What is improper about the manner of mourning suggested by Mephistopheles in lines ? Does her answer reveal blissful innocence or a guilty conscience? Watch for a speech by Gretchen later that implies the latter is the truth. Why is Martha so eager to meet the magistrate Mephistopheles says he will bring to her? Faust is eager to seduce Gretchen, which will ruin her; but he is reluctant to tell a lie. What argument does Mephistopheles use to demonstrate that this is an absurd distinction?
Again we see that he is cleverly maneuvering Faust into doing something obviously evil and distasteful in order to gain his ends. What argument does Faust use to maintain that his promises of eternal love for Gretchen will not be a lie?
What is the logical flaw in his argument? What attitude toward his situation does Faust express in his last line in this scene, and is it justified? What does Martha seem to be aiming at in her conversation with Mephistopheles?
Gretchen suffers from an acute case of low self-esteem. Can you describe how the relationship between them has developed between this passage and line , when Faust and Gretchen reappear together as they stroll around the garden? The technique used here is not unlike a scene change in a film, where matters have progressed much farther than one would have expected in the brief moments they have been out of earshot, but because we could not hear what they were saying, we are not bothered by this fact.
What does Gretchen say her reaction was when Faust first spoke to her? Against whom was her anger ultimately directed? Have you ever encountered this sort of emotional reaction in real life?
Watch for that reaction to return later in the play. No end! Gretchen is mystified as to what Faust sees in her. She is a classic victim of sexual aggression: too young and naive to realize that the erotic attractions of her body more than compensate for her lack of sophistication.
This may seem inconsistent since we have no reason to think that Faust has maintained any relationship with this spirit, and in fact it is partly a remnant of a plan by Goethe to have the Earth Spirit play a much larger role in the story than he finally did. What is he trying to achieve out here in the wilderness? Why does he say he has not succeeded? In ll. How does he tempt Faust to continue his affair with Gretchen?
What clues are there in their dialogue that Faust has already made love with her repeatedly? In lines Faust blasphemously proclaims that he is jealous when Gretchen goes to Mass and consumes the wafer which Catholics believe is transformed into the body of Christ.
Mephistopheles is saying that he is jealous of Faust when the latter enjoys Gretchen with her blouse off. In fact, she is almost certainly pregnant at this point, as we will discover later. Faust is reduced to spluttering protests by this sly remark, which Mephistophles answers with yet another sexually-toned blasphemy, arguing that since God made women to be the partners of men, he was the first pimp.
How does he rationalize completing her destruction? What feelings does Gretchen express in her spinning wheel song? How does he manage to change this troublesome subject back to his love for her? What important error does Gretchen make in this debate which prevents her from understanding that Faust is evil? Why, although it is made clear a little later that Gretchen is no longer a virgin and is in fact probably pregnant at this point, does Goethe seem to evade that point by using ambiguous language here which could be misread to mean that they have never had sex together when in fact it is only that they have never slept in her bedroom all night before?
How would you feel about a real girl who was willing to give her mother a dangerous drug so that she could have sex with her lover in the same bedroom? What is there about the portrait of Gretchen that tends to make us more forgiving of her than of her real-life equivalent? What effect does it have on our feelings about Gretchen that her mother never appears on stage?
Mephistopheles does not really take pleasure in sexual desire for its own sake—only for the evil it may lead to. He anticipates in his last line the disasters to come. What is your reaction to the character of Lieschen? How does she cause us to side emotionally with Gretchen? What techniques does Goethe use in this scene and elsewhere to avoid presenting Gretchen as a wicked sinner? How does this scene indirectly make us aware that Gretchen is pregnant?
What are his feelings about her? Does he really care about her for her own sake? How many days away is Walpurgis Night April 30? Martha is correct in calling his self-righteous words blasphemous since he is presuming to be more judgmental than God, whereas it can be argued that Jesus taught that humans should be more forgiving than God, who is the only one who can send sinners to eternal damnation without hope of forgiveness see Matthew Gretchen is at the funeral of her mother, killed by the sleeping potion, and of Valentine, killed by Faust.
She is crazed with guilt and terror for her role in this catastrophe. The choir sings the famous opening lines from the Dies Irae, the traditional chant describing the Day of Judgment which is sung during the mass for the dead. How are their words related to Gretchen?
Who shall I ask to plead for me, when scarcely the righteous shall be safe? The eve of May Day is here observed as a kind of Halloween, filled with Devil worship in the Harz mountains, where Goethe had spent a memorable night after hiking up the famous site of this scene. Much of the opening is sung, and Goethe uses a variety of devices to create the illusion of climbing on a static stage.
What references to motion of various kinds can you find in this part of the scene? Note how even the trees are brought to life. Why is such a guide chosen to lead them up the mountain? How is the theme of striving which pervades the play reflected in the Half-Witch? In traditional witchcraft, some ceremonies were performed nude. How does Goethe do a satirical variation on this theme?
Why does Mephistopheles speak as if he were losing his power in lines ? Is he really commenting on the impending Last Judgment or on the decline of religion in the age of Enlightenment? Keeping in mind the latter interpretation, notice how he ridicules the Huckster-Witch a huckster is a sleazy, dishonest merchant. Lilith is rarely and unclearly alluded to in the Bible, but Jewish tradition makes her the first, rebellious wife of Adam, and later a symbol for everything evil about women.
Note that Mephistopheles and the old witch use much more obviously obscene metaphors in the following exchange. What effect does the enlightenment rationalism of the Proktophantasmist have on the Walpurgis Night celebration? In mythology, Perseus rescued Andromeda by cutting off the head of Medusa, whose gaze could turn a person to stone.
Goethe here blends that story with a traditional tale of a young woman who persisted in wearing a velvet band around her neck night and day. When her new husband removed it while she slept, her head fell off. She had earlier been executed, but kept alive by the witchcraft of the band. One theory has it that the story was inspired by the red thread which was tied around the necks of those intended for the guillotine during the French Revolution, to mark the place where the blade should fall.
This blending of northern European and Greco-Roman mythology is very typical of Goethe. How in this scene does Faust make it unequivocally clear that he had made love with Gretchen before this time?
This is the only scene in the play which Goethe left in the original prose. Perhaps he thought its depressing subject was better suited to prose than poetry. Faust, feeling at last some qualms of conscience, has fled Gretchen again to commune with nature in the countryside.
Evidently quite a while has passed since Walpurgis Night, for Gretchen has despaired after the night in which her mother and brother both died, feeling that she is to blame.
Abandoned, she has killed the infant fathered by Faust by drowning it in a forest pool; but she has been caught, tried, and condemned to death. Infanticide by guilt-ridden young mothers was quite common at this time, and is hardly unknown today, though it has always been strongly outlawed in Europe since the advent of Christianity.
Mephistopheles has just informed Faust of all this as the scene begins, and we must infer what has happened from his reaction and from what follows. How does Mephistopheles answer his hysterical accusations and turn the blame back around onto Faust? Mephistopheles proposes to stand guard, but Faust must be the one to actually help her escape from prison, just as in the duel with her brother Mephistopheles parried while Faust was forced to strike.
The character of Gretchen was inspired in the first place by a real-life story Goethe had heard of a young woman who was seduced and abandoned, who killed her illegitimate child, was condemned to death, and whose repentant lover joined her in prison to share her fate.
In what important way does this scene differ from the original incident? Having been either directly or indirectly responsible for the death of her mother, brother, and baby, Gretchen has gone insane with guilt. As she sings madly in her prison cell, she blends the classical myth of Tereus and Procne which involves cannibalism and rape with a similar Germanic tale in which the victim is turned into a bird.
In whose voice is she singing? Who does she think is coming when she hears Faust and Mephistopheles enter? How does she speak differently than she might have if her madness did not prevent her from recognizing Faust, and how does that create a powerful effect on him? What has she learned that she did not understand earlier that explains why he seduced her?
European brides wear wreaths of flowers on their wedding day to symbolize their unbroken virginity, so the torn wreath symbolizes her fall from virtue.
Gretchen imagines that someone else has stolen and killed her baby, and complains of the sensational street ballads that are being composed about her crime. What evidence is there that Gretchen, though mad, has recovered much of her sensitivity to evil?
In what way does line say more than Gretchen intends? At what point does she seem to emerge from her madness into relative sanity? How are you affected by her mad vision of seeing her baby still struggling in the pond?
Although Faust never proposed to her, she has obviously been dreaming of wedlock since she fantasizes that the next day is to be her wedding day. As she imagines her own execution, she is finally saved—why?
What is her final reaction toward Faust? What is the meaning of her last cry as she ascends into Heaven? How many different interpretations can you give it?
What does it mean that both a Christian and a pagan heaven can exist in the same play? Since he has done nothing to deserve this, such as repenting his evil deeds, why do you suppose it happens?
His dramatic intentions? The river Lethe in classical mythology was the boundary between life and Hades, the land of the dead. Rather than repenting, what does Faust vow to do when he reawakens?
Compare the passage on the rising sun in lines with the earlier passage on the setting sun in lines What are the major differences? What are the similarities?
Our translation now skips a vast portion of Part II. Much of this part of the play wanders far afield from the central narrative of the old Faust legend; and although it was highly thought of by German romantic scholars, it has seldom caught the imaginations of other readers.
Faust has been given a seaside kingdom by the Emperor, which he has enlarged by diking and draining the swampland—a common practice from the Middle Ages onward in Holland and southwestern Germany. Only an old couple named Baucis the woman and Philemon the man are willing to open their houses and cupboards to them, and only they are preserved when the rest of the village is drowned in a flood. Goethe expects his readers to know their Ovid well enough to recognize the names and make the proper associations.
What is Goethe implying about the relative moral sensitivities of men and women? What does the difference tell us about the development of his character? What evidence is there that he is using illicit means to conduct this trade? In line Mephistopheles alludes ironically to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, discussed above. As you would find it you followed up the reference to I Kings 21, King Ahab envied the vineyard of his subject Naboth. His wicked wife arranged for Naboth to be killed so that Ahab could seize it.
Thus Mephistopheles is clearly preparing us to expect the deaths of Baucis and Philemon as Faust plays the role of Ahab. Faust rages at Mephistopheles for his killing of Baucis and Philemon; but why might one see him as responsible for their deaths anyway?
As in a Medieval morality play like Everyman, allegorical figures enter who symbolize the approach of death. They also parallel the four horsemen of the Apocalypse: death, war, famine, and plague see Revelations What does it tell us that Guilt cannot reach Faust? What philosophical conclusions does Faust draw from his life experience in lines ? In what ways are these different from his earlier attitudes?
In what ways the same? What does Faust think the digging outside is accomplishing? How does Mephistopheles sarcastically prophesy that all his hopes are in vain, and how does this comment connect with the Baucis and Philemon story in Ovid? As Kaufmann points out in the introduction, this was the last scene Goethe wrote, a wildly comic, blasphemous account of how Faust is saved, as if he wanted to underline that the final scene must not be taken seriously as a scene of orthodox redemption.
It has utterly failed to achieve that goal with most scholarly readers, partly because they are too embarrassed by its obscenities even to discuss it. Psyche is the Greek mythological name for the human soul. How is the effort to capture the soul made grossly physical in this scene? What sight ultimately distracts Mephistopheles so that the angels are able to make off with the soul?
Is he attracted by their virtue? In what ways is it similar to his rebirth at the opening of Part I? How does his journey through the levels of Heaven relate to the main themes of the play? Here they are given the more Romantic role of guiding the soul to Heaven.
What seems to be the ultimate power that draws Faust into Heaven? See Luke 7: She has been traditionally confused with Mary Magdalene, who is discussed elsewhere; and Goethe probably meant her to be identified as such; but which of her characteristics is particularly relevant here? What is relevant in the story of the Mulier Samaritana Samaritan woman in John ? Maria Aegyptica , whose story of sin and repentance is told in the Medieval Acts of the Saints, is the third of these women.
In what way are the defeat of Mephistopheles and the salvation of Faust caused by the same force? The final lines of the play are mistranslated. Since Goethe was clearly not a Christian, why do you suppose he wrote this scene in Heaven? Since Faust never repented his sins and did no notably virtuous deeds and never expressed any religious faith, why do you think he is saved?
You may remember him as the lookout who was temporarily blinded by the brilliance of Helen's beauty in Act III. In this case he announces the arrival of ships in the harbor, which will travel up a canal to F's palace. We also see F, "in extreme old age" Goethe said he is exactly years old , walking about, meditating. His thoughts are interrupted by the sound of the bell from Baucis and Philemon's chapel, and it infuriates him. The reason is that the bell, whenever it sounds, reminds him that his rule is not absolute, for the old couple continue to defy him.
It is in fact so galling that he wishes, "were I far away from here! The ships, laden with treasure and other goods, arrive at the palace, and Mephistopheles and the Three Mighty Men disembark. Mephisopheles extols the virtues of piracy; offshore, beyond the law of the land, might is right and expediency prevails.
The Mighty Men are miffed because F does not seem appropriately appreciative he is still upset by the chapel bell , but Mephisto mollifies them. M tells F he has no reason to be unhappy; the world is entirely within his grasp, and he enforces peace on land and sea.
The terms in which F phrases his frustration are very revealing. M, to his credit, thinks that it is absurd that F is bothered by this small matter, but F is so put out by it that he exclaims, "One has to tire of being just" M remarks that F just has to say the word, and F tells M to move the old couple to the new housing he has assigned them.
M departs with the Mighty Men to carry out the relocation assignment. Like the last scene, this one starts with Lynceus, and he begins with a song in praise of vision In contrast to Faust, with his never-ending efforts to conquer and remold nature, L has a different relationship to the natural world, more contemplative and empathetic.
Soon the chapel and linden grove are also in flames, and the old couple's homestead is destroyed. Mephisto and the Three Mighty Men arrive to report that things did not go as planned.
The old couple were too deaf to hear them banging at the door, and when the relocation party broke in and grabbed the old people, they died of fright. The Wayfarer tried to protect the old folks, and so the Mighty Men had to kill him.
The violence knocked some coals about, which started the fire. All very regrettable. Nowadays we would call it "collateral damage. The chorus seems to think the old couple and Wayfarer are responsible, for it is foolish to resist force: "Give way to force, for might is right" Faust is left alone.
The smoke from the fire drifts his way and hides the stars; in the gloom he thinks he sees spectral figures moving toward his palace.
Want, Debt, and Need observe that a wealthy man dwells inside, and so entry is blocked to them, but Care says she can enter even a rich man's house. Care enters through the keyhole while the other three depart, remarking that they see their brother Death approaching from afar. To understand the role of Care Ger. There F lamented that a person, no matter how great their accomplishment, no matter how high their thoughts or aspirations, is still a mortal creature of flesh and blood, and therefore vulnerable to injury, disease, old age, and inevitable death.
II, Act V. From inside his palace, F has observed the approach of the four gray crones and has noted that only three left. He has heard only muffled snatches of their conversation, including the word "Death," and the entire situation has left him spooked. His feelings of anxiety show him that he is not free of care "I have not fought my way to freedom yet" -- However, this does not seem to be a renunciation of magic as some critics have read it , but merely a moment of reflection, for he continues to depend on magical power see your text, pp.
Nevertheless, he is upset that every night the air seems to be choked with bogeys of his own creation In this frame of mind, he hears the door creak open. After introductions, Care proceeds to speak in a keening or wailing chant with occasional interruptions by Faust. This chant, in which she describes her power over everyone, is a kind of spell, and although it is not directly addressed to F, it threatens to overwhelm him with dread.
The first time he interrupts her , F summarizes the way he has lived his life, ever striving, never satisfied. He remarks that he understands everything of earthly life, but no one can know the afterlife, and so only a fool worries about it; the able man will confine his attention to what he can perceive and grasp, and continue to move forward, "every moment stay unsatisfied" It's worthwhile to pay attention to the metaphors F uses here, and also to compare his attitude toward nature to that of Lynceus in Scene 3.
Gloomy concern for the future will cloud and pollute his life, regardless of how well off materially he is. F interrupts again, feeling himself weakening under the enchantment Care continues relentlessly. She confronts him with the extreme debility of old age, clinging to life, no matter how intolerable, "Hung between despair and striving" F interrupts for the last time , accusing Care and her unholy kin of tormenting people through the ages.
And she departs. Still unbowed, Faust observes that although all is dark outside, the light within him still burns bright. He does not need sight or strength of body; his word and mind alone can accomplish great enterprises. This is a very important scene, and you should read it closely, maybe more than once.
As the scene opens we find Mephistopheles supervising a team of demonic laborers, the Lemures leh-MOO-rays , who were unfriendly ghosts according to the ancient Romans. Here they appear as animated skeletons, barely held together by their sinews. Presumably they are the workmen that Mephisto has been using for his nighttime excavations, and they come prepared with their picks, shovels, and surveying chain, but M tells them they have a simpler job, for they will be digging a trench measured by the human body.
In an aside , M tells us that F's efforts to reclaim the land from the sea are futile, for nature will in the end prevail; he is only forestalling the inevitable. This is followed by what is to be Faust's last speech , and there are many important aspects to it. First , we learn that he is trying to solve an environmental problem, for his reclaimed land is befouled by stagnant swamps.
His Eden may not be such a nice place to live after all, and we realize that Baucis and Philemon were wise to hold onto their high ground F's paradise is maintained by a constant battle with environmental degradation, which he sees as a spur to communal spirit and part of his grand plan. In this speech F articulates his vision for the future This is not be a Paradise of idle ease, but a place where hard-working people can earn a satisfying existence.
There are many opinions on F's vision for his country and its role in the drama. On the one hand it has been claimed that in it Faust shows a genuine concern for humanity, and that this vision displays a shift from his previous egotistical attitude to a more altruistic perspective.
This change in attitude is supposed to justify his eventual redemption. Such a conclusion is called into question by the fact that the architects of several "engineered states" such as the Nazi and Communist East German states have pointed to Faust's "workers' paradise" as a model for what they were trying to achieve your text, pp.
So perhaps we are justified in viewing his utopia with some skepticism. We also have the advantage of historical perspective Goethe was contemporary with the dawn of German Idealistic philosophy, later systematized by Hegel, who influenced Marx, … Be that as it may, F is entranced by visions of his utopia, and he imagines that his accomplishment will be remembered for aeons He anticipates the satisfaction and sense of completion he would feel if he were able to see his future utopia: "Oh how I'd love to see that lusty throng and stand on a free soil with a free people.
It is significant that F doesn't say that he is experiencing such a perfect moment now, but that he would do so in that future time he is imagining. Does this satisfy the terms of the wager? Commentators differ, and you should think about it yourself. In any case, Faust collapses dead, and the Lemures catch his falling body and lower it into the grave they have dug for him.
Mephisto then pronounces his cynical verdict on Faust's life and the human condition The final, timeless moment, the perfect moment of satisfaction for F, the moment of fulfillment, was "worthless, stale, and void" For M, human striving is pointless because it must end in death. M would prefer Eternal-Emptiness to the continual and, to him, futile coming-to-be and passing-away of the natural world.
According to Edinger, the first four acts of Part II correspond to the material elements: fire, water, air, and earth. These are the elements from which our world was supposed to be made but also corresponding to the four functions of consciousness -- intuition, feeling, thinking, sensation — but also many other quaternities, such as the seasons.
According to this scheme, Act V corresponds to the fifth element, called ether , the Quintessence or fifth essence quinta essentia. This was supposed to be the substance of the celestial bodies the planets and stars. According to the traditional Aristotelian-Thomistic physics, the four material elements exhibit rectilinear straight-line motion, whereas the quintessence exhibits circular motion.
Therefore motion on earth always comes to an end because eventually you run into something , whereas celestial motion goes on in eternal cycles. Therefore, since all earthly motion must come to an end, everything on earth is subject to "coming-to-be and passing-away," to "generation and corruption. On the other hand, cyclic motion can continue forever, and so eternal life is found in the heavens, where all things are eternal and incorruptible.
Thus the traditional cosmology. From this perspective you can see also why the alchemists were interested in making the quintessence, for it was the essence of immortality and incorruptibility. The key to creating the quintessence was a cyclic rotation through the four elements in part a kind of distillation process , which would eventually converge on the quintessence by transcending and unifying the oppositions among the elements warm and cold, wet and dry.
More than you wanted to know, I'm sure. The point is, that in Act V the passage through the elements, the alchemical process, is reaching its end, and that this end corresponds to the substance of the celestial or heavenly realm, which is eternal, incorruptible, and immortal.
These matters assume greater significance beginning with Scene 6, "Entombment. There are many comical elements in this scene, which owe something, perhaps, to the old Faust puppet plays, with which Goethe was familiar.
Mephistopheles and the Lemures are watching over Faust's corpse in the open grave, waiting to snatch F's soul when it departs. M grumbles that in the old days he could always trust that he would get what he was due, but now he has to be worried about being cheated.
Sometimes people hang on at the threshold of death for days, or have a miraculous recovery, so it's difficult to tell whether they have died and when. To help with the vigil, M invokes two troupes of devils, the fat ones with short, straight horns and the lean ones with long, crooked horns. Therefore the Hell-Mouth, common in medieval plays, appears stage left, and opens its jaws, belching smoke and fire; from it swarm the fat and lean devils.
Among the uncertainties that M must deal with now is where the soul will exit; it used to depart from the mouth with the last breath, but now it may use any orifice. M assigns the fat devils to watch the lower part of the corpse and the lean ones to watch the upper part. It's worth mentioning that the Greek word psyche soul, spirit, breath also means butterfly, and so a butterfly was often used to depict the soul escaping from the body at death.
This explains M's instructions to the fat devils:. It's probably also relevant that according to a well-known allegory in Plato's Phaedrus , the goal of spiritual practice and philosophy is to develop the soul's wings, so that it can rise above the earth and approach the heavens. The worm, of course, we expect to find underground. No sooner has M completed his instructions when a brilliantly shining disk or aureole appears from above on the right; it encompasses a chorus of angels, in the form of winged cherubs, singing a hymn.
M hears the song, which he calls "boyish-girlish," alluding to the traditional sexlessness of angels, and warns his devils to be watchful.
From M's perspective, at least, the angels are far from innocent and honest, and have often cheated him in the past. M orders them to huff and puff and blow the roses away, but they blow too hard and the roses burst into flame. In panic, the devils tumble back into Hell-Mouth; only M remains to confront the cherub army.
The roses cling to M and apparently act like an aphrodisiac; soon M is feeling the effects of infatuation, which is a new experience for him
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