take this path to salvation.

Faustuss Rejection of the Ancient Authorities

In scene 1, Faustus goes through a list of the major fields of human knowledgelogic, medicine, law, and
theologyand cites for each an ancient authority (Aristotle, Galen, Justinian, and Jeromes Bible, respectively).
He then rejects all of these figures in favor of magic. This rejection symbolizes Faustuss break with the
medieval world, which prized authority above all else, in favor of a more modern spirit of free inquiry, in which
experimentation and innovation trump the assertions of Greek philosophers and the Bible.

The Good Angel and the Evil Angel

The angels appear at Faustuss shoulder early on in the playthe good angel urging him to repent and serve
God, the evil angel urging him to follow his lust for power and serve Lucifer. The two symbolize his divided
will, part of which wants to do good and part of which is sunk in sin.

Goethe's Faust
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethe's Faust Study Guide

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust is one of the greatest works of German literature in the modern age and
one of the greatest epic poems in Western literature. Faust consumed much of Goethe's thought and work
throughout his entire life. He outlined the first sketches of the Faust story as a young student of law and did not
complete the play's final act until a year before his death, approximately sixty years after he first began.
Goethe's play comes from popular legends that circulated throughout Europe from the sixteenth century
onward. Scholars believe that a man named Faust -- probably a doctor or spiritualist -- did actually exist in
sixteenth century Germany. He even receives a mention from Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant
Reformation, as a "conjurer and necromancer" who dabbled in the devil's work. The real Faust probably
dabbled in alchemy and made a living as a traveling magician, providing spectacle to audiences of medieval
Europe.
Faust's legend grew much more popular than the real man ever was while alive. Some of the earliest works to
benefit from Gutenberg's movable type were Faust chapbooks, or cheap pamphlets accessible to the common
classes, that began to appear in the late sixteenth century. This Faust inevitably sold his soul to the Devil for the
gifts of magic and wealth. His life, however, was doomed from the start, and he always ended as the victim of
the Devil's game. His life became both a source of entertainment and a cautionary tale for those that would
stray from the bounds of religion and morality.
Goethe's Faust, however, tells a much grander and more philosophical tale. Goethe wrote the play in order to
explore the themes of philosophy, religion, politics, culture, and literature, as well as what these meant in the
context of an enlightened age. In this story, Faust is not a magician but is, instead, an academic who has reached
the limits of learning and knowledge. He seeks a fuller life and to know about nature and the universe. Through
a wager with the Devil, he hopes to take advantage of a life beyond his study and see the answers that the
universe might provide to him.
Goethe's style in the play is as prolific as the themes he engages. Goethe moves freely from uniform verse to
irregular patterns of poetry to songs and hymns to free verse to Shakespearean blank verse and even to the
simplest rhymes and meters. The play moves from scenes of intense sorrow to scenes of comic hilarity.
Goethe's play tests the limits of modern forms of literature and the way that these forms might describe the
human condition.
Faust is, in the end, a tragedy. This tragic context is seen most clearly through the love story between Faust and
Gretchen. Faust plays a complicated role in the relationship. On the one hand, he is the tempter who lures the
pure virgin from the religion and morality of her simple lifestyle. On the other hand, Faust sees for the first time
that his subjective self is nothing in the face of an eternal love. However, even this realization cannot save him
from his pact with the Devil. Faust, representing the modern human being, always drives himself to damnation,
held back from the moment of true enlightenment.
Goethe's Faust has, along with Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, become the standard telling of the Faust
legend in modern literature. In the centuries after Goethe's death, scholars and writers have remained fascinated
with Goethe's retelling of the legend and the themes that he presents through the work. Novels, plays, and even
pieces of popular culture have paid homage to Goethe's work, and the Faust legend continues to be one of the
most well recognized stories of the modern era.
Summary

The narrative of Faust begins in Heaven. While angels worship The Lord for his creation, Mephistopheles, the
Devil, complains about the state of affairs in the world. Mankind is corrupt, he claims, and he revels in the evil
and disaster that he is able to cause. Mephistopheles makes a bet with The Lord that he will be able to turn one
of his servants, Dr. Faust, over to sin and evil. The Lord agrees, claiming that Faust will remain a loyal
follower.
The play introduces Faust while he sits in his study in despair over his life. He has been a scholar and an
alchemist, and he feels as though he has come to the end of all knowledge. Books and chemistry can no longer
define his life for him, and he longs to live a life in harmony with Nature and with the universe. He summons a
Spirit to come and be with him, but this only reinforces the fact that he is human and not spirit and therefore
cannot share the Spirits higher knowledge. In his despair, Faust brews a poison to commit suicide. Just as he is
about to take the poison, a chorus of angels appears announcing Easter day and stops him from completing the
act.
Faust walks outside his town with Wagner, a fellow scholar. Faust describes his passion for nature and for a
higher mode of life, but Wagner cannot fathom it. The townspeople celebrate Easter, and although Faust feels
that he should be with them, he cannot shake his despair at his current situation. The townspeople crowd around
Faust, cheering him because as a young man he and his father helped the people with medicine during a time of
plague. Faust, however, feels that he probably did more harm than good with his crude medicines. As Wagner
and Faust return home to their studies, they meet a black dog on the road that follows Faust back to his room.
In his study, Faust attempts to find new inspiration by reading the Gospel of John. He begins his own
translation of the work, but the barking dog interrupts him. Soon, the dog transforms, and Mephistopheles
appears where the dog once was. Faust and Mephistopheles begin a conversation about Faust's work and
despair at his current situation in life. To show Faust a taste of his power, Mephistopheles summons a group of
spirits that take Faust on a hallucinatory journey while Faust falls asleep. Mephistopheles leaves the study with
a promise to return and show Faust more.
When Faust awakens, Mephistopheles returns, this time with a wager. Faust continues discussing his inability to
find a satisfying higher power, and Mephistopheles makes him an offer. The Devil promises to serve Faust and
to give Faust a moment of transcendence, a moment in which he hopes to stay forever. If Mephistopheles
succeeds, Faust must then be his servant for the rest of eternity in hell. Faust takes the wager, believing that the
Devil can never give him such a moment. Mephistopheles tells Faust to prepare for their journey, and while
Faust does so, the Devil poses as the doctor as one of Fausts new students arrives for a lesson. The Devil and
the Student talk of the student's future learning endeavors, and Mephistopheles tempts him into a more libertine
lifestyle. The Student leaves, preparing to abandon his study to pursue women.
Mephistopheles takes Faust first to Auerbach's Cellar, a drinking tavern. He tries to convince Faust that the men
there have found their true pleasure; they are men who enjoy their lives in the tavern. Faust is unconvinced,
however, by their crude cares and simple lives. Mephistopheles plays tricks on the men. He drills holes in the
side of one of the tables and pours wine out of the holes. As soon as one of the men spills his wine, however,
flames jump out from the spilled liquid. As they try to come after Mephistopheles and kill him, the Devil
transports them into an alternate reality while he and Faust make their escape.
Faust and the Devil then travel to a witch's cave where they encounter two apes brewing a potion in a cauldron.
The beasts begin to have fun with Mephistopheles and pretend that he is a king while they are his servants.
When the witch returns, she initially does not recognize the Devil but soon sees that he is her master.
Mephistopheles makes the witch give a small bit of her potion to Faust, who drinks it. Outside on a street, Faust
meets a young girl with whom he immediately falls in love. Margaret, or Gretchen for short, avoids his
advances but cannot help and think about the older, noble stranger she met on the road that day.
Faust and Mephistopheles sneak into Gretchens room. In her room, Faust realizes that the feelings he has for
the girl go beyond simple sexual desire. His feelings are complex, and he longs to be near her. At seeing her
bed, he reveres nature for creating such a beautiful creature. When Gretchen returns, they quickly exit, but
Mephistopheles leaves behind a box of jewels. When Gretchen finds the jewels, she cannot believe that they are

for her, yet she also cannot help but put them on and admire them. Faust orders Mephistopheles to have the two
of them meet.
Gretchen visits her neighbor, Martha, to fret over her mother's actions. Her mother, upon seeing Gretchens
jewels, promptly took them to a priest, who could tell that they were from an evil source. Later, Gretchen found
another box of jewels, and Martha encourages her not to tell her mother this time. They answer a knock at the
door and discover Mephistopheles disguised as a traveler. He weaves a story for Martha, telling her that her
husband has died on his long travels. Martha is both heartbroken and angry at the stories of her husband's
licentious life. To put the matter to rest, Martha asks Mephistopheles and another witness to come and legally
attest to her husbands death. The Devil agrees to bring someone, as long as Gretchen will also be present.
That evening in Martha's garden, Gretchen and Faust meet formally for the first time. Faust charms her and
courts her. She tells him of her hard life and of how she nursed her sick infant sister until her sister died.
Gretchen has no other family except her brother, who is away at war, and her mother. Mephistopheles and
Martha also flirt, with the Devil playing a coy game of seduction with her. Meanwhile, when Faust professes
his love for Gretchen, she plays a game of He loves me/He loves me not with a flower. She lands on he
loves me and runs to her room. Faust follows her to a summer cabin, where they say goodbye.
Faust, fearing that he will corrupt the girl with his feelings, runs away to the forest, where he lives for a time in
a cave. He thanks the Spirit of Nature for giving him such feelings, for now he has a moment and an
understanding of life that he does not want to lose. Mephistopheles finds Faust and derides his foolish behavior,
hiding from the woman that he loves. He tells Faust that Faust must find this girl, for she pines away for him
day and night. Faust, his passion overtaking him, agrees that he must go.
Faust returns to Gretchen, and one night in her room, they discuss his feelings on religion. Gretchen is a faithful
Christian, and she knows that neither she nor her mother could accept a man that does not believe the same.
Faust tries to convince the girl that he also believes and worships God, but she does not quite believe him. Faust
convinces her to allow him to give her mother a sleeping potion, and they consummate their relationship. Soon,
Gretchen learns that she is pregnant by Faust. One day, while drawing water from the town well, she hears the
girls gossip about another girl who had sexual relations and became pregnant. The girl was forced to kill her
baby and now lives as a beggar and outcast. Gretchen fears that she will share the girls fate. Gretchen prays to
the Virgin Mary that the Lord will have mercy upon her.
Faust comes to Gretchen's house to see her and meets Gretchen's brother, Valentine. Valentine has heard of her
sister's licentious behavior and has come to exact revenge on the man who impregnated her. He and Faust begin
to argue and fight, and Faust plunges a dagger into Valentines heart. As he lies dying, Gretchen comes to
comfort her brother, but he accosts her as a whore and tells her that she will be damned for her actions.
Gretchen runs to the Cathedral to pray, and an Evil Spirit visits her, securing her damnation.
Faust leaves Gretchen to attend Walpurgis Night with the Devil. Walpurgis Night is the one night of the year
when all the witches, evil beings, and magic creatures of the world gather on Brocken Mountain. Faust
witnesses the revelry of the creatures and begins to dance with one of the witches. Over a fire, Mephistopheles
and Faust converse with a group of artists and politicians about the state of the world. Faust sees a vision of
Lilith, the mythical first wife of Adam, who threatens to enchant him. He also sees a vision of Medusa, who
Mephistopheles warns will seduce Faust and bring no good. As the night ends, Faust sees a small stage set up
on the mountain and goes to attend the show.
The play is entitled Walpurgis Night's Dream and is a take on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The play tells the story of the golden wedding between King Oberon and his wife Titania. Attend the wedding is
a panoply of characters, including politicians, artists, figures from mythology, philosophers, and even objects
that have come to life. They represent different strains of thought, philosophies, or artistic viewpoints on life.
The entire play-within-a-play reflects on the varied academic and intellectual interests of Modernism.
In a gloomy field, Faust learns of Gretchens fate. She killed their infant child and was as a result arrested. He
falls into a new kind of despair and curses Mephistopheles for creating this unhappy and unholy affair.
Mephistopheles reminds him that it was he, Faust, who made the pact. Faust orders the Devil to take him to

Gretchen's jail so that he can free her. Mephistopheles brings horses, and they ride towards the village, although
the Devil warns Faust that both the authorities and avenging spirits are in the town, ready to take their
vengeance on Faust for murdering Valentine.
Faust sneaks into the jail and finds Gretchen. She has devolved into insanity, and she does not recognize Faust,
instead mistaking him for her executioner. Faust pleads for her to escape with him, but her own sense of guilt
and shame, as well as the prospect of the despairing life that she will live outside of the jail, prevents her from
escape. As Gretchen surrenders her soul to the judgment of God, Mephistopheles enters to tell Faust that they
must leave or be caught by the authorities and suffer the same fate of execution. Faust and Mephistopheles flee
from Gretchen's cell as she cries out his name.

Goethe's Faust Character List

Raphael
Raphael is one of the Lord's angels. He appears in the "Prologue in Heaven." He sings of the majesty of God's
creation and the cycles of the sun.

Gabriel
Gabriel is one of the Lord's angels. He appears in the "Prologue in Heaven" and sings of God's creation and the
cycles of day and night.

Michael
Michael is one of the Lord's angels. He appears in the "Prologue in Heaven" and sings of God's creation and the
cycles of storms and weather.

Mephistopheles
Mephistopheles is the play's antagonist. He plays both the parts of tempter and devil, as well as those of court
jester and comedian. Mephistopheles makes a deal with the Lord to tempt Faust, and Faust wagers that
Mephistopheles will not be able to show him an eternal moment that would ever satisfy his thirst for
knowledge. Through a series of tricks and deceits, Mephistopheles confounds Faust's quest for love and
eventually secures his damnation and eternal suffering as the Devil's servant.

The Lord
The Lord appears in the "Prologue in Heaven." The Lord makes a deal with Mephistopheles for Faust's soul and
allows the devil to tempt Faust in order to prove that he will remain faithful to God.

Faust

Faust is the plays protagonist. He is a scholar and alchemist falls into despair because he feels as though he has
exhausted the limits of his knowledge. He feels that he will only become complete if he can fuse his life with
nature and the universe. In order to find this higher knowledge, Faust makes a wager with the devil
Mephistopheles. Faust soon finds his eternal moment in his love for a young girl, Gretchen, whom he then
tempts away from her religious and moral life. Faust's relationship ends in tragedy with Gretchen killing their
child and falling into madness. Faust thus becomes damned never to experience the true knowledge of love that
he seeks.

Earth Spirit
The Earth Spirit is one of the main spirits of the play. It appears to Faust in his study and represents the
goodness of the higher powers of nature and the universe.

Wagner
Wagner is Faust's companion in the first third of the play. Wagner is a scholar who sees no reason to venture
outside of books and learning into the realms of the natural and spiritual as Faust desires. Wagner represents the
academic context that Faust desperately seeks to escape.

Manager
The Manager appears in the scene "Prelude in the Theater." He represents the practical side of art and drama as
he goads the Dramatic Poet and the Comic Clown into performing the Faust story in a way that draws in an
audience and entertains them while enlightening them as well.

Poet
The Poet appears in the scene "Prelude in the Theater." The Poet represents the artistic side of the theater. He is
more concerned with the artistic autonomy and authenticity of the drama than with the entertainment value or
practical staging of the work of the theater.

Comedian
The Comedian, or Clown, appears in the scene "Prelude in the Theater." The Comedian represents the
entertainment value of drama. The Comedian's argument is that theater should take people away from their
everyday worlds and present them with spectacle and passion.

Gretchen

Gretchen is a peasant girl with whom Faust falls madly in love. Gretchen represents the religious and moral
society of common German life against which Faust is compared. Their relationship is destined for tragedy
from the start as Faust tempts Gretchen away from her moral life. After bearing his child, she commits
infanticide, for which she goes to prison and is executed for her crimes.

Martha
Martha is Gretchen's neighbor who provides the means by which Mephistopheles is able to concoct Faust and
Gretchen's love affair. Mephistopheles weaves a lie about the death of Martha's husband in order to bring the
two together, and Martha facilitates Gretchen's fantasies of love with Faust.

Valentine
Valentine is Gretchen's brother and a soldier returning home from war. He receives word of his sister's sexual
indiscretion, and when he meets Faust, they fight. Faust fatally wounds Valentine, and as he dies, Valentine
insults and damns his sister for her indiscretion. His blasphemy represents the violent fissure of modern society
from the religious and social spheres of Christendom.

Student
The Student appears in Faust's study to learn under Faust's tutelage. Mephistopheles impersonates Faust and
tempts the student into a libertine life. The Student shows how easily one can be tempted away from the dull
life of academics and learning.

Witch
The Witch first appears in her cavern, brewing a concoction that initiates Faust's burning passion for Gretchen.

Frosch
Frosch is a character in the scene "Auerbach's Cellar." He is in love with a girl that refuses to reciprocate and
represents the first year student's naivete.

Brander
Brander is a character in the scene "Auerbach's Cellar." Brander teases Frosch about his love affair. He displays
the disillusionment of sophomore students in the academic environment.

Altmayer

Altmayer is a character in the scene "Auerbach's Cellar." He represents the older or former students of a
university.

Siebel
Siebel is the bartender in "Auerbach's Cellar."

Goethe's Faust Glossary

Age of Enlightenment
A philosophical and cultural movement in the Modern Era that appealed to rational thought, reason, and
democratic societies.

alchemist
A person who deals in chemical and rare substances in order to seek the true nature of life.

Brocken Mountain
The scene of Walpurgis Night.

cauldron
A boiling pot, usually associated with witchcraft or alchemy.

confession
A Catholic ritual in which a person tells all their sins to a priest in order to gain absolution.

equine
Of or relating to horses.

fops

Foolish men or women. A derogatory term.

Job
A character in the Bible whose soul is wagered by God and Satan. Goethe based his "Prelude in Heaven" on the
Book of Job.

Leipzig
A city in Germany; called a "little Paris."

libertine
A person with loose or ambivalent morals, especially concerning women.

Lilith
A figure from Rabbinic literature and legend, believed to be Adam's first wife. Lilith has strange powers over
men.

Linden Tree
A tree under which townspeople gather for song and dance.

Lord of Flies
A name for the Devil.

macrocosm
A drawing that attempts to place all concepts of the universe in a compact form.

Magister
Latin for "master." A name that Faust was called by others.

malediction
The act of calling down a curse that brings evil.

Mammon
Wealth personified. Mammon is regarded as an evil influence.

Martin Luther
A sixteenth century Protestant Reformer. Began the Protestant Reformation in Germany with his 95 Theses.

Mater Dolorosa
"Our Lady of Sorrows." A visual representation or icon of the Virgin Mary.

Medusa
A woman from Greek mythology. She had snakes for hair and could turn men into stone with her look.

metaphysics
The philosophical study of being and knowing.

Microcosm
A replication in miniature.

Nature
A spiritual sense of the "real" world. This is often a non-materialistic view of what constitutes the world and the
human condition.

Nordic

Of or relating to the people of Scandinavia.

Padua
A city in Italy.

pedant
A person who pays more attention to rules and regulations than a situation merits.

pentagram
A drawing of a star with five points. The pentagram is associated with witchcraft, magic, and devil worship.

plague
A disease that swept over Europe during the middle ages, killing over a third of the population.

Prater
A famous public park in Vienna.

Proctophantasmist
A word made up by Goethe that means, approximately, "buttock ghost-imaginer." The name was meant to
portray one of Goethe's intellectual rivals.

Promenade
A leisurely walk taken for conversation.

quid pro quo

Something for something; that which a party receives in return for something he does or gives or promises.

Rationalism

A view that appeals to reason as a source of knowledge.

Reformation
The Protestant Reformation, a split in the Christian church in which groups broke off from the Catholic Church
to start their own sects and churches.

Saint Anthony
The patron saint of loving wives and brides.

serf
The lowest social class in the feudal system.

sieve
A utensil of wire mesh or closely perforated metal.

Sign
A word or object that signifies a concept or thing.

Signified
A concept or thing pointed to by a sign.

sophist
A person skilled in elaborate or deviant argumentation; also referring to a group of Greek philosophers.

specter
A ghost or spirit.

Strasbourg
A city in Germany, where Goethe attended university.

Sturm und Drang

German for "Storm and Stress." A literary and philosophical movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries that sought to elevate human emotion over rationalism.

The Fatherland
A name for the country of Germany.

The Snake
A name for Satan taken from the Book of Genesis.

theology
The study of God.

Thule
A legendary kingdom in Europe. Gretchen sings a song of the King of Thule.

vial
A glass container that holds liquid. Usually used in chemistry.

wager
A bet made between two people.

Walpurgis Night

A night of revelry in which all of the earth's witches, sorcerers, and evil spirits come together on the Brocken
Mountain.

Goethe's Faust Themes

The Enlightenment Tradition
The Age of Enlightenment was a broad movement of intellectual culture and philosophy that arguably began
with Ren Descartes' philosophical work Discourse on Method and culminated in the revolutionary works and
actions of the eighteenth century such as the American and French Revolutions. While the Enlightenment
included a vast array of thought, one of its central intellectual themes was that of reason and the role that reason
played in science and the arts.
As a poet and artist of the Enlightenment age, Goethes literature argued against the shift towards radical
rationalism. Faust is the culmination of this argument. As a man of the Enlightenment, Faust seeks to escape
the extreme rationalism of his academic and medical life, but Goethe shows this tradition ultimately cannot
satisfy without emotion and art.

Science and Spirituality

Faust is a scholar and a man of science who feels that he has reached the limits of what rational thought can
contribute to his life. One of the concepts of Enlightenment thought was that humanity would eventually perfect
itself through the advancement of knowledge and technology. Faust argues against this line of thinking. Faust
attempts to perfect himself through learning and science, yet he finds that at the end of his intellectual journey,
he has destroyed his faith and his reason to live.
What Faust strives for is a taste of the spiritual, either in his own life or in a life beyond. His life of science and
medicine and the vast array of knowledge that he has collected keeps him from this spiritual state. He conjures
spirits yet cannot join their world. He soon discovers that his own nature contains a spiritual dimension, that of
love, which he finds in his relationship with the young girl, Gretchen. Goethe argues that love and tragedy can
conquer the tyranny of extreme science and rationalism.

Signifier and Signified

Goethes literary and theological argument in Faust concerns the disconnect between the signifier and the
signified. When Faust attempts to explain his spiritual beliefs to a skeptical Gretchen, he tells her that he can
find no name for what it is he believes. Some might call it God, while others call it Nature or Love. Because
Faust is not able to truly name what he believes, Gretchen is likewise unable to believe in Fausts spirituality.
This is the result of the disconnection between words and the concepts or objects that they signify. Goethe is
asking a deeply philosophical and theological question: if humanity cannot adequately name God, does God
actually exist for humanity? Fausts own subjective experience of this problem destroys his faith and leads him
to an extreme nihilism and the verge of suicide at the plays beginning.

The Nature of Life and Death

Faust is a man who must confront his own existential crisis. The questions that he ponders as a scholar and
doctor have destroyed his faith and his belief in the progress of humanity, and his extreme nihilism lead him to
the verge of suicide. The question that Faust must answer is whether life is worth more than the peace that death
offers.
Goethe creates an extreme example of the logic of philosophical rationalism. Rational thought alone can never
perfect or complete humanity, Goethe argues, because human knowledge has fundamental limits when it comes
to the spiritual world. Humanity simply cannot name or understand that which is higher than it. Therefore,
humanity would only have the question of whether life should be continued or simply ended. This point is a
critique of Modernism and a theme that runs through much of Modern philosophy even into the twentieth
century.

The Romantic Tradition

Goethe's Faust, while not strictly a piece of Romantic literature, nonetheless displays characteristics of the
genre. Faust's extended speeches on the qualities of Nature and the reasons that he cannot be a part of it show
Goethe's faith in the spiritual qualities of the world that the Romantic tradition elevated. In an important scene,
Faust returns from his walk through nature with Wagner to his study and, for the only time in the play's first
half, feels a satisfied spirit within him. By contrast, his removal from the natural world and entry into the world
of rational thought kills this spirit.
Goethe sees in Nature the true spiritual and moral foundations of humanity. Humanity's depraved condition
comes not from some innate sinfulness, but from a disconnection with the spiritual and divine aspects of
Nature. Only a return to these true qualities of the world leads to completeness for the individual.

Moral Ambivalence
One of the consequences of Modernism, according to Goethe, is that if modern rationalism destroys the need
for religion or social constraints, then this creates a moral vacuum in the human condition. Faust's condition is
not only one of intellectual despair, but also one in which his character is transformed into a morally ambivalent
libertine, as in his love affair with Gretchen. Gretchen, who is morally pure before meeting Faust, is tempted
into a life of immorality just as Mephistopheles tempts Faust. When Gretchen accepts Faust's declarations of his
post-Christian faith, she loses the moral qualities of her previous life. Faust destroys Gretchen's faith and moral
support through his own moral ambivalence. Goethe argues that such a condition can only lead to tragedy, just
as it does for both Faust and Gretchen.

Subjectivity
Goethe characterizes the modern world as one in which meaning revolves not around the action of the
collective but around the introspection and imagination of the subjective self. While the classical epic poem
always portrays action emanating from a great hero, all action in Faust depends on Faust's own subjective
experience. Faust falls into existential despair through his own subjectivity. Likewise, he cannot understand his
own chance at salvation through his love of Gretchen outside of his own subjective experience. Goethe
characterizes the separation that occurs between people who are unable to speak in similar languages of faith or
love because of their own subjective selfishness. This leads to tragedy for both characters since, as Goethe
suggests, they can never truly capture the love of the other. The turn toward the subjective is therefore a turn
towards tragedy.

Goethe's Faust Quotes and Analysis

Alas, I have studied philosophy, / the law as well as medicine, / and to my sorrow, theology; / studied them well
with ardent zeal, / yet here I am, a wretched fool, / no wiser than I was before."
Faust, 31
These lines introduce Fausts character. He sits in his study and laments that although he has studied all of the
world's great knowledge, he feels no wiser from it. These words set up the central motivation of the play,
Faust's desire to transcend human knowledge in order to gain divine knowledge. The situation is also a
metaphor for what Goethe sees as the conundrum of Modernism, in which mankind relies on strict rationalism
instead of striving for a deeper and more divine knowledge to understand the world.

"Oh my, but art is long / and our life is fleeting."

Faust, 47
This quote, spoken by Wagner, is a translation of the Latin ars longa, vita brevis. Wagner, who represents the
rationalist tradition, is expressing the idea that all knowledge should come from the classical Greek works of
philosophy since one's life is too short to construct entire new systems of philosophy. Faust represents the
opposite position, as he hopes to build a new way of learning through his own subjective experience of nature
and the divine.

THE LORD
Is nothing ever right on the earth?
MEPHISTOPHELES
No, my Lord, I find it there, as always, thoroughly / revolting. / I pity men in all their misery / and actually hate
to plague the wretches.
Faust, 25
This dialogue between God and the Devil expresses the latter's attitude toward humanity. Later in this scene,
God allows Mephistopheles to tempt his servant, which echoes the Book of Job from the Hebrew Bible. The bet
between God and the Devil is God's attempt to prove that some of humanity remains faithful to religion and
morality. However, as this quote shows, Mephistopheles sees the world as so depraved that even his own
temptations cannot equal the suffering and misery that mankind brings upon itself.

The time has come to prove by deeds / that man will not quake before the pit where fantasy / condemns itself to
tortures of its own creation / when he advances to the narrow passageway / about whose mouth infernal flames
are blazing. / Approach the brink serenely and accept the risk / of melting into nothingness.
Faust, 57

Faust gives this speech as he holds a cup of poison, ready to drink it and commit suicide. This expresses Faust's
post-Christian nature. He rejects the ideas of heaven and hell as nothing more than fantasies that humanity has
created for itself. Instead, Faust replaces ideas of religion with utter nihilism, ready to take his own life since he
believes the action will have no eternal consequences.

It is written: "In the beginning was the Word!" / Even now I balk. Can no one help? / I truly cannot rate the
word so high. / I must translate it otherwise.
Faust, 97
Faust expresses two ideas in this line. First is the idea of a reformulation of religion for the modern era. Faust
wavers between rejecting religion as superstition and believing that one can salvage religion in face of extreme
rationalism. The second idea expressed is the relation between the signifier and the signified. Faust cannot find
understanding within the Word (alluding to both scripture and the actual word), demonstrating that the thing
signified by a word can never be completely described by that word.

If you should ever find me lolling on a bed of ease, / let me done for on the spot! / If you ever lure me with your
lying flatteries, / and I find satisfaction in myself, / if you bamboozle me with pleasure, / then let this be my
final day! / This bet I offer you!
Faust, 131
These lines form the play's most critical moment. Mephistopheles has wagered Faust that he will be able to give
Faust a moment in this life in which Faust will leave his subjective despair. Faust mistakenly feels assured that
he will never find such a moment and agrees to the bet. This excerpt demonstrates Fausts belief that all human
endeavors lead to nothing and that happiness and morality are not possible in the modern world.

To grasp the gist of medicine is easy; / you study through the great and little world, / in order in the end to let
things be / exactly as the Lord desires.
Faust, 157
Mephistopheles says these words to a student in order to tempt the student to abandon all learning and live
outside of its limitations and restrictions. According to the Devil, learning only imposes morals on humanity
while causing nothing but unhappiness. Instead, this student should abandon morals and live a libertine and
subjectively hedonistic life, even if such a life leads towards damnation.

MEPHISTOPHELES
And then you'll speak of faith and love eternal, / of a single, overpowering urge- / will that flow so easily from
your heart?
FAUST
Enough, I say it will.
Faust, 269

This conversation between Faust and Mephistopheles is the decisive moment when Faust admits that he has lost
his wager. Faust did not believe that he could find an experience of completeness in his own life, yet he did
through his love for Gretchen. Goethe thus argues that emotion can overcome strictly rational thought to
provide humanity a way out of its existential crisis.

Fill your heart to overflowing, / and when you feel profoundest bliss, / then call it what you will: / Good
fortune! Heart! Love! or God! / I have no name for it! / Feeling is all; / the name is sound and smoke, /
beclouding Heaven's glow.
Faust, 311
This attempt by Faust to explain his spiritual beliefs to Gretchen is an expression of the idea that human words
and systems of thought or theology have no real way to express the nature of the divine. This disconnection of
signifier from signified has caused Faust's own existential crisis as well as humanity's move from a Christian to
a post-Christian society. Faust attempts to recreate his own system of belief but does not find sustaining faith
until he experiences his love for Gretchen.

You may find him anywhere, my dear. / When others dance, he's got to criticize, / and if he fails to criticize a
step, / that step might just as well have not been taken.
Faust, 375
These lines, spoken by Faust as he dances with a witch on Walpurgis Night, sum up Goethe's distaste for the
rationalist philosophers who criticize the belief that emotion is a truer expression of humanitys capacities than
is reason. Goethes school of thought, called Sturm und Drang (German for Storm and Stress), sought to
elevate the place of emotion in the modern world. Whereas the rationalist school of thought relied upon
classical learning and texts as the foundation of knowledge, the Sturm und Drang school argued that truth must
be found in the emotional storms of life.

Goethe's Faust Summary and Analysis of Prologue

in Heaven
Summary
Faust opens with a conversation between The Lord and his four servants Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, and
Mephistopheles. Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael are all angels of heaven and begin the play by praising The
Lords creation. Raphael praises the sun, extolling the way it intones (The Lords) ancient song. Gabriel
praises the earths full splendor and how the rivers and the sea reflect The Lords power. Michael speaks of
the fury of creation, how storms and lightening tear across the face of the earth and, yet, O Lord, your
messengers revere / the gentle movement of your day. The three angels then praise all The Lords creation as
glorious.
Mephistopheles is introduced. He gives The Lord his own update on the state of earth, yet his does report not
praise The Lord. He tells The Lord, I waste no words on suns and planets, / I only see how men torment
themselves. Things would have been easier for humanity if they had not gotten a glimpse of celestial light
and that now man only uses his gift of reason to be more bestial than the beasts. Mephistopheles calls
humanity a grasshopper and he wishes man had never left the grass / to rub his nose in imbecility! The
Lord does not understand why Mephistopheles only sees the wrong things of earth, and Mephistopheles assures
him that he only finds the things that are thoroughly / revolting. It is so bad that he pities mankinds plight.

The Lord then asks Mephistopheles if he knows of his servant Faust. Mephistopheles says he does and that he
knows Faust serves The Lord in peculiar ways. The Lord assures him that even if Faust is not currently a
dedicated servant, in the end he will be clear in his service to The Lord. Mephistopheles makes a bet with The
Lord that the latter will lose him in the end. The Lord takes the bet and tells him that as long as Faust is alive,
Mephistopheles can lead him downward on your road. The Lord is confident that in the end Faust will be a
true servant of goodness and glory.
The Lord tells his servants that he is glad to give freedom to the rogue Mephistopheles because mankind
becomes self-satisfied too easily. The Lord is pleased to give (man) a companion / who must goad and prod
and be a devil. Mephistopheles ends the Prologue by saying to himself that it is good to see The Lord because
he is very decent to be so human with the devil.
Analysis
Goethes Faust is based around two supernatural wagers. The first of these wagers occurs in the Prologue and
sets up the overarching conflict of the narrative. The scene opens in heaven with two contrasting visions of the
world below. The angels give God a report that his creation is beautiful. They paint scenes of the powerful
forces of nature and the ways in which Gods magnificent creation reflects his benevolence and glory. Each
angel represents a particular cyclical process of the earth: the sun, night and day, and the power and calm of
weather. All of these connote the completeness of Gods creation and God himself. Mephistopheles, however,
offers a different view. His viewpoint comes not from a view of nature but that of humanity. Mephistopheles
does not look at the world and see beauty and goodness; instead, he looks at the world and sees the misery of
humankind.
Gods argument with Mephistopheles comes from his divine belief that, in the end, humanity will transcend the
evil of the world and be faithful to their creator. God brings Faust into the conversation as an example of such
goodness. Mephistopheles is skeptical that Faust is that good of a servant to God, and the two make a wager for
Fausts soul. This scene in heaven is an alternate telling of the story from the Hebrew Bibles Book of Job. In
the biblical story, Satan makes a wager with God over Gods servant Job. Satan is sure that he can make Job
curse God, but God has faith that Job will remain loyal to him. Satan then destroys everything in Jobs life,
taking his possessions, family, and health. Job, however, does not curse God and in the end receives Gods
double blessings.
As in Job, the overarching theme of Faust is a reflection on the essential characteristics of human nature and the
relation of human nature to the divine. The Prologue takes place out of the realm of human nature, suggesting
that higher powers are ultimately responsible for the salvation or damnation of human souls. Nevertheless,
throughout the play, Fausts interior struggles between his desire for power and knowledge and that of his better
self constitute a major tension in the narrative.
Goethe also raises the question of the humanness of God. In contradistinction to the omnipotent and omniscient
God of Calvinism and the Protestant Reformation, Goethes God displays very human characteristics. God must
have his own faith in humanity in order to make the wager with Mephistopheles, and the reader understands
that the drama of the play depends on whether Gods gamble does or does not pay off. Even Mephistopheles
notes that he enjoys conversing with God because of Gods humanness.
The Prologue also has some political symbolism. Scholars have noted that one should not take the scene as a
theological statement of Gods relation to man, but rather as a political allegory. The feudal court, over which a
benevolent God reigns, is a staple theme in Renaissance drama, and Goethe borrows from those themes here.
By this reading, God is the king, and Mephistopheles, instead of playing the part of a powerful evil creature, is
more of a court jester meant to entertain both the audience and the king.

Goethe's Faust Summary and Analysis of Night

Summary

This scene begins with Faust sitting at his desk in A high-vaulted, narrow, Gothic room as night falls. Faust
laments all that he knows and yet cannot know. He is a master in philosophy. . .law as well as medicine
and. . .theology, yet although he is smarter than all of his students and the other great teachers of the day, the
only thing that his knowledge has given him is the truth that we cannot know! and this gives his heart nothing
but sorrow.
Faust has turned to magic so that he might yet learn some secret lore. As he watches the moonrise, Faust
speaks to it. He reminds the moon of how often he sat at his desk, reading and studying until seeing it rise. He
laments that if he could only be free, as the moon is, to wander over all of nature then he might expel the
smoke of learning / and be drenched to wholeness in your dew.
He knows he is still trapped in his scholarly work and in his quest to find the answers to life. He curses the
room in which he sits and the worm-eaten books that surround him. He wonders to himself why he is so tied
to this quest for knowledge when he knows that the pulsing nature that God intended for man is available to
him. He tries to urge his soul to abandon his work, the volume of Nostradamuss writings that he holds in front
of him, and all of these questions of magic. He urges himself to go out into nature and to feel alive.
He opens the book in front of him and sees the sign of the macrocosm. His mood suddenly changes. Instead of
doom, he feels hope and bliss. Faust believes it must have been a god that drew such a sign because in such
signs he can see living Nature before his soul. Faust understands again why the world of spirits is not
closed. The sign reminds him of the angels, yet it also speaks of something deeper, the infinity of Nature.
Faust looks again at his book and sees the sign of the earth spirit. This new sign works on him and he begins
to feel stronger and more powerful. He calls for the Earth Spirit to reveal itself to him and says a quick spell.
The Spirit appears and Faust averts his face. The Spirit tells Faust that he heard him pulling him from his
sphere. Faust, however, is terrified at the sight of the Spirit and it is disgusted with him. It asks him, What
pitiable terror / seizes you, you superman? The Spirit mocks him for his fear, but Faust insists that he stands
his ground as the Spirits equal. The Spirit recounts how it rises and falls in the rhythm of life: The cradle and
the grave, / a perennial sea. . . / I toil at the whirring loom of time. It tells Faust that he is not like it, which
upsets Faust until he hears a knock on his door.
Wagner, a fellow scholar, enters in a nightgown. Wagner heard the conversation between Faust and the Spirit
and thought his own work might be helped by such elocution because in these days it is often said that an
actor / could give lessons to a preacher. Wagner is frustrated because his scholarship seems to lack the
emotional power of the thought of previous ages. Faust taunts him and tells him that he will never conquer his
subject unless there is a surging from your soul. If not, youll never move anothers heart. Wagner rebuts,
Elocution is the speakers greatest tool, but Faust again calls him a fool for thinking this. The knowledge of
previous ages, according to him, is nothing but shredded bits of / thought, while Wagner still asserts, Aart is
long / and our life is fleeting. Their argument over the spirits of another age continues with Wagner arguing
that all knowledge advances society and Faust arguing that all knowledge is meaningless and that all of history
is nothing more than Pails of garbage and heaps of trash. All those that ever gained a share of
understanding / who foolishly unlocked their hearts... / have always ended on the cross and pyre. Wagner tells
Faust that he would like to continue the conversation on tomorrows Easter holiday.
When Wagner exits, Faust wonders at how such a man could still cling to the wisdom of past ages when he
himself can commune with spirits. Faust returns to his despondency, upset because having been so close to the
Spirit, he can now understand his own dwarfish self. He cries out to be again close to such divinity. Faust
cries that at one point, Imagination had reached boldly for eternity, but now it seems content to live in the dim
chamber of the scholar. Such learning only imprisons people. Nature has chosen not to reveal itself to him
through the instruments of science or the learning of past ages.
Faust focuses his vision on one particular vial filled with a poison that he himself has concocted and suddenly
feels a sweet illumination in the thought of suicide. By looking and grasping the vial, Faust begins to feel the
darkness lifted from his soul. He again sees visions of natures grandeur. Faust feels that this is the time to Be
bold and brash and force the gates / from which men shrink and slink away! He attempts to face death with
bravery.

As he puts the goblet of poison to his lips, the Choir of Angels suddenly enters the room singing, Christ is
arisen! / Joy to all men, and Faust puts down the vial. The Choir tells him that they are the same as were there
on the night of Christs birth and later at Christs empty tomb. Faust asks the angels why they have come to
him. Although he hears their message, he has no faith, but remembering the sounds of angels and salvation
from his childhood, Faust then can hear their summons to return to life. The Choir of Angels ends the scene
with praise of Christ and his resurrection from the dead, telling Faust, The Master is near you; / Now He is
here!
Analysis
Night begins the Faust drama and sets forth the themes and motifs of the play through both its structure and
its symbolism. The most important symbol of this scene is the timeframe in which the scene takes place. This
particular night is not just any night. Instead, it is the Saturday night before Easter morning, the most important
celebration of the year on the Christian calendar. The night before Easter and the night before Christmas have a
symbolic connection to humanitys darkest hour before the appearance of their savior Jesus. In the same way,
this night is Fausts darkest night as he confronts the despair and depression of his own life and work and
almost decides to kill himself. Ironically, however, the Devil rather than Jesus appears to save him.
The setting, that of Faust alone in his room, debating and fighting with a dark internal spirit, is an
Enlightenment variation on popular folklore. Martin Luther, the great Protestant Reformer of the sixteenth
century, is often depicted as having come to his great spiritual insight through times of tumultuous reflection
while alone in his study. Some stories depict Luther as having intense arguments with the devil. Ren
Descartes, also, is said to have come to important philosophical insights through his internal deliberation, alone
in his stove-room. This theme of the great thinking man, alone and wrestling with his own consciousness, is one
of the hallmarks of the Enlightenment narrative, and Faust continues the tradition with this opening scene of
internal deliberation.
Fausts internal strife is an example of the German philosophical movement Sturm und Drang (Storm and
Stress). This school reacted to the extreme objectivism and rationalism that characterized early Enlightenment
thinking in Europe. Sturm und Drang sought to find ways to express the turbulent internal emotions of the
human experience. For example, the term is believed to have been first used in a play about the American
Revolution in which the violent emotions of the Revolutions participants are the catalysts for war and change.
In Faust, Faust longs to break away from the violent emotions of his own soul by joining the natural world, and
he longs to use his own mind to construct an order for the world.
This scene also introduces the reader to Fausts tragic flaw. In some ways, Faust is a work in the Romantic
tradition, as the reader sees Fausts longing for a kind of spiritual and natural world that is separate and apart
from the real world of learning or everyday life that he suffers. The reader can also see the nascent
beginnings of a Nietzschean will-to-power in Fausts desire not just to transcend the real world, but also to
rule over or dominate the more spiritual, natural world. This is the flaw and tension in Fausts character. He
wishes to transcend the real world, yet he does not want to give up his own identity or desires. Fausts
conflicting dialogues with both the Spirit and with Wagner represent this wish. Faust wants desperately to
escape from the tired constraints of philosophy and old learning, but he can find no way to do so through his
own subjective experience.
Fausts attempted suicide is a fork in the road for the character. Goethe asks one of the key philosophical and
existential questions with which Modern philosophy grapples, that of why is life better than non-life. Faust first
believes that non-life is his best option because by contemplating death, he again feels the possibility of the
natural world open up before him. Faust can identify with the dust of the earth, since his own body and soul
will return to the natural world. Nonetheless, Faust also ultimately finds this unsatisfying because death does
not allow him to retain his essential self, something that was of great importance for European philosophers and
artists of Goethes time. Faust would return to the natural world, but he would not become the master of the
world or even himself.
The Choir of Angels come both to announce the dawn of Easter morning, a representation of new life and
resurrection, as well as to stop Fausts death. Ironically, however, the new life that Faust will receive is not a

Christian life. Faust has a post-Christian worldview in which Christ is unnecessary for new life. He is ready to
give up his life because he no longer believes in the consequences of sin and death, and this view permeates his
future actions.

Goethe's Faust Summary and Analysis of Before the

Gate
Summary
Before the Gate opens outside the town of Burgdorf with several groups of people strolling about and
speaking of various things. A group of Apprentices wanders in the countryside looking for a good meal and for
girls, although some want to stay away from the town because they were once beaten up there. A group of
Servant Girls talk about a man that they want to meet and dance with in town. A group of Students and some of
the Burghers Daughters admire each others beauty and dream of being married while the Burghers discuss
issues of politics, war, and peace while they celebrate their simple lives. A group of Soldiers stands guard
around the towns castle and dreams of going off to war.
Faust and Wagner come strolling up to the gate having an intense conversation. Faust admires the beauty of
spring and how it drives out Winters feeble self. From a high place, he looks down upon the peasants of the
town. All of them are outdoors celebrating the Easter day. They celebrate / the resurrection of the Lord, / for
they themselves have arisen / from their glum quarters and tight little houses, / from bondage to their trade and
labor.... Faust admires the way the crowd moves through the spring day with such energy and enthusiasm.
This, he says, is their paradise.
Wagner admires Fausts ability to find such beauty in such profane affairs of the peasants. Their playfulness is
vulgar to Wagner, and he finds the noise hateful. The peasants began to sing a suggestive song as they twirl
around a Linden Tree. The song is about a boy and a girl, who are also twirling around a Linden Tree, and about
how the boy makes advances to the girl, touching her and flirting with her. The song ends with a lesson about
how men deceive their women but how women fall for the men anyway.
Seeing Faust, a peasant comes up to him and thanks him for being with them on this Easter day. The peasant
gives him a pitcher of drink and toasts Faust, saying, May the sum of drops contained therein / be added to
your days. The peasant then praises Faust. He tells everyone of how Faust and his father, a doctor, would come
to give medicine and comfort to the peasants during the fevers burning rage. The peasant notes that though
many people died, Faust always came out of their houses whole and well. The peasant proclaims, Our
helpers help came from the Lord in Heaven.
Wagner is impressed that a group of peasants heaps such lavish praise on his friend. Wagner notes that the
peasants treat Faust in the same way they might treat Jesus. Faust is not impressed by the display, however, and
sinks into another black mood. He tells Wagner that the acclaim he receives sounds like mockery. He admits
that neither he nor his father knew how to heal the many dying people and, in their quest to find an antidote to
the sickness, concocted potions and poisons that left many more dead. One particular potion they concocted,
made of Red Lion and Lily, did particular damage. Faust tells Wagner, With our hellish potions / we raged
about these plains and mountains / and were more deadly than the plague.
Wagner tells his friend that he should not be so depressed over the situation. He tells Faust that a person can
only know what they have learned and that they can learn from their mistakes, but Faust does not feel better.
What we dont know is really what we need, he says. He decides the day is too beautiful to be marred by
gloomy thoughts and he begins to point out beautiful sights of the land. Faust dreams of what it would be like
to have a birds vantage point, to sail high above all of nature. He thinks this image must be the spirits vantage
point and pleasure.
Wagner tells Faust that Faust has a noble dream but that he has never had it himself. He derives all his pleasure
only from unrolling a precious parchment. Wagner says that doing so makes the very skies come down to

us. Faust chides him for being conscious of only a single drive. Faust declares that his drive is much more
spiritual and that he would trade anything in the world for the ability to roam with the spirits between heaven
and earth. Wagner warns Faust of invoking the names of the spirits because they pretend to come to you from
Heaven / and lisp like angels when they lie to you.
Faust stops and looks startled. He sees a jet-black dog running through a field below him. Wagner waves the
dog away and says it is just a poodle acting as a dog should, but Faust sees something else in the dogs ample
spiral turns. Faust sees the dog softly weaving coils of magic / for future bondage round our feet. Wagner
thinks that Faust is just confused and that if he were to see the dog up close, he would recognize that it is a dog
doing what dogs normally do. Faust realizes that Wagner is right and that it is just a well-trained dog. Wagner
tells him that, Yes indeed [the dog] quite deserves your favor / as a student and a fellow-scholar.
Analysis
The setting of this scene contrasts with the previous scene of Night. The reader sees the ordinary lives of the
ordinary town of this small German village. Through the prattling of students, girls, businessmen, and soldiers,
Goethe depicts the mundane life of the villagers, which contrasts with the dark and depressed world of Fausts
life of the mind. As in the Romantic Movement, the mundane and ordinary hold a special place within the
framework of divinity, while the culture of elites and intellectuals is a path into existential turmoil.
Faust shows again his inner turmoil through his conversation with Wagner. He notes how happy the people
seem. His speech as he and Wagner walk through the Easter springtime offers the possibility of release from his
own existential prison. He tells his friend Wagner that he knows he should live within this context, but that he
cannot live within this context because the magic of this life has been dispelled. The magic in this scene is
Christianity. The yearly routine of the faith not only depicts scenes of birth, death, and resurrection, but it also
provides the chance for the people to experience this cycle of life and resurrection. Because Faust does not
share this faith, he knows that he also cannot share in this life.
Faust and Wagners conversation concerning his fathers work in medicine allows Goethe to make arguments
for and counter-arguments against the benefit of science for society. Fausts father was a doctor and attempted
to provide medical care to those suffering from the plague, but even this bit of altruism disgusts Faust as he sees
the limitations of his care. He feels that he and his father, working under the guise of science, quickened the
pace of death for those suffering. Wagner attempts to counter this by claiming that all science or knowledge
must be built upon the successes and failures of those that came before. Thus, Goethe produces one of the
central tensions in European Enlightenment thought, that between the ability of objective reason to bring about
progress and the need for the individual to return to a natural and spiritual state of emotion.
Fausts speech towards the end of the scene displays the paradox of his own situation. Faust, seeing the setting
sun, has visions of flying high over the world, looking down upon the seas and the land. Faust is endlessly
frustrated by the pointlessness of his own work and his inability to find a place in this world. Faust, in a sense,
has created his own prison.
Scholars note that this scene is a depiction of several myths of the soul dating back to ancient Greek philosophy
that found their way into the philosophy of Goethes time. The Doctrine of Two Souls is especially apparent in
Fausts monologue. This doctrine states that the soul has two competing interests, or drives. One drive is the
rational, characterized by Fausts scholarly and scientific work. The other drive is that of the imagination, or the
spiritual drive, as depicted by Fausts dream of flying over the world. Wagner, Faust notes, has only the rational
drive and no desire or thoughts of the imaginative or spiritual. However, both of these drives, if out of balance
with each other, do not bring about the kind of contentment that Faust hopes to achieve. As the reader will see
later, a life of play becomes as much a prison for Faust as a life of reason and work.

Goethe's Faust Summary and Analysis of Faust's

Study

Summary
With the fields and meadows of the town gate behind him, Faust returns with the black poodle to his study at
night. He is ebullient from his day in nature and feels that the love of mankind is astir, / the love of God is all
about us. The poodle is also frisky, and it runs and barks through the study, annoying Faust. He tells it to be
still and that it will be his welcome guest because it entertained him while out in the fields.
As the night grows darker outside, Fausts heart grows darker inside. The poodle growls a brutish snarl, and
Faust tells him to stop. He tells the dog that he is familiar with people who mutter at the Good and Beautiful /
because it is often too much trouble. Faust is distraught that his soul has run dry of inspiration so soon. He
turns to the Book of John in the New Testament and begins to translate its lines into his native German tongue.
He reads, In the beginning was the Word! but feels that it is not the correct translation for himself. He feels
inspired by the spirit and instead writes, In the beginning was the Mind, and then, In the beginning there was
Power! before finally settling on In the beginning was the Deed.
Faust begins to tell the dog to stop growling and barking, and he begins to show the dog out the door, when he
suddenly sees it begin to change shape and form. What specter did I bring into my house! Faust exclaims. In
the rooms corridor, a group of spirits speaks. Faust believes that he must first use the Spell of Four to
confront the thing inside of the dog. Yet, when he uses that spell, he finds that none of those four spirits are in
the dog. He then tries stronger conjurations. Calling the thing a refugee from Hell, he makes the sign of the
cross and watches the thing swell and puff.
This holy spell holds the thing at bay behind the stove in his study. Faust continues to invoke the name of Christ
to hold the evil spirit at bay and to make it reveal itself to him. A mist descends on the room and when it clears,
Mephistopheles steps out from behind the stove dressed as a traveling scholar. Faust is surprised to see one of
his own as the spirit within the dog and laughs at the confusion. Mephistopheles salutes Faust, yet will not give
his name for one so scornful of the word, / for one removed from every outward show / who always reaches
for the inmost core. Faust says that for such a spirit, The essence of the like of you / is usually inherent in the
name.
Mephistopheles then begins to describe himself. He is a portion of that power / which always works for Evil
and effect the Good, he is the proper element of deadly sin and Evil, and he is a portion of that part which
once was everything, / a part of darkness which gave birth to Light, / that haughty Light which now disputes the
rank / and ancient sway of Mother Night. Mephistopheles tells him that his work on earth never ceases
because new blood always exists to tempt and bury.
Faust tells him that his work is in vain and that Faust will never fall to the forces of darkness. Mephistopheles
tells him they should give the matter further thought in future conversation. He asks if he may leave but finds
that he cannot. Mephistopheles admits that because a broken pentagram sits half drawn on the sill, he cannot
leave. Faust is amused because the devils caught and cannot leave the house. Mephistopheles tells him that
hells law is that a spirit can only leave a room in the same way that it entered it. So Hell itself has its
legalities? Faust asks.
Faust, knowing that he has the upper hand in the situation, tells him to stay and perform some handsome tricks
and conjurations. Mephistopheles agrees and calls in the Spirits so that Faust will be bathed in ecstasy. The
Spirits sing a song, making the High-vaulting arches of the study vanish and replaced with Mellower suns,
foaming wines, and Radiant isles. In a moment, Faust is asleep.
Seeing his way to escape, Mephistopheles calls on a scurrying rat to come and chew the edge of the broken
pentagram. Using a daub of oil, he completes the broken pentagram and exits Fausts study. Faust awakens to
find that he has been cheated once again. He cannot tell if the whole scene was real, or if it was a dream and
the poodle had simply run away from him.
Analysis

This scene is both a microcosm of the entire Faustian myth as well as a metaphor for the transformation of
humanity from the bounds of Christendom into the Age of Enlightenment. As a microcosm of the entire play,
the scene works by first introducing Faust in his study, reading the great wisdom of the ages, which ultimately
leaves him unsatisfied. He then encounters the supernatural, with whom he makes a pact. The scene then ends
with Fausts ultimate continued discontentment and the feeling that he has been tricked into a great loss. The
entirety of the play follows a narrative arc encapsulated in this scene.
As a symbol for the transformation of humanity, the scene works on several levels. Most notably, the scene
opens with Faust turning away from the collected wisdom of humanity to find a more satisfying reality in the
pages of scripture. However, although Faust remains a Christian (albeit a Christian marked by the art and
knowledge of the Renaissance), he cannot pull his mind out of the dissatisfaction of his pursuits, and he tries to
reformulate the opening words of the Book of John into a formula that would be more appropriate for his
intellectual situation. Goethe thus suggests that the trajectory of Modernism, with regard to Christianity, is an
attempt to remake the religion in modern humanitys own image. Where one particular idea of religion was
unsatisfying, the great minds of the age found a way to make it relevant. By making it relevant, however,
something is always lost, just as the meaning of a text is inherently lost in the process of translation. Goethe
may be making an explicit reference to the new discipline of Biblical criticism that was introduced in the
German intellectual culture of his day. Goethe had previously satirized the discipline in earlier works.
The Devil interrupts Fausts attempts to remake the scriptures into his own formulation. Figuratively, Goethe
implies that humanitys own progression has been a kind of pact with the Devil as well. Just as Faust will wager
his own soul for progress and contentment, so too has the Devil interrupted and made a bet for the soul of
humanity.
Notably, Fausts intellectual quests are always interrupted in some way by the appearance of spirits that propose
to open new doors of experience and learning for him. This occurrence echoes a theme running through several
famous works of German philosophy of the time. G.W.F. Hegels Phenomenology of the Spirit is perhaps the
best known example of this. While the philosophers often used the term spirit interchangeably with terms for
human consciousness, Goethes use of the spirit world is more overt. A literal spirit (in this scene, the Devil) is
necessary for Faust to gain a greater understanding of the world.
Mephistopheles, now introduced in the human world, transforms from a black dog into human form. He is the
Christian Devil when he shrinks away from the form of the crucifix. Again, the play in many ways critiques the
decline of European Christendom. The song that Mephistopheles weaves with spirits shows the power of the
Spirit of Nature. Just as the beauty of the song hypnotizes Faust, so too does the verse transfix the audience of
the play. While Faust sees this Spirit to be of the highest order, the audience now sees that the Spirit of Nature
and the Devil are intricately connected. One cannot worship this Spirit without also entering into a pact with
Hell. Consequently, Goethe pokes at his own audience, who probably shared many of Fausts interests and
passions.

Goethe's Faust Summary and Analysis of Study

Summary
Faust hears a knock at his door while in his study. He tells the visitor to come in, and he hears the voice of
Mephistopheles. Faust urges him to enter, but Mephistopheles tells him he must say Come In three times
before he may enter. Once inside, Mephistopheles tells Faust that he will drive his sorrows away. He tells Faust
to dress in his nicest clothes so that they may go out into the world for some pleasure. Faust, however, is
reluctant because he knows that even in such pleasure, he will feel the pain of his doldrums. He tells
Mephistopheles, I am too old for mere amusement / and still too young to be without desire. Faust tells him
that he wakes with a horror in the morning and lives with it all day. The horror is that he cannot fulfill a single
wish of his soul. He seeks vainly for rest and for God, but he finds neither. Even Death is not welcome, for
Mephistopheles reminds him that he did not drink the poison that he concocted for his suicide. Faust tells him
that a sweet familiar note / drew me from my fearful bog / and deceived the remnants of my childlike faith /

with allusions to a gladder day but that now knowing he will never see that gladder day, he has sunk into a
deep depression. Faust curses all things of life and faith, and most of all he curses Patience.
The Chorus of Spirits, invisible to Faust, begins to sing a song of woe. They tell him that they carry the
fragments of his shattered world into the Void and goad him to build a brighter world. Mephistopheles tells
Faust that these are his spirits, and that Faust should listen to their advice. Mephistopheles then tells Faust that
he has another way out of his depression. He tells Faust that if Faust will travel at my side / and make your
way through life with me, then Faust will be his servant and slave, allowing him to glimpse all the secrets of
the world that he now does not know. Faust asks what Mephistopheles will gain in return for his years of
servitude, but Mephistopheles tries to avoid that question. Faust tells him that he knows he is dealing with a
devil and that such hellish creatures do not often do what is useful for another. Mephistopheles tells him that
he pledges to be his servant and slave here and now if Faust will then do the same for him in the world
beyond.
Faust, without hesitation, tells him that the beyond he speaks of does not bother him at all. He wants to
smash this world to bits, and he does not care what happens to the other world. He takes all his joy from the
earth he now inhabits and wants to know all of its secrets, and whatever happens in the next world is of no
concern. Mephistopheles is pleased with this answer and encourages him to take the risk and to commit his
life to him. He promises to give to Faust what no man has ever seen before.
Faust tempers his expectations, however. He doubts that the Devil can show him anything of real importance.
Faust conjectures that he will offer him food which does not satisfy and riches that do not stay. He will offer
him sport with no winner and false love. He will offer him honors that do not last. Mephistopheles contradicts
these accusations, telling him that such treasures will be easy to produce but that there will come a time when
both will want to revel in the leisure that such comforts bring.
Faust is now ready to make the wager. He tells Mephistopheles that he will never take such leisure. He knows
there are too many mysteries to be solved and too much wonder to behold and that if he ever finds satisfaction
in myself / if you bamboozle me with pleasure, / then let this be my final day! / This bet I offer you!
Mephistopheles eagerly agrees to the wager, and they shake on it. Mephistopheles, however, is not content with
a simple handshake. He desires a legal, signed document to seal their fate. Faust finds it amusing that the devil
would want a binding document and he is reluctant to give it at first, saying that he is a man who keeps his
word. Mephistopheles wonders why Faust is so hot and angry and tells him any scrap of paper will do. All
Faust has to do is sign it with a drop of his blood. Faust agrees and tells him that he should not be afraid that he
will break his pact because he desires the knowledge of the spirits too much. He desires too much to see the
miracles of the world and to experience the lot of humankind that he desires to taste within my deepest
self. / I want to seize the highest and the lowest / to load its woe and bliss upon my breast / and thus expand my
single self titanically.
Mephistopheles tells him that he has never quite met a man with such passions and that he might be
disappointed at what he finds. Faust assures him that he wants to take the journey nonetheless. Mephistopheles
then has a brief change of heart, telling Faust that perhaps he should find a poet to help guide him through the
world. The passions of the poet are very similar to his own and if he were to find such a man, he might call him
Mr. Microcosm. Faust assures him that he has hoarded all the treasures, / the wealth of human intellect, in
vain and that he knows for sure that his only salvation will come through supernatural means. Mephistopheles
relents and tells him that he will see and feel all the pleasures he desires. Faust asks how they must begin, and
Mephistopheles tells him that they must leave because there is nothing left for him in this study.
However, he must first deal with his student who has come prepared for a lesson. The Devil tells him that he
will deal with the boy, and, donning the scholars cap and gown, he tells Faust that he will dispense with the
student in fifteen minutes time. Faust leaves. Mephistopheles, speaking only to himself, divulges his secret
plan. He says that he will drag Faust through the wasteland of mediocrity. / Let him wriggle, stiffen, wade
through slime, let food and drink by dangled by his lips / to bait his hot, insatiate appetite. In the end, Faust
will tell the Devil that he has been satisfied, and he will then perish miserably.

The Student enters and tells the Devil that he is newly arrived and, thinking that Mephistopheles is Faust,
desires to study with the man whose name all speak with veneration. Mephistopheles tells him that this is the
place for him. However, the Student says that already he is thinking of running away because of the coldness of
the place and its lack of joy. Mephistopheles tells him that this is simply because he is not acclimated to the
scholarly life and that if he puts all of his energies into his studies, he will soon find his place. The student tells
him that he desires to study all of the things of nature and of science and Mephistopheles gives him a speech
about the rigors of academic training. He must learn to duly classify all things. He tells him to first tackle
logic and then metaphysics and that he must declare a discipline.
The student tells him that he is unsure about which course to follow. He says that he does not like law, and
Mephistopheles agrees that the laws of man are nothing but a pestilence. The student suggests theology, but
the Devil tells him that this is probably a false direction. Mephistopheles suggests the study of literature and
words for then you will securely pass the gate / into the temple-halls of certainty. The student asks him if
words do not harbor ideas, but Mephistopheles assures him that where no thought is present / a word appears
in proper time. The student then suggests medicine, and Mephistopheles decides he is tired of playing the
scholar.
He once again takes on the guise of the Devil and tells him that medicine is easy: You study through the great
and little world, / in order in the end to let things be / exactly as the Lord desires. Medicine is vain, and the
only way to be the man of the hour is to become familiar with women and to give them pleasure. The Student
likes this train of thought and asks to drink more deeply from your wisdom, to which the devil obliges. He
signs the Students autograph book Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum (You will be like God,
knowing Good from Evil). The Devil tells him finally to Follow the ancient words and also my cousin the /
snake. / That godlike spark will have you quaking / soon enough. Faust enters, and the scene ends with both
leaving the room in a fiery air that takes them from the earth.
Analysis
This is the most crucial scene of the play, as it enacts Fausts bargain with the devil for his own soul. Faust
makes the transition in this scene from the Christian man of the Renaissance to the post-Christian man of the
Modern world. He thus encapsulates what Goethe sees as the condition of humanity during the Modern era.
It is important to note that Faust does not make a bargain with the Devil, implying that each will get something
from each other, but instead makes a wager. The wager is that the Devil will accompany him through the world
in order to produce for him a moment of bliss and contentment in which he will never want to leave. If Faust is
able to experience such a moment, then Faust will have to become the Devils companion for the rest of
eternity. If Faust does not experience such a moment, then he is free. Such a wager demonstrates the deepness
of Fausts despair. Faust considers his inability to fuse with the life of the universe to be his own personal hell.
In a way, Faust is damned either way in the wager.
Fausts wager with the Devil represents the break of Christendom with the secular world. Mephistopheles
represents this world of Christendom, dating back to the Emperor Constantine and continuing into the
Renaissance and the Protestant Churchs break with Catholicism in the sixteenth century. In this world, there
are physical things that can provide pleasure and satisfaction to humanity. When such physical things occur in
excess, confession and sacraments exist to bring people into right relationship with God. Faust, however,
represents a newer world. Faust is entirely sure that physical pleasure will never be able to satisfy him. Fausts
life is subjective, and his inability to satisfy his mind represents the ultimate dead end of philosophy and of
human endeavors of learning and comprehension.
The use of the number three is notable in this scene. Three is a number of religious import in the Christian
tradition, often symbolizing the Holy Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Mephistopheles must ask
three times if he can enter Fausts study. In one part of the scene, Mephistopheles is also forced to ask Faust
three times for his soul, an allusion to Peters betrayal of Jesus in the Gospel accounts. This use of numbers
demonstrates the free flow of meanings and significance between the spirituality of Christianity and paganism,
as well as an important fact about Fausts medieval world. Such a world, while fully a part of Christendom, was
not as orthodox as one might think. A free cultural exchange existed between religious and pagan ideals, and

Fausts character represents a break with this exchange for the more rigid culture of logic and dogmatism of the
Modern era.
At issue in this scene is the central tension of the play, the conflict over the mind/body dualism of the Christian
and the post-Christian age. Goethe asks his audience to consider whether one can pursue this life, free from the
moral and sacrificial constraints of the Christian age, without it turning into a life of sin and debauchery. As the
reader will see, the answer that Faust gives is mixed. On the one hand, we see the modern man, represented by
Faust, as a supremely unhappy being. On the other hand, his wager with the Devil does not provide a resolution
either, although it does illuminate the power and passion of love in Fausts heart. One could argue that Fausts
position in the play ultimately represents one of nihilism and defeat.
The closing event of this scene, Mephistopheles conversation with the student, is the first of three successive
scenes meant to provide comic relief after the intensity and despair of the plays beginnings. On one level, this
scene is a parody of academic culture in Goethes day. The student arrives, eager to learn from an intellectual
superior, only to become gradually aware that the intellectual superior is unhappy in his own scholarly pursuits.
The student feels this tension almost immediately. On another level, the scene shows how easy of a time the
Devil has in the world of such intellectual pursuits. After only a brief conversation, the boy is ready to give up
his study for more fleshly pleasures. The student, like all students and their teachers, is easily persuaded
towards the less noble aspects of life. His world becomes relativistic, and if these academic disciplines have no
ultimate meaning, then morality and social structure mean nothing either. The signature in the students book
alludes to the Garden of Eden scene in the second and third chapters of the Book of Genesis from the Hebrew
Bible. The student reenacts this scene, choosing evil over nobler, though more unsatisfying, intellectual
pursuits.

Goethe's Faust Summary and Analysis of

Auerbach's Cellar in Leipzig
Summary
The scene opens at a lively and lusty drinking party with a group of young men all sharing in some wine and
revelry. The party has not really started on the right foot. One of the men, Frosch, complains that no one is
drinking or laughing, and another, Brander, complains that there is no horseplay, no dirty joke. Frosch pours a
glass of wine on his head to get the party started, but this only infuriates Brander and sours the mood of the
room even more as they begin to fight.
Frosch sings a drinking song about the dear old Holy Roman Empire, but Brander calls it a nasty. . .political
song. Brander says that he considers advantageous to be neither emperor nor chancellor, yet he concedes
that Germany must have a leader, so they should choose a pope. Frosch sings another drinking song, this one
about lost love, but this upsets Siebel who has recently had some heartbreak. He hopes that his former girlfriend
will get nothing but a hobgoblin for a lover / Some old goat returning from Block Mountain.
Brander interrupts all of this sadness by telling them that he knows a song that will please everyone. He sings a
song about a rat that lived in a kitchen who liked her lard and butter. . .and looked like Martin Luther. One
day the cook of the kitchen slipped some poison into the rats food, and it got in an awful state, / As if it had
love in her belly. The rat scurried everywhere in mortal fear and finally ran into the kitchen, where it turned
and died on the kitchen hearth As if it had love in her belly. Siebel admits that, with such a cruel song, now
the numbskulls are enjoying their time together.
Faust and Mephistopheles enter the Cellar, and the Devil tells Faust that he will introduce him to some jolly
company, / so that you can see how smooth your life can be. These men, Mephistopheles says, live their lives
with little thought towards the future. As long as their hangovers are not too bad, and the bar owner continues to
keep a generous tab for them, they are happy with their daily lives. The drinking friends see the two enter and
peg them as travelers. They toast their hometown of Leipzig, a little Paris.

Frosch tells the others that once they take some wine, he will be able to ascertain everything about the travelers.
They look proud and dissatisfied. Mephistopheles tells Faust that they will never even suspect that the Devil
is in their midst, though the men are all a little skeptical of Mephistopheles who drags his foot. They offer to
join them at their table, and since their wine is no good, they want at least to enjoy the company. They ask if the
travelers left Rippach and had supper with Master Hans, a figure from German folklore. Mephistopheles said
they did and that Master Hans asked about each of them. The drinking friends realize they are dealing with a
huckster who is no fool.
Mephistopheles tells them that they came to the Cellar just to enjoy in the singing that they heard from outside.
The men goad him on to give them a song, so Mephistopheles begins to sing. His song is about a king who
owned a large-sized flea on which he lavished all the riches of his kingdom. This farcical story entertains the
men. The flea, the Devil continues, was fitted in fine clothing and was made a head of State. The other
members of the Kings court could do nothing about the fleas power and so only squealed as they were
nicked. / We slither and we quiver / As soon as we are pricked. by the fleas bite. The song delights the men,
and they toast good songs and wine.
Mephistopheles tells the men that he would like to toast their good times if only there was wine of good quality.
He offers to treat the men to something rare from our cellar. The men tell him not to worry about the landlord
and that if he produces the liquid, well sing your praises / to the sky. Mephistopheles begins to ask each of
them about their favorite wine. One says Rhenish wine, local fare, another says champagne, and one says a
sweet wine. Mephistopheles tells them that he will provide it all. He begins to drill holes in the side of their
table and tells them to stop the holes up with wax. They all think he is playing a trick on them.
After he has drilled the last hole, he says a spell, telling them that a miracle is here, and he pulls the wax from
the holes, and the wine begins to pour forth. They all begin to fill their glasses with the wine, and
Mephistopheles warns them not to let any of it drop on the floor. Faust tells the devil that he is inclined to
leave immediately, but Mephistopheles tells him to Take notice first how their bestiality / will stand revealed
in glowing color. Siebel accidentally lets a little of the wine spill to the ground and it explodes in fire. This
shocks the men and they begin to murmur about kicking the travelers out of the tavern. They accuse him of
playing tricks on them.
The men start to come at Mephistopheles to fight him. More wine spills on the floor, and fire leaps into
Altmayers face. They pull their knives in preparation to kill Mephistopheles, but he says a quick spell and they
suddenly believe that they are standing in a beautiful vineyard. They gape at the large grapes and try to grab
them without realizing they are really seeing the noses of the other men. They prepare to cut down the grapes,
and Mephistopheles lifts the spell just before they take off each others noses. Mephistopheles and Faust
disappear, and all the men realize they have been tricked. However, Altmayer realizes that something
extraordinary has happened. He proclaims, Who says there are no miracles!
Analysis
The scene at Auerbachs Tavern is a nod to the long line of Faust myths and folklore that came before Goethes
epic. Auerbachs Tavern is a real and well-known drinking establishment in the city of Leipzig. It opened its
doors in 1438, and Goethe himself was a patron while a student at the University of Leipzig. The intentions of
the scene, in folklore, are to show Faust making his transition from doctor, chemist, and magician to a more
drunken or debauched state as he is slowly tempted by the Devil. In the legend, Faust performs tricks of magic
and flies away from the tavern on a barrel of wine, just as a witch would fly away on her broom. In Goethes
version of this scene, Faust rarely speaks. Instead, the scene is used as a powerful example of comic relief in the
play, a moment of spectacle and levity that must be understood in the context of the theater in which it was first
performed.
The four bar characters represent stereotypes of the academic crowd that would have congregated at
Auerbachs. Frosch is a nickname for first year students, or freshmen. Brander is a term used for second
year students, sophomores. Altmayer represents an alumnus of the university and Siebel is the bartender,
suggesting that perhaps university education does not get one as far as they hoped.

The men, along with Mephistopheles, sing two stories involving animals, the story of a rat who is poisoned and
the story of the flea at a kings court. Such songs would have been popular entertainment at drinking taverns
during this time, but in Goethes play they serve as allusions to events both past and present. The story of the rat
is on one level an amusing parable of the dangers of love. The men tell it in order to soothe the heartbreak that
Siebel seems to have over a lost lover. On a literary level, however, this story foreshadows Fausts future love,
Gretchen, whom the play introduces a few scenes later. The reader is also reminded of the poison that Faust
almost drank at the beginning of the play. Faust will soon drink another kind of poison, a poison of love, that
will cause him just as much misery.
The story of the flea is more of a political satire. The song satirizes the ancien regime, the mode of government
and aristocracy that ruled over much of Europe in the centuries between the Middle Ages and the French
Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. It was common for animals to represent certain characters or
ideals in such songs and plays. In this particular song, a flea represents a member of the aristocracy that holds
court with the king. Even though, in the song, the other members of the aristocracy find it appalling that a flea
would join their ranks, the song really pokes fun at those people. Like the aristocracy, fleas simply latch onto
and feed from those things that are bigger and more powerful. They have no real power or means of existence
apart from that which supports them.
The scene ends with Mephistopheles performing great tricks of magic and sorcery. He brings wine forth from a
table in which he has drilled several holes, and the wine, when spilled on the floor, bursts into flames. The
magic is both fun and entertaining, yet it is also dangerous and cruel. Such tricks reinforce Mephistopheles
characteristics to the audience or the reader. He is on the one hand playing the role of the court jester, but he is
also the Devil, and his cruelty and malice are not separate from his humor and entertainment.

Goethe's Faust Summary and Analysis of Witch's

Kitchen -- A Street
Summary
Witchs Kitchen
Faust and Mephistopheles enter the lair of a witch. Two apes watch over a brimming and brewing cauldron.
Faust is repelled by everything he sees and does not understand why he is coming to seek counsel from an
ancient hag. He wonders why an easier answer to regaining his youth has not come to him yet. Mephistopheles
tells him that an easier way exists: Start to dig and cultivate; / keep your body and your spirit / in a humble and
restricted sphere, / . . . live with your herd and spread your own / manure / on land from which you reap your
nourishment. Faust tells him that he has no wish for such a simple life, so Mephistopheles tells him that if that
is the case, I suppose the witch is worth a try.
Faust wants to know why the Devil cannot himself brew a magic potion to help cure all Fausts ills.
Mephistopheles tells him that such a potion takes the care and time that only a devoted servant of the Devil
might give. He asks the two apes where their mistress is, and they say that she has slipped away into the night
to carouse. Mephistopheles asks the animals what they are brewing in the cauldron, and they tell him it is a
watery beggar soup. The apes challenge the visitors to a game of chance and dance around the room with a
large sphere. They sing rhymes and taunt Mephistopheles for coming to steal their potion. Mephistopheles sits
down and fans himself with a feather duster.
Faust looks into a magical mirror and sees the shapely form of a beautiful woman appear in the glass. He longs
to be with the woman and asks if she can be found somewhere on Earth. Mephistopheles tells him to sate
himself with her image for now and that soon he will introduce Faust to such beauty. The Devil, enjoying
himself now, tells the animals that he needs a crown and then he will be like a king. They bring a crown to him
but, in playing with it, break it in two. Faust is still lost in the mirror, and Mephistopheles agrees that he will
also lose his mind if the noise from the animals continues.

The cauldron, left unattended by the apes, begins to boil and overflow, and through the flames that rise up from
it, the witch appears. She is angry at the apes for letting the cauldron overflow, and she begins to toss hot flames
at her visitors, not realizing who they are. Mephistopheles becomes angry at this inhospitality and begins to
retaliate at the witch and her belongings. She realizes then with whom she is dealing and recoils, apologizing,
because she failed to see his equine hoof. Mephistopheles admits that they have not seen each other for a long
time and that his appearance has changed: The world is now a cultured place, / where the devil has evolved
accordingly. He has shed his Nordic form of horns and tails and crooked fingers for a more refined look,
though he has kept his hoof foot. The witch dances, crying, My Squire Satan has come back again! but
Mephistopheles tells her not to use that name because Its now a name for fairy tales and fables... / the Evil
One is gone, the evil ones remain.
Mephistopheles tells the witch to give him and Faust a glassful of her famous juice. The witch tells him that
she will be glad to give some to Faust, but that if he drinks it when not prepared, hell died within an hour.
Mephistopheles believes he will be fine and tells the witch to prepare it for him. She makes fantastic gestures
and draws a great circle on the floor, placing glassware and other strange objects into it. Faust enters the circle,
wary of all the nonsense, and the witch reads a spell from a book, a rhyme of number-games. Mephistopheles
tells Faust to go along with the farce because such nonsense is what is expected of a witch. The witch continues
her spell: When science lies buried, / The why is or what is / Need never be sought. / No one is worried; /
All science is gratis, / Need never be thought.
Annoyed by the witchs nonsense, the devil tells her to give Faust her drink. She obliges, and Faust drinks down
the fiery potion. Mephistopheles tells Faust that they must immediately go so that he will perspire thoroughly
and feel the strength of the potion. Soon, he tells Faust, Youll sense with thorough satisfaction / how Cupid
stirs and prances to and fro. Faust remembers the woman in the mirror and asks to see her one more time, but
Mephistopheles tells him no. With that potion in your belly / youll soon see Helena in every wench.
A Street
Faust stands on the street alone and sees a young woman, Margaret, pass by. Faust, loopy and lustful after the
witchs potion, begs her to let him accompany her. She tells him that she is neither lady, neither fair, / and need
no escort to go home. Faust becomes lovesick over the girl, and when Mephistopheles appears, he orders the
Devil to get the girl for him. Mephistopheles tells Faust that he just overheard her in confession. The priest
absolved her, but there was really nothing for her to confess. He admits that he has no power over that woman.
Faust complains, Shes past fourteen already, and Mephistopheles scolds him for talking like Jack the
Libertine. Faust warns his companion not to lecture him and demands that the girl be his, or by midnight you
and I part company. Mephistopheles reiterates that he needs at least two weeks to tempt the girl and ferret out
an opportunity. Faust is still unsatisfied, and Mephistopheles tells him now that he is talking almost like a
Frenchman. He tells Faust that he will take him to the girls room, and though she is not there, Faust may
indulge yourself alone / in your hopes of future ecstasies. They turn to go, and Faust asks Mephistopheles to
procure him a gift to give her. Mephistopheles thinks this gesture is nice and tells Faust of the existence of
several places with hidden treasure.
Analysis
The scene in the witchs cellar is the final of the scenes of transition in the play. The first part of the play
depicted Faust as a lonely scholar, miserable and depressed by his own lack of understanding and inability to
join in the spirit of the world. By contrast, these scenes, starting with Mephistopheles and the students and now
ending in the witchs cellar, provide a transition in which Faust, now under contract with the Devil, moves from
his previous state into a new kind of man. The Don Juan legend may have played a part in Goethes modeling
of the Faust character, for now Faust will transform into a young lover and indulge in the sexual and moral
liberties of the new age.
The opening dialogue between Faust and Mephistopheles offers an insight into Fausts own motivations for his
wager with the Devil. As Faust continues to complain about his spiritual and intellectual depression,
Mephistopheles suggests that perhaps he should till his own earth and put such academic and spiritual pursuits

behind him, reminding the reader of the townspeople that Faust met while at the city gates earlier in the play.
Faust rejects this idea, however, because he has no tolerance for manual labor. Thus, the source of Fausts
condition might be as much from his pretensions as from his wager with the Devil.
The apes and the witch serve as comic relief and spectacle in the play. Scholars of Goethes play generally
agree that there is little significance in the apes language or the witchs incantations other than to provide a
dose of nonsense and entertainment into the play. Both the apes and the witch perform a ritual of perversion,
first crowning Mephistopheles as a ruler or king of their underworld and secondly providing Faust with a potion
that symbolizes a dark Eucharist. The witch even calls Mephistopheles Satan, though he corrects her, saying
that just as humanity has evolved past all of their superstitions, so too have the spirits of evil evolved into forms
less noticeable.
Faust, while disgusted at the animalistic rituals and the evil chemistry in the room, finds himself nonetheless
enthralled by a figure he sees in a mirror. The figure is of the female body, and Faust cannot avert his eyes even
when Mephistopheles tells him to pay attention to the witch and her apes. While the witch and the apes brew a
potion that will make Faust vital, young, and lustful, Faust undergoes his own transformation from the inside by
looking at this mirror. Goethe suggests here that perhaps magic is not necessary for his transformation. Perhaps
Faust has the innate ability to change without the need of a wager with the Devil.
The scene on the street, which occurs soon after Faust has taken the witchs magic potion, shows that Faust has
transformed from the lonely, depressed scholar into the modern libertine, free from inhibition or morality. He
makes an immediate advance upon a young girl named Gretchen (or Margaret, both names being
interchangeable in the German). Although she rejects him, Mephistopheles quickly notes the danger that this
young girl holds for both of them. She is dangerous, on the one hand, because she represents the morality of the
church. On the other hand, she offers a temptation more tempting than what Mephistopheles can offer. Only
through persuasion can Mephistopheles get Faust to wait until Mephistopheles has had ample time to tempt the
girl away from the church and the morality. Through trickery and deceit, the Devil retains his control of Faust.

Goethe's Faust Summary and Analysis of Evening -Promenade -- The Neighbor's House
Summary
Evening
The scene opens in a small, tidy bedroom. In another room, Gretchen braids her hair and thinks of the gallant
figure that she met on the street that day. She is sure he was of noble family and is impressed that he would be
so bold with her.
Mephistopheles and Faust enter the girls bedroom while she is not there. Faust wants Mephistopheles to leave
him alone, so the latter exits. Faust, collapsing in a chair next to the girls bed, begins to wax poetic about his
love and lust for the girl. He tells his image of the girl that he feels the whisper of your spirit. The entire
cottage, because she is in it, is doglike to him. He lifts the curtain over the bed and becomes even more
enraptured. The bed, he imagines, is where Nature shaped the girl and wrought the semblance of divinity.
Faust is critical of himself and his own motives. He admits to himself that he came to seize the crassest
pleasure but now he is overcome by dreams of love!
Mephistopheles reenters and tells Faust that he sees the girl returning to her room. As they leave, the Devil
gives Faust a small gift box. The gift was supposed to be for someone else, he tells Faust, but a childs a child
and a game is a game. Faust puts the small box in Margarets closet, and they begin to leave. Mephistopheles
notes that Faust looks sad, like a student entering the lecture hall.
When Margaret enters her bedroom, she notes that it feels sultry in the room, although it is cold outside. She
feels a chill go down her spine. She sings a rhyme to herself while she undresses. The rhyme is about a king in

Thule who received a golden goblet from his dying wife. When the king came to die, he prepared to give away
all his land and possessions except for the goblet. At his final dinner, the king drank his last cup of red wine and
tossed the goblet into the sea, yet he did not realize the sadness that would overcome him as he saw the goblet
drift away and sink.
Margaret opens her closet and sees the small gift box. She thinks it is perhaps some trinket from a neighbor, but
when she opens it, she sees that it is a box of expensive jewels. She is shocked and amazed by the gift and
wishes that she could keep it. She laments that the poor, like her, will never have such things because youth and
beauty are wasted on them.
Promenade
An upset Mephistopheles rejoins Faust, who asks him what is the matter. The Devil tells Faust that the jewelry
that they gave to Gretchen (short for Margaret) now belongs to a priest. After Gretchen showed the jewels to
her mother, her mother immediately knew that their presence was not wholly blessed. She forced Gretchen to
take the jewels to the priest and to offer them as a gift to the blessed Virgin. When the priest looked at the
jewels, he told them that they had done the right thing: Who conquers self will be rewarded in the end. / The
church has always had an iron belly, / has swallowed states and countries now and then, / and yet it never
overate. The priest tells the women that only the church can take in such cursed possessions.
Faust asks about Gretchen, and Mephistopheles tells him that she now sits and frets, thinking about the man
who might have left the jewels for her. The news troubles and saddens Faust, who tells the Devil to obtain a
new gift for his love. Mephistopheles agrees but complains that Faust, in his lovesickness, would blow away /
the sun and moon and all the stars, / as a pastime for his sweetheart.
The Neighbors House
Gretchens neighbor, Martha, wails alone over her lost husband because he wanders and roams the earth while
leaving her and her children alone in poverty. She worries that he might be dead.
Gretchen enters and exclaims to Martha that she found another box of jewels in her wardrobe. Martha tells her
that this time she must not tell her mother or else lose them to the priest again. Gretchen tries on the jewelry and
admires herself. She laments that she cannot wear it outside, but Martha tells her that she can begin slowly to
wear it to special occasions, and either her mother will notice or they will think up a lie to tell her.
After hearing a knock, Martha opens the door to see Mephistopheles. She believes him to be a foreign
gentleman. Mephistopheles flatters both of the women to win their trust but then tells them that he brings bad
news. He tells Martha that her husband has died. Martha is upset but wants to know of his last hours. He tells
her that he was buried in the city of St. Anthony in Padua and that he asked for three hundred masses for his
soul. However, he left no gift or riches for his family because he did not squander money.
Mephistopheles goads the woman, telling her that she should marry immediately or at least take a lover, but she
resists the call. Mephistopheles continues his story, saying that her husband died on a bed of decaying straw and
that he left a number of unsettled scores. The Devil tells her that her husband cried out that he craved his
wifes pardon for his transgressions. Martha begins to think fondly of her husband, but Mephistopheles adds her
husbands final dying words: And yet, God knows, she was much more to / blame than I [for his
transgressions].
These words incense Martha. Mephistopheles continues to tell her how her husband raved madly about not
having time for recreation and about how he could never eat in peace. He also received a great fortune from a
Sultan and spent it all on a lover he took in Malta, making Martha livid at her husbands indiscretions.
However, although Mephistopheles urges her to start looking for a new husband and even offers his own hand
in marriage, she declines his advances. As an aside, Mephistopheles whispers that he should probably go or else
the woman might agree to his offer.

As Mephistopheles leaves, Martha asks him to bring another witness to her husbands death so that everything
will be legal and official. Mephistopheles says he will return with such a gentleman and asks if Gretchen would
also be willing to attend. Martha agrees, and they plan to meet that evening in the garden.
Analysis
The scene allows the reader to glimpse the character of Gretchen, with whom Faust will fall madly in love. The
reader sees a girl of peace and harmony, who represents goodness and purity, as well as the balance between
such goodness and the peasant girl position that her life has given her. When she first sees Fausts gift of jewels,
she does not even question whether they are hers or whether she should take them. Goethe creates a character
that is above reproach.
The portrayal of Gretchen contrasts with that of the newly transformed Faust, who is a character in inner
conflict. One part of him has become the libertine, free from all moral restrictions. He sneaks into Gretchens
room in order to sleep with her, but once there, he discovers something sacred about his desire and the girl that
he has come to see. He repeatedly describes her room in religious terms, while acknowledging the Spirit of
Nature. This Spirit once did nothing but confound him, but now he worships it for providing such a beautiful
creature. For the first time, Faust sees a world (a limited world) where he might find fulfillment as a human
being.
Gretchen and Mephistopheles have a deep distrust and dislike for each other. Gretchen can sense his evil
presence, and he finds her cleanliness and aura of morality to be disgusting. Gretchen sings a song of the King
of Thule, in which the King remains steadfast to his lover by drinking from a jeweled goblet that she gave to
him at her death. At his death, he drinks from it once more and throws it into the sea. The song evokes the kind
of constant, lifelong love that a man has for a woman, even if that woman is not his wife. Ironically, Gretchen
sings such a song just as she discovers the jewels left for her by the Devil. Gretchen, as per stage direction, is
also undressing in this scene, which adds an extra layer of sexual tension. As she finds the jewels while
undressed, the audience sees the irony of a girl finding corruption while also displaying an ideal of love and
commitment through her song.
The scene at the promenade is a short comic scene meant to show that no character in Goethes play, even the
pure Gretchen, is immune from the Devils temptations. Her mother and the priest are comic representations of
religious stereotypes, that of the holy widow and the corrupt church. Gretchens mother wants solely to avoid
any hint of temptation of pretension or wealth. The priest, who should have the same pretensions, subtly hints
that the church will better use the wealth of the jewelry. These characters would have been familiar to an
audience familiar with the details of the birth of the Protestant Reformation.
The scene that follows in Marthas house has a comic sensibility that only cursorily hides the devils malice.
Intent only on finding a way to bring Faust and Gretchen together, Mephistopheles shows up in the guise of a
worldly traveler. The tale that he weaves of the death of Marthas husband is comical because it is merely an
elaborate lie meant to evoke the emotions, first of sadness and then of outrage, from Martha.
This scene contrasts Fausts life with that of Gretchen and Martha. The backdrop of each scene is important
here, as both Gretchen and Martha have their main scenes in the domestic backdrop of their homes. Faust, on
the other hand, usually appears in a street or a promenade, an open place of passage in nature or in the city. In
previous scenes, Faust has sworn off the constrictions of domestic life, yet in Marthas deep and forgiving love
of her husband, the audience sees the domestic world for which Faust searches, which he can only glimpse in
Gretchens cramped room. This common domestic world that produces such love is the world that Faust refuses
to believe in and has rejected for so many years.

Goethe's Faust Summary and Analysis of A Street

(II) -- Martha's Garden -- A Summer Cabin -Forest and Cavern -- Gretchen's Room

Summary
A Street (II)
Back on the street, Mephistopheles tells Faust of their plan to meet Gretchen in the garden that evening. Faust
finds the plan exciting, but the Devil tells him, Something of a quid pro quo will be required. He tells Faust
that all they have to do is tell the widow Martha that her husband is dead and buried in Padua. Faust thinks this
should be easy enough and tells Mephistopheles that they should hurry and make the journey to see the body
for themselves. Mephistopheles curses, Sancta Simplicitas! and tells him just to say it and not make a fuss.
Faust tells the Devil that if they do not make the journey, their plan is worthless because he cannot lie about
such an important matter. Mephistopheles taunts him, calling him a holy man and the image of a saint. He
asks Faust, Is this the only instance in your life / that you have borne false witness? He reminds Faust that
just a little while ago, Faust dared God and the world with his brazen face and swollen chest. Faust calls
Mephistopheles a sophist and a liar. Mephistopheles reminds him of his great love for Gretchen, about how
he will express his undying faith and love eternal to her in the garden, and about his burning ardor for the
young girl. Faust admits the truth of his companions words and says that such love cannot be a devils game
of lies. He decides he must lie to the widow in order to achieve a higher cause.
Marthas Garden
That evening, Faust and Mephistopheles enter Marthas garden to testify to her husbands death. The scene
opens with Gretchen holding Fausts arm and Mephistopheles and Martha walking and talking together. Martha
puts on an attitude of humility with Mephistopheles. Traveling gentlemen, she tells him, become accustomed to
whatever women they can find on the road, so she does not feel that his advances towards her are real. She
laments that the life of a traveling bachelor is one of dismay and despair. Mephistopheles agrees with her and
compliments her on the warm hospitality she has shown towards the men. Warming to Mephistopheles, Martha
admits, A bachelor is hard to sway, while the Devil assures her, A hearth, a goodly woman of / ones own, /
are worth their weight in pearls and gold. Martha makes more forward advances, asking him if he had known
women in the past and if his intentions were ever serious. Mephistopheles admits that he is sincerely /
pained and that Martha is very good to him.
Meanwhile, Faust and Gretchen walk and talk quietly to each other. Faust lavishes her with praise and talk of
love. She tells him that she is unworthy of such praise because she is nothing more than a peasant girl with
rough hands and a dim wit. He tells her that no learning and beauty in the world compares with her humility
and loving, bounteous Nature. Gretchen recounts how her household is very lonely, as her father is dead and
her brother is a soldier away at war. She had a small sickly baby sister at one time whom Gretchen attempted to
nurse back to health, but death eventually overcame the child. Now her household only consists of her and her
mother.
Gretchen picks a daisy from the garden and begins to pluck the petals, playing a game in which each petal
represents either he loves me or he loves me not. The last petal is he loves me, and Faust is elated. He
tells her to let this flowers word / be the pronouncement of the gods. Margaret trembles at the prospect and
Faust offers to give himself completely to her until eternity. They clasp hands, and Gretchen runs off. The sky
begins to darken, and Mephistopheles tells Faust that they must go.
A Summer Cabin
Gretchen runs into Marthas house and hides behind a door. Faust runs into the house after her and catches her
hiding. Playfully, he grabs her and kisses her deeply. She returns the kiss and tells him that she loves him with
all my heart. Mephistopheles knocks as the door and tells Faust that it is time to go. Gretchen agrees that she
must get home, and Faust offers to walk with her but she declines. They bid each other farewell. When
Gretchen is again alone, she marvels at how intelligent Faust is and how all I can do is stand abased / and nod
my yes to everything. She cannot understand what a man like him would see in a lowly girl such as her.
Forest and Cabin

Faust sits alone in the wilderness and pines for Gretchen. He speaks to the Sublime Spirit, telling it that it
gave him everything he ever desired: glorious Nature for my kingdom / the strength to feel and to enjoy Her.
Even when things go very badly in the world, the Spirit gives him a cave in which to take shelter. Faust admits
that he now knows that nothing perfect ever can accrue to Man. He knows that the gods gave him his current
companion, Mephistopheles, who busily fans within my bosom / a seething fire for that radiant image.
Mephistopheles enters and wants to know if Faust has finished with this kind of life in the wilderness. He
wants Faust to try something new. Faust is tired of Mephistopheles and wants him to leave. Mephistopheles
almost wants to abide by Fausts wishes, and he says, The loss of such a mad and hostile fellow / is but a
trifling business for me, for he has other business elsewhere. Mephistopheles reminds Faust that he cured the
doctor of his depression and that without Mephistopheles Faust would have killed himself.
Faust tells Mephistopheles that the latter cannot even imagine the vital power that Faust receives from living
in the wilderness. Mephistopheles, mocking him, recounts how heavenly it must be to live in a world in which
the son of earth is canceled out. Mephistopheles tells Faust that he cannot keep up the pretensions of his love
of nature and that soon a thirst will return to his soul for the things that he cannot have. He reminds Faust of his
sweetheart sitting alone at home, thinking of him. He reminds him of the love that he felt for Gretchen and
says that she is now in utter sadness over his departure. Mephistopheles tells Faust, I think, instead of playing
king in forest groves, / the gentleman might well see fit / to give the squirming little creature / a gift in gratitude
for living him. Faust is upset by Mephistopheles words, and he tells the Devil that he even grudges the Body
of the Lord / when her lips approach to touch the Host. Faust remembers, In her arms, I need no joys of
Heaven, and that her beauty and simplicity drove out his desires for nature and heaven. Mephistopheles is
happy to see Faust long for his love, and he encourages Faust to leave and go find her.
Gretchens Room
Gretchen sits and spins thread in a wheel while singing a song of loneliness. The refrain of the song laments,
My peace is gone, / My heart is sore; / Ill find it never / And nevermore. She uses imagery of the grave to
relate how Fausts absence is like her own death. She longs for his return and knows that even being in his arms
is a kind of death.
Analysis
In the street scene, Faust begins to recognize the cost of his wager with the Devil. His insistence on going to the
place where Marthas husband died is funny to Mephistopheles and ironic to the audience, for a person of
integrity has no need to make a deal with the Devil. This scene reminds the audience of Fausts dismissal of
Mephistopheles insistence that he seal their wager in a document with his blood. At the time, Faust argued that
simple words mean nothing and that his character would seal his fate, but here, Faust has the predicament of his
words meaning everything. If he is true to his character and does not lie, then he will never have Gretchen. If he
does lie, betraying himself, he will have what he desires. Faust is forced to make a decision about which good is
greater, and he chooses Gretchen.
Gretchens tale of caring for her dying infant sister foreshadows Gretchens own future demise. Again, Goethe
contrasts Fausts disgust with domestic life and the constrictions that it brings with Gretchens eternal love
within such a realm. Gretchens truest expression of love toward her dying infant sister occurs within this
domestic picture. Because Faust will not enter such a life, he cannot gain her truest love. Fausts spirit and his
heart are thus at tension, as each instinct leads him in a different direction. The scene is also heartrending
because Gretchens fate is ultimately that of infanticide, indicating that Fausts wager will also corrupt her love.
In Gretchens simple game of Love me/Love me not with the flower, the changes occurring in the characters
of both Faust and Gretchen become clear. Because of the impetus of love, both find that they must step outside
of their previous bounds of culture, society, or self-imposed despair. Gretchen takes the first steps outside of her
sphere of morality and purity, while Faust steps outside of the depression and dissatisfaction that his intellectual
pursuits had left with him. He is, for the first time, being led by his heart. The scene is bittersweet for Faust
because the very moment that he professes his love and that the world holds an infinite moment from which he
would never like to leave is also the moment that he loses his wager with the devil.

The meeting between Faust and Gretchen that takes place in the summer cabin represents a meeting of two
worlds. Just as a summer cabin, in Goethes culture, is a place of retreat in which the world and nature meet, so
too in this scene does Fausts world meet with the domestic and natural world of Gretchen. In their exchange of
love, Faust for the first time sees a meaning in life beyond that of his own selfishness. However, as soon as
Faust attains the moment, Mephistopheles appears to break it up. Although Faust has now seen the moment in
which he would be able to live eternally and happily, he cannot reach it.
The scene of Forest and Cavern is a turning point in the play. Just as the scene in the Witchs Cavern turns the
play towards Fausts love for Gretchen, now Fausts introspective reflections in his cavern set up the action for
the rest of the play, in which we see each character begin to unravel. In this scene, Faust has retreated because
he knows that the wager he has made with the Devil will bring nothing but destruction to Gretchen.
Nevertheless, he has found a world beyond his own subjectivity. Love, he now knows, is a feeling of
reciprocation between him, another person, and the entire world. Through the gift of love, he sees what it means
to take part in the life of the world. He thanks the Spirit of Earth for this gift, a reminder of his original spiritual
desire, but he is conflicted about how to move forward. When Mephistopheles appears and reminds Faust of his
love, Faust attempts to refute such arguments, saying that he has found his passion here in nature. The statement
is false, for what he truly desires is to fulfill his love for Gretchen. Fausts own conscience torments him
because of his voluntary pact with the devil. In this way, the scene reinforces the problems of consciousness
from earlier scenes. Faust is caught between living within his own mind and his conception of nature and living
in the bounds of a simpler and more domestic life of love and giving. Faust says he begrudges the fact that the
body and blood of Jesus is more present for her in the Eucharist than he is, but his words also foreshadow the
way in which Gretchen will become a sacrifice for Faust at the plays end.
The scene of Gretchen spinning at her wheel and singing a song of lost love is a musical scene in the play, and
it depicts the beginning of Gretchens decline. Just as she sings of lost love being like a venture into death, her
song foreshadows her own decline into death and despair. Her song reflects Fausts speech in the wilderness.
His speech is a crisis of conscience for causing her demise, while her song is a desire for a love she knows will
doom her.

Goethe's Faust Summary and Analysis of Martha's

Garden (II) -- At the Well -- By the Ramparts -Night -- Cathedral
Summary
Marthas Garden (II)
Faust and Gretchen sit in Marthas garden and talk. Gretchen asks about Fausts belief in religion, and he
attempts to convince her that he is a religious man who believes in God, but Gretchen is not sure if he tells the
truth. Faust goes into a long poetic discussion on God, declaring that He is The All-Enfolding, / All
Sustaining being who keeps everyone in his arms. After hearing his words, which Gretchen says sound like
that of a priest, though he says it differently, Gretchen says that what Faust says seems right but that she
believes he still has no proper Christian faith.
She tells Faust that she is concerned about his companion. Faust asks her why, and she says, His presence
makes my blood run cold / and yet I usually like everyone. She tells Faust that she feels a nameless terror
when she is in Mephistopheles presence. Faust attempts to reassure her that the man she fears is not dangerous,
and he moves the conversation to intimate pleasures. Faust begs to hang upon your bosom / pressing breast on
breast, my soul into your soul. Gretchen tells him that she cannot do so because her mother is a light sleeper
and would hear them. Faust gives Gretchen a vial of sleeping potion and tells her to put a few drops into her
mothers cup. She relents, telling him that something drives her to him and that little else remains for her to
give to him. She leaves and Mephistopheles enters, having spied on their conversation. He notes that the girl is

quite perceptive to physiognomy. Mephistopheles feels the keenest pleasure that the girl feels terror when
she is around him.
At the Well
Gretchen and her friend Lieschen are fetching water from the well and gossiping. Lieschen relates the latest
news on Barbara, a mutual friend. She tells Gretchen that Barbara has become pregnant by a boy that once
fawned over her and gave her many presents. Lieschen believes that Barbara acted immorally by strutting
around and reveling in her beauty, and now her flower has been plucked. Gretchen pities the girl because she
has just consummated her own affair, but Lieschen does not: While girls like us were spinning at the wheel, /
and our mothers never let us out at night, / she was cooing with her lover. Now Barbara atones for her sins by
bearing a child while her lover finds another woman. When Lieschen leaves, Gretchen laments that at one time
she would have felt the same indignation over Barbaras sins, but now her own virginity has been taken, and
she knows she is now steeped in sin. She nonetheless feels heartened by the knowledge that she would not
trade anything for the goodness of Fausts love.
By the Ramparts
Gretchen sits in a niche in the city wall in front of a picture of Mater Dolorosa. She puts fresh flowers in front
of the picture and says a poetic prayer, asking for mercy and forgiveness for all her sins. She relates her pain
and suffering under the weight of what she has done, for she now knows that she is with child. She longs to be
in Gods good graces again and knows that only God will heal her pain. She asks to be saved from my shame
and death!
Night
Valentine, Gretchens brother, has returned from war and stands before the door of his house. He remembers a
time when, away at war, the men would drink in bars and toast all of the beautiful women they had seen.
Valentine would only raise a glass to his sister and remind all the men that no one could hold a candle to that
girl, and all of the other soldiers would agree and toast her. Now, upon returning, Valentine has heard the
gossip about Gretchens affair with another man. He thinks, I could tear my hair / and dash my head against
the wall! He hears some movement in the alley and sees Faust and Mephistopheles approaching.
Faust tells Mephistopheles that upon seeing the light of his lovers room, he feels the flickering flame of the
eternal light. Mephistopheles tells him that he only feels like a lonesome cat / that prowls about the fire
ladders, and he feels a little thievish, somewhat lecherous to boot because Walpurgis Night is only two
nights away. Faust asks Mephistopheles if he has seen any jewels that he might steal to give to Gretchen, and
the Devil says that he has. Mephistopheles takes out a zither and sings a song that he has written, which depicts
a young maid that enters the room of her lover and leaves as a maid no more. The song relates the fact that
her lovers love is brief and that only with a ring on your finger will the man stay.
Valentine approaches the men and smashes the Devils zither. He tells Mephistopheles that he will now split the
Devils head open. Mephistopheles tells Faust to strike at Valentine, and he uses his power to make Valentine go
limp. Faust strikes the man and deals him a fatal blow. Mephistopheles tells him that they should disappear and
that Mephistopheles can usually handle the authorities but perhaps not a blood-ban on Faust because that is
quite a different matter.
A crowd gathers around Valentine and Gretchen approaches. They tell her that her brother is dying. She comes
close to him to give him comfort, but he begins to berate her. He calls her a whore and tells her that now that
she has given away her virginity to a strange man, she will soon be the whore of the entire town. She will end
her days with the lepers and beggars, and even if God can forgive her, she will remain an outcast during her
time on Earth. Martha tries to stop his blasphemy, but Valentine calls her a pimping woman and tells her that
she has dealt his heart a heavy blow. He dies.
Cathedral

Gretchen is in the Cathedral at Mass, and the Evil Spirit is behind her, whispering to her. The Evil Spirit asks
her, What has happened to you? / What misdeed / is lodged in your heart? The Spirit tells her that her mother
has died from the shame of her actions and the grief of the loss of her son. Gretchen begs for forgiveness from
God and for freedom from the awful dark thoughts that engulf her. The choir in the Church sings a Latin chant
telling of the Day of Judgment that all must face before God. The Evil Spirit tells her that her heart will rise to
fiery torture, and Gretchen pleads for escape. She feels as though she is being crushed under the weight of the
Church, and the Spirit tells her that the blessed turn their faces from her.
Analysis
Scholars often term Fausts speech to Gretchen regarding her inquiries into his religious beliefs Fausts
Credo, or his confession of faith. The structure of the poetic language plays an important part in this scene.
Goethe switches to a free form verse, which in a sense replicates the varied and unstructured thoughts that Faust
attempts to address concerning his faith.
This scene deals with one of the most important philosophical themes in Faust, the tension between the
signifier and the signified. Goethe uses this literary and philosophical debate in a theological way, as Faust
questions how one can properly name God and the spiritual, as well as whether such words can ever properly
signify what they attempt to name. For her part, Gretchen implicitly understands this conundrum, for she resists
Fausts declarations of his spirituality not because it differs from her own orthodox beliefs but because she
cannot grasp that which Faust attempts to signify. Gretchen, therefore, represents the disconnect between
signifier and signified, as well as the inability of words to rightly name the relation between philosophy,
rhetoric, and the natural spiritual world. Although Gretchen is doubtful of Fausts religious devotion, this scene
deepens the intimacy between the two characters, as represented by Gretchens use of Fausts first name,
Heinrich.
Significantly, even Faust and Gretchens consummation of their affair takes place through Fausts own deceit.
Although he attempts to be honest with her about his religious inclinations, he cannot fully convey the truth
because of the barriers of language. In this way, Faust leads Gretchen away from her social and religious sphere
into a relationship of which neither she nor her family and friends can approve. She is also complicit in such a
move, as she understands that his faith is partly a lie yet offers no real resistance to Fausts advances. The
couple also engages in material deceit, as Faust drugs Gretchens mother so that she does not hear their
lovemaking. After his temptation by Mephistopheles, Faust takes on the devils function as tempter.
Mephistopheles approves of their consummation as something he might have engineered himself.
The scene At the Well shows Gretchens final break with the social world that previously defined her. She
cannot decide between the world that Faust offers to her, a post-Christian world without structure or morality in
which God and the Spirit cannot be rightly named, and the world of her peasant upbringing. She is pregnant, a
physical mark of her separation from morality and the structures of her upbringing. The gossip she hears from
her friend at the well only foreshadows Gretchens ultimate punishment. Gretchens turning point occurs in her
prayers in front of the Mater Dolorosa, or Our Lady of Sorrows. Unlike Faust, Gretchen does not reject the
world and its religion but instead turns towards it for comfort and the hope of salvation.
Faust kills Gretchens brother and thus seals his own fate. The blood ban that Faust faces in the city alludes to
the mark that Cain received after killing his own brother Abel. This mark set Cain apart from Gods favor for
the rest of his life. Fausts act marks the final and total separation from his previous world. The following
scenes show his exile and his decision to remove himself from the moral and religious world. Gretchens
confession in the cathedral is her act of contrition, but the evil act has already been committed, and the child
that is now inside her is her own physical mark of exile, as well as proof that she will soon face judgment.

Goethe's Faust Summary and Analysis of Walpurgis

Night -- Walpurgis-Night's Dream -- Gloomy DayField -- Night-Open Field -- Dungeon

Summary
Walpurgis Night
The scene opens in the Harz Mountains with Mephistopheles and Faust climbing on a narrow road.
Mephistopheles offers a magic broom to help Faust climb, but Faust says he would rather walk. Faust says he
feels the power of Spring filling him, but Mephistopheles says he feels nothing but winter in his belly.
Mephistopheles calls out to a Will-o-the-Wisp and tells it to keep straight. It tells him that it is used to a
zigzag way of life and that with all the magic-mad commotion of the mountain on this night, it may not be
able to keep the Devils command. The three then sing a song of the glory of nature below them in the valley.
They sing the praises of the forest, the cliffs, and the animals. The song takes a dark turn, telling of snakes and
curling roots, and sets the foreboding scene.
Mephistopheles tells Faust to hold on to him as they reach a central peak where they can observe the madness
of the night. Faust observes the light of the fires and the spectacle of the crowds. He marvels, The mountain
wall from top to bottom / ignites and seems on fire. Mephistopheles boasts, Has not Sir Mammon lighted
splendidly / the palace for this great occasion? Faust sees witches race through the air, and the blast from their
flight almost knocks him down. The Devil tells him to hold on to the mountains rocks in order not to fall. The
entire mountain comes alive with the voices of witches and wizards.
They sing songs and rhymes of the night and of magic. One of the witches is caught in a ravine because she is
only a half-witch without the magic to fly. The other witches tell her that if she does not fly tonight, she will be
caught in the ravine forever. Mephistopheles finds the witches songs delightful and prepares for his own grand
entrance to the festivities. They climb into a hidden brush to observe the scene again, and Faust tells the Devil
that he would prefer to be on a higher peak with the crowds advancing to the Evil One, so that he will know
the answers to many riddles. Mephistopheles tells him they will stay where they are and admire all the fires.
Faust asks him if they will join the festivities and whether the Devil will go as a wizard or witch.
Mephistopheles tells him that on this night he will enter as himself. The two run into a group of professional
men: a general, a minister, a parvenu, and an author. They lament, remembering the world of old when men
were noble and governed the world in a better way. A Peddler-Witch greets them trying to sell novelties: a
dagger that has killed a man, a cup filled with poison, a gem that tempted a young woman, and a sword used in
battle. Mephistopheles tells the witch that they only want new things because Whats done is past! Whats past
is done!
Faust then sees visions of spirits. He sees a beautiful woman in the distance, and Mephistopheles tells him that
she is Lilith, Adams first wife. He tells Faust to be careful of her hair because once it has ensnared a man, it
will not easily let go. A Proctophantasmist appears and mocks the shameless mob who dances around with
spirits. He is enlightened and cannot pity such foolishness. Faust dances with a witch and tells her that the
Proctophantasmist could appear anywhere to censure the fun of spirits and witches. They tell the
Proctophantasmist to go away because he bores them. Mephistopheles also makes fun of the man, saying that
he will now go squat upon the nearest puddle -- / in this manner he relieves his trouble; / and when the leeches
gorge themselves on his / behind / he will be cured of spirits and of mind.
Faust suddenly sees a pale and lovely child coming towards him. She has the body and face of Gretchen, and
he feels a rush of ecstasy. Mephistopheles warns him that this is Medusa and that any man that looks upon her
will turn to stone, but Faust cannot avert his gaze. Mephistopheles finally diverts his attention by showing him a
small stage and curtain. Servibilis appears and tells them that an amateur theater company will begin a play in a
moment and that he will be an amateurish curtain-raiser for them. Mephistopheles is pleased to see Servibilis
and his theater company.
Walpurgis-Nights Dream
This scene reenacts the play that Faust and Mephistopheles leave the fray of Walpurgis Night to view. Goethe
calls it an Intermezzo. The scene opens with the Theater Manager (Servibilis from the previous scene)
opening the play and calling all to rest; the Ancient hill and greening vale / is all the scenery required. The

Herald announces a Golden Wedding Feast for King Oberon and Queen Titania, who have been married for
fifty years. Puck and Ariel arrive to celebrate. The King and Queen have a tenuous relationship, however, for he
pouts and she is cross. An Inquisitive Traveler cannot believe that Oberon is here before his eyes.
The scene introduces an entire cast of characters as participants in the play. Each character represents a
particular social class, a school of thought, a section of the contemporary literature scene, religious zealots, or
philosophical opponents of Goethe. Each speaks four lines that sums up their position or caricatures their
beliefs and social status. A group of philosophers, for example, joins the King and Queen. Their ranks include a
Dogmatist, an Idealist, a Realist, and a Supernaturalist. A group representing Goethes literary rivals joins in the
festivities, and their dialogue makes fun of and caricatures their work. Memberss of the working and common
classes join the ranks as commentators on the politics of the day. The play closes with Ariel calling all to follow
her and join her on the Hill of Roses while all that was has gone away.
Gloomy Day-Field
Faust cries in despair. He has learned that his love, Gretchen, is in prison for her indiscretions. Faust curses
Mephistopheles. He cannot believe that the Devil would let such hardship come on a girl who is given over to
evil spirits and to the unfeeling who presume to dispense justice! He is angry that Mephistopheles has hidden
her suffering from him. Mephistopheles only answers, She is not the first.
Faust cries out to the Infinite Spirit to change the Devil back into a dog or a snake and make him crawl on
his belly before me. Faust is angry with God for not letting Satan, the first one cast into the bottomless
wretchedness, take enough of the blame for the guilt of everyone who has committed evil. He curses God for
doing nothing but grinning complacently at the fate of thousands.
Mephistopheles becomes angry at Fausts rant. He tells Faust that the weakness of mortal men is that they
wish to fly and yet are prone to vertigo. He points out that it was Faust who wagered with the Devil. Faust
again cries to the Spirit to rid him of this evil monster that is always with him. He begs Mephistopheles to save
the girl, but Mephistopheles warns him that he can neither undo the bonds of the Avenger, nor draw back the
bolts, for Faust and not he had damned her. Faust asks Mephistopheles to take him to the prison so that he may
free her. The Devil warns him that the blood-guilt still reigns in the city and that spirits guard the place while
waiting for the murderers return, but he agrees to take Faust. He also agrees to befog the jailers senses while
Faust grabs the keys and releases her. Then, magic horses will whisk them both away.
Night-Open Field
Faust and Mephistopheles ride horses through an open field. Faust spies a coven of witches performing some
act on the Ravens Stone, where executions normally take place. They are sprinkling and murmuring spells,
but Mephistopheles tells Faust to pay no attention to them.
Dungeon
Faust enters Gretchens prison cell with keys and a lantern. He feels all the misery of Man at being in a place
where his love is captive. He comes close to her door and hears her singing a song about a mother who put her
daughter to death, a father who fed on the flesh of his daughter, and the girls little sister who buried her. The
girl then became a bird and flew away. Faust unbolts the prison door and walks in. Gretchen yells because she
believes he is the hangman who has come to execute her.
Faust tries to convince her that he has come to set her free, but she is delusional and continues to believe he is
the hangman. She pleads with him, showing him how young she is. Faust is in misery at hearing his love in
such pain. Gretchen asks to nurse her baby once more and says the guards told her that she killed it. Faust falls
to his knees, exclaiming, Your lover, kneeling at your feet, / has come to free you from your chains. Gretchen
agrees that they both should kneel and pray to the saints. Faust yells her name.

Gretchen hears Fausts voice and, calling for him, finally believes that he has come for her. She now believes
that she is safe, but she still resists running out of the dungeon cell with Faust. She asks him if he has forgotten
how to kiss since he has been away. She tries to kiss him but feels his cold, clenched lips.
They continue speaking. Gretchen tells Faust, I killed my mother / drowned my child; / was it not a gift for
you and me? Faust begs her to Let the past be past. / You are killing me! but she begs him to stay amongst
the living so that he can bury her. After continuing to argue, she tells him that she cannot leave because she has
no more life. Its misery to go begging, / and with a guilty conscience too. She begs him to save their child,
giving him directions to the pond where she threw it in the water. Faust decides to carry her out of the cell, but
she commands him to put her down. The day begins to break, and she remembers how the day was meant to be
my wedding day! She compares the day of her wedding with this impending day of her death, describing the
crowds that would gather and carry her through the streets. Now, all the crowds will be there for a different
purpose.
Mephistopheles enters and tells them that they must leave, or else they will both be caught and killed. Gretchen
sees the Devil and cries in terror because she believes the Devil has come for her. She surrenders herself to the
judgment of God. Mephistopheles tells them that they must come or he will abandon them both, but Gretchen
has fallen into holy delusions, calling for Angels to gather about her and save her. Mephistopheles pronounces,
She is condemned! but a Voice from above answers, Is saved! Mephistopheles vanishes with Faust, and a
last voice from the dungeon cries out Fausts name: Heinrich! Heinrich!
Analysis
Fausts transformation completes in these closing scenes. Throughout the play, Faust is a man who has to make
difficult choices. He has chosen between life and death, as well as between morality and immorality, and now
he chooses between the good of love and evil. In Walpurgis Night, Faust chooses evil. Instead of staying with
his love and suffering his punishment for her salvation, he goes away with Mephistopheles to participate in the
Devils world.
Walpurgis Night is a complicated scene for modern readers because it works on several different levels, one
of which must be understood in the cultural and intellectual context of Goethes day. On the first level, the
scene switches between motifs of comedy and tragedy. Mephistopheless and Fausts journey up the Brocken
Mountain contains many comical elements that become apparent in the plays staging. The playfulness and
dancing of the witches entertains as much as it terrifies. The scene is also tragic, however, because both Faust
and the plays audience see the dark, evil world without redemption into which his wager has thrown him. Faust
gives himself up completely to Mephistopheles sideshows. Faust dances with a witch, he marvels at Lilith and
Medusa, and he talks with a group of men who are also damned.
On a deeper level, the scene is also a satire of the intellectual culture of Goethes day. Faust interacts with
several groups of characters who participate in the Walpurgis Night festivities. Each portrays and caricatures
particular political or intellectual sectors of Fausts post-Christian world. Many of these encounters criticize the
French Revolution, which Goethe saw as the greatest evil of the modern age. The Revolution was the result of
an idealism that was rational thought taken to its extreme end.
The end of Walpurgis Night marks a stark transition. Faust sees a stage set up in the middle of the festivities,
and he and Mephistopheles are invited to come and watch a play. What ensues takes the plays audience further
away from the reality of the preceding story. Goethe models his play within a play on Shakespeares A
Midsummer Nights Dream, and the play uses similar structure and themes. Using quatrain poetic lines, an
ensemble of characters appears and exits, each using terse language to describe particular ideas. Philosophers,
theologians, politicians, and even inanimate objects all appear to state their opinion or their viewpoint of the
world. Both the array of characters and the ideas that they represent confuse the reader while simulating the
insanity and commotion of the eighteenth-century intellectual world. No one, Goethe suggests, has the whole
truth because no one seems to understand what others are saying.
The end of the play returns to the Faust and Gretchen narrative. Faust awakens from his Walpurgis Nights
Dream to realize that he has committed a terrible sin. By choosing to accompany Mephistopheles, he has

damned his love to her death. Fausts cursing of God reminds the reader that Gods nature has been in question
since the beginning of the play. Faust has made his own determination of Gods goodness, and the audience is
left with a theological question: either God is cruel and has allowed Fausts wager to damn both him and
Gretchen, or else God is not all-powerful and could not stop the chain of events. In Fausts post-Christian
world, the latter option is a possibility. Months have passed since Faust fell into his hellish dream, and in the
meantime, Gretchen has borne their illegitimate child, killed the child to avoid becoming a societal outcast, and
been arrested and sentenced to death. Faust rushes back, with Mephistopheles help, to her jail cell in order to
rescue her.
Gretchens fate is the great tragedy of the play, as the day of her execution was to be her wedding day. Instead
of living a happy, full life, she becomes the sacrifice for Fausts chance at enlightenment. What seemed to be
Fausts salvation, his realization that the world holds the means of grace through love of another, instead causes
Gretchen to be condemned. The play reveals an ending that the reader might not expect. Although the reader
knows the play will be a tragedy, Faust is not immediately condemned to a physical hell, unlike in the popular
Faust legends. Instead, in a development that remains consistent with the philosophical themes of the play,
Faust is until his death condemned to a personal hell as the result of his wager with the Devil. He has
experienced grace through Gretchens love, and he knows that it exists, yet he is condemned never to
experience it again. He will live with the knowledge that he caused the death of his love and that he will never
again have his blissful moment of union with Nature and the world.

Goethe's Faust The Faust Legend in History and

Modern Culture
While Goethes Faust is probably the best known version of the Faustian legend and one of the greatest epic
poems of the modern era, it is not the first or only telling of such a tale. The architecture of the Faustian legend
dates back to some of the earliest oral cultures. It is a story that perseveres and continues to be part of the
cultural and intellectual context of the modern era.
The major theme of Faust, that of supernatural temptation and human strength or weakness, is seen in the
earliest literature of ancient cultures. One of the first written iterations of the legend is in the Book of Job from
the Hebrew Bible. Job, a faithful servant of God, is the subject of a bet between God and Satan. Satan bets that
through torment and pain, he can turn Job against God. God believes that his servant Job will remain faithful.
Satan proceeds to torment Job, killing his family, taking his property, and causing him great physical pain. Job,
however, does not relent in his faithfulness to God. By the end of the story, Job is rewarded with even more
riches than he previously had. Goethes Faust alludes to Job in many ways, including the epics opening scene
in which God and Mephistopheles barter over Fausts soul.
The New Testament echoes the same scene. Jesus, Gods son, goes into the wilderness where he faces three
temptations from Satan, including the ability to rule the world as a great King. Jesus does not give into such
temptations. Scholars believe the scene to represent the dichotomy between the humanity and divinity of Jesus.
He is able to feel temptation just as a human being would, yet he resists such temptation because he is the Son
of God.
Such temptation myths exist in other cultures and other religions as well. For instance, the ancient religion of
Zoroastrianism espouses the concept of Aka Manah, a state of mind that causes evil intentions or evil
thinking. Aka Manah, which is of the demonic realm, represents a kind of divine temptation for Zoroaster, who
must overcome his own evil intentions through right worship of the gods who counter these evil thoughts.
Medieval and modern myths relating to the Faust legend have taken on more ambiguous and morally fraught
interpretations. While many of these early myths of divine interplay featured characters who remained morally
and spiritually upright, newer versions of this myth, such as Faust, offer characters that give into temptation
and are refused salvation. The earliest versions of the Faust legend began appearing in chapbooks, cheaply

produced books and pamphlets, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe. The books, based on what
scholars to be a real doctor names Faust who lived in the sixteenth century, depicted a man who received
magical powers after selling his soul to the Devil. In one of the most famous Faust stories, alluded to in
Goethes Faust, Faust appears at Auerbachs Cellar in Leipzig for drunken revelry with the tavern goers. At the
end of the story, Faust flies away on a magic barrel of wine. In these early Faust tales, Faust gains great power
while on Earth but is doomed to eternal damnation. The moral of the story is clear. One should be morally
upright in this life in order to assure eternal comfort and salvation. Deals with the Devil only lead to future
suffering.
The Faust legend has continued into the modern era in other forms as well. In modern American culture, one of
the stories that best exemplifies the Faust archetype exists in American twentieth century music. Robert
Johnson was one of the great bluesmen of the twentieth century and is credited with creating the modern form
of the blues, an amalgamation of black gospel and spiritual music, combined with the sorrowful tales sung by
slaves and black sharecroppers in the American South. Robert Johnson was so prolific at blues music, and his
early death was such a great loss for the blues community, that legends and stories began to grow around him
and his personality. The most famous legend concerns Johnsons meeting with the Devil. The tale says that
Johnson met the Devil at a Mississippi crossroads, and in exchange for being able to play blues music on his
guitar, Johnson sold his soul to the devil. Only the devil could create music with such sorrow and controversial
rhythm, and Johnson became the sacrifice for the creation of modern blues.
The legend of Robert Johnson, as well as numerous stories and tales with similar narratives and arcs, shows that
the Faust legend has moved from a simple popular story in the late middle ages to an archetypal narrative that
defines cultures other than the one out of which it originally grew. Goethes version of the Faust story, while
more deeply infused with philosophical and literary culture than other versions of the legend, shows that the
basic narrative of such stories resonates deeply with people in varied and diverse cultural contexts. The story
survives and is recreated again and again.