FREE ESSAY ON TWENTY-FOUR YEARS IN THE LIFE OF DR. FAUSTUS

TWENTY-FOUR YEARS IN THE LIFE OF DR. FAUSTUS

Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus is the story of a selfish Renaissance-era man
who sold his soul to the devil in order to further his knowledge of things beyond man's
normal state of being. Faustus was a doctor with a degree in divinity who was highly
respected among his fellow scholars. Seemingly bored with the way his life was going,
Faustus yearned for more knowledge. He gained a new interest in magic, and decided that
if he were a magician, he could somehow learn all of the things he wanted to know.
These metaphysics of magicians
And negromantic books are heavenly;
Lines, circles, letters, characters -
Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires.
O, what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honor, and omnipotence
Is promised to the studious artisan!
All things that move between the quiet poles
Shall be at my command: emperors and kings
Are but obeyed in their several provinces
But his dominion that exceeds in this
Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man:
A sound magician is a demi-god!
Here tire my brains to get a deity!
Doctor Faustus I:I:47-60
Faustus proceeds to make a pact with Lucifer in which he "surrenders up to him his soul /
So he will spare him four and twenty years." (I:III:89-90). Though Faustus had originally
intended to use his newly acquired magic for good, he couldn't fight the urge to use his
powers for jokes and trickery.
During the course of the play, Faustus wastes his magic skills by playing tricks on
important figures. In the presence of the Pope, Faustus makes himself invisible and
proceeds to make various objects fly through the air to the amazement and awe of the
crowd. When visiting the Emperor, he calls forth the spirit of Alexander the Great.
Faustus becomes more and more obsessed with the idea of becoming all-powerful as the play
wears on. The power he holds causes him to believe that he can eventually become either a
god or a devil himself.
Toward the end of the play, as his twenty-four years are drawing to a close, Faustus
begins to realize that he has wasted all of the time basically "playing around" when he
could have been learning. He comes close to repenting though he never actually asks for
forgiveness. His soul is carried off to hell by the devils after they have torn his body
limb-from-limb and left it for the scholars to find.
Christopher Marlowe uses the story of Doctor Faustus as a subtle way to criticize the
religious beliefs of the general population of his time. Marlowe was at one time accused
of being an atheist. If this is true, his play becomes a sort of satire of the scholarly
Renaissance man. Marlowe chooses to send Faustus down the wrong path by having him make a
pact with the devil. During a time when religion was still a topic that was not as open
to public scrutiny as it is today, Marlowe is able to use the play as a format to get his
message across. Having Faustus make fun of the Pope and conjure spirits is Marlowe's type
of criticism. Writing for an audience that wouldn't necessarily be able to understand all
of the underlying themes of the play, Marlowe is able to plant a seed of fear into the
minds of the population. The people in his audience might think that one day something as
"terrible" as what happened to Faustus could actually happen to the scholars of their
time.
Doctor Faustus is related to, but unlike the character of Job from the Bible. In the Book
of Job, God and Satan, to see just how faithful he is put Job to the test. When all of
Job's earthly possessions as well as his family are taken away from him, he does not
curse the name of God, he only asks what he has done to deserve such a punishment.
Throughout the text, Job criticizes the majority of people in general for their
disloyalty to God.
The stories of Faustus and Job are related only because they are each involved in a type
of relationship with either God or Satan: Faustus belongs to the devil, and Job belongs
to God. They both have criticism for the masses, but in different ways. Faustus is
saying, in a way, that the people are taking their beliefs to literally, and that they do
not have to believe everything that they are told to believe. Job is saying that the
people are not believing as they should be.
Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus is about what can happen to a person who
becomes greedy. Faustus only wanted more knowledge, but he ended up eternally damned to
hell. It is, in effect, a lesson used to scare those who are willing to believe it. Even
if it wasn't written in jest, Marlowe's play still stands today a lesson in morality for
anyone who reads it.