Doc Faustus

Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.

Men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels, rather than elevated apes.

As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague interests.

When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life.

(Barnes & Noble Book of Quotations, 310-312)

Doctor Faustus is a scholar who questions all knowledge and finds it lacking. Because none of his learning will allow him to transcend his mortal condition, he rejects God and forms a pact with Lucifer all the while pursuing the arts of black magic. Of course, this is one more propaganda piece of Western Christianity attempting to argue that knowledge is dangerous and confining instead of rewarding and liberating. It also suggests a Protestant parallel in its representation that one who believes in everything ends up believing in nothing. However, if we cast aside its use as a socio-economic, ideological tool of manipulation, we can explore its character, action and themes without suffering too much offense as open-minded scholars. In a play of five acts, twenty scenes and more than 70 pages of typed text, Gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins, consumes a mere 13 lines. While s

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mself. Sloth is so consumed in sloth that he will not speak more for a king’s ransom. Envy is envious because he cannot show the world how fat he would be if it were in his control to become so. Pride is large enough to encompass “every corner of a wench”, and Covetous cannot acquire enough gold so would turn the entire world into it so he could possess it all (Marlowe 49). In other words, anything in excess becomes noxious to the human character, destroying the soul of its own surfeit, at least from the Christian perspective. In fact, as one of the scholars argues, Faustus, himself, has come to such a miserable pass because of a surfeit of too much solitary study, “He is not well with being over-solitary” (Marlowe 95). This same argument was used by Christians as an attack upon the existential philosophy in Nietzsche’s writings. Faustus, from the tip of Marlowe’s pen, even admits as much, “A surfeit of deadly sin that hath damned both body and soul!” (Marlowe 95). Hell, of course, is surfeited with examples of those who lived in sin, gluttons of human pleasure as opposed to forsaking pleasure based on a fear of eternal damnation and the promise of an eternally rosy paradise. When Faustus spends his “dreadful night”,
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Approximate Word count = 1480
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)