Primarily Faustus’ decision to defy God and turn to necromancy doesn’t seem a bad idea when he talks about all the power and wealth that he would gain. This was probably what the attitude of the people was, that there is a lot to gain from sin. The bargain seems very attractive when he meets with Valdes and Cornelius and the three of them talk about all that Faustus will be able to do. The conceptions are quite grand and it doesn’t seem too bad when Valdes says,
“Faustus, these books, thy wit, and our experience
Shall make all nations to canonize us.”
Valdes is suggesting that by taking up necromancy they would be made saints, even though they are going against God and religion. Faustus’ sin does not seem to be bad when he will have “women, or unwedded maids” and “all the wealth”
Marlowe gives a sense of something bad and wrong happening at the beginning of scene 3 when Faustus conjures. We get this feeling when Faustus describes the “gloomy shadows” and the “pitchy breath” The image of darkness and night gives the impression that what Faustus is doing is dangerous and evil. Faustus practises the Black Mass, which was a mockery of the Roman Catholic Church, practised by Satan worshippers, which would have made this scene extremely horrific for Marlowe’s audience, and definitely seen as a sinful act. The attitude to Faustus’ choice to sign the contract with Lucifer is a negative one and this is shown with the symbol of congealing blood, showing it to be “unwilling” to cooperate in the sin. The rhetorical question: “Is not thy soul thine own?” gives the audience the message that his soul is his own and giving it away is unnatural and it cannot not rightly be anyone else’s.
The ultimate sign that Faustus was sinning is a direct message from God, “Homo fuge” the words, which appear miraculously on Faustus’ arm meaning, “Flee, man” but Faustus chooses to ignore this message, showing all defiance of God. By doing this, the audience’s attitude towards Faustus may be one of admiration because he is courageous enough to blaspheme and oppose God, something that many of them had not dared to do; to gain supreme knowledge, power and wealth.
After Faustus signs the contract, what Faustus actually gains from sinning seems very unlike what he thought he’d gain and makes the sin seem pointless. It is foreshadowed by Mephastophilis when he tells Faustus that he’ll give him more than he “hast wit to ask” implying that Faustus is stupid for acting in this way. The audience comes to see that Faustus’ choice to sin was clearly a stupid one when tries to get answers from Mephastophilis, who tells him no more than “…slender trifles Wagner can decide”, simplistic and silly as something a servant can guess at. Faustus himself realises that he’s made a mistake when Mephastophilis gives him books with insufficient information. Faustus main aim was to gain power and we see that Faustus gains no power and is under the control of Lucifer, and is actually low in the hierarchy of hell when he asks Mephastophilis, “Now tell me what says Lucifer thy Lord?” The very need to ask in this way symbolises how low his position is.
Doctor Faustus seems like a rather lonely character, so self-absorbed in his own achievements and interests that when he thinks about the “women” he’ll be able to have, he is really looking for a companion and this is proved when he asks Mephastophilis for a “wife”. Mephastophilis tells Faustus to “talk not of a wife” because marriage is a religious ceremony and gives him a whore instead. This shows that Faustus’ sin has not only caused him to lose God’s love but the possibility of love with anyone else. Mephastophilis himself is damned and we can feel his sadness in losing what he had in scene 3 when he warns Faustus about selling his soul, calling himself an “unhappy spirit”.
I think Faustus begins to realise that his sin was pointless and that he won’t get what he wants and uses his time and “power” to be mischievous by playing practical jokes like those on the pope and the horse-courser, to distract himself. Faustus must have been scared of what will happen to him after his contract has ended.
Faustus is guilty of many sins (not just that of opposing god and selling his soul), pride being the greatest. Faustus’ real sin is not his conjuring, but his denial of God’s power and majesty. We can sense Faustus’ from the very beginning of the play from Faustus’ tone. An example of this is when he talks about all his achievements at the beginning and says, “A greater subject fitteth Faustus’ wit” and when he boastfully asks, “The end of physic is out body’s health, why Faustus, hast thou not attained that end?” It is pride that damns him completely. All his other sins are different aspects of this key sin. Even his despair, at the end of the play, is another aspect of the same thing.
Pride refuses to acknowledge God’s power in the same way in which despair denies God’s mercy. Throughout the play Faustus has doubts about what he is doing and thinks of repenting but it is his pride that keeps him from turning to God and asking for forgiveness. This happens throughout scene 5 where he doubts his actions, thinks of repenting and then because of his pride he becomes resolute again. The good angel tries to help him by saying “Faustus repent, yet God will pity thee” but he can’t face being humiliated and says, “My heart’s so hardened I cannot repent!”
Pride is seen in Mephastophilis’ discussion with Faustus on the subject of hell. Mephastophilis replies honestly to all Faustus’ questions about hell. However, Faustus, out of pride in his own “resolution,” refuses to accept the truth. When asked how Lucifer fell from grace, Mephastophilis says, “by aspiring pride and insolence/ For which God threw him from the face of heaven.” This also foreshadows Faustus’ own fate at the end of the play.
This recurs throughout the play. Like Lucifer, Faustus rebels against God. However, he realizes that the freedom he hoped for is only another form of slavery. It is true that at the
end of the play, Faustus is no longer proud, but he is afraid to turn to God and despairs of receiving His mercy.
The play shows that despair was thought to be the worst sin of all from Faustus’ suicidal thoughts. Suicide was a direct result of despair and treated very seriously. It was not thought to be a sin because it was a type of murder but it indicated loss of faith, which is irrevocable. It was seen as taking away God’s control over death and this is why Mephastophilis offers Faustus the dagger.
It is hard to decide whether Faustus is damned from the beginning because you could see him as damned from what is said in the Chorus: “And melting heavens conspired his overthrow” which could suggest that God himself is aligned against Faustus. By saying this maybe Marlowe is pointing out that Faustus cannot be guilty for his sins because God has already damned him. Marlowe himself has been accused of being an atheist, and if this is true, it casts a great deal of doubt on his ability to moralize from a Christian attitude. There are some things in the text that might point to a more unconventional reading. Marlowe could be showing God to be judgmental and someone you can’t turn to for comfort.
We can explore the attitudes towards damnation by looking at how hell and damnation are represented in the play. In scene 3 when, Mephastophilis is presented to Faustus he comes in the form of a scary dragon, but it is Faustus who refuses to face the horror of hell and its devils by making Mephastophilis change his form because he wants to ignore the true representation of hell. Mephastophilis tries to make hell seem like an extremely unattractive and damnation an unhappy end. He describes devil like himself as “Unhappy spirits that fell with Lucifer, Conspired against our God with Lucifer, and are forever damned with Lucifer”. The use of “fell,” shows that he sees it as a mistake. He also says “our God” which sounds like he is reminiscing and does actually love God. Faustus doesn’t seem to care and ignores what Mephastophilis says this. We can get the idea that hell is being presented as a horrific place because Mephastophilis who is the second most powerful devil tries to persuade Faustus not to make the same mistake when he says,
“Think’st 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!
O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands,
Which strike a terror to my fainting soul.”
In the play hell is represented not only as a physical place but as a state of mind as well when Faustus asks Mephastophilis about hell.
Faustus:
Where are you damned?
Mephastophilis:
In hell.
Faustus:
How comes it then that thou art out of hell?
Mephastophilis:
Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Medieval thinking had been dominated by the idea that God had organised the world into a series of linked hierarchies, with God at the top and then descending successively through angels, men, women, animals, birds fishes, insects, trees and plants to stones. Hell was thought to be underneath the Earth. So it might have been quite hard for some of the audience of the time to imagine everything but heaven to be hell. If Faustus was damned from the very beginning it might have been because he was questioning his position in this hierarchy by striving to “become a deity”. In Faustus’ time devils and spirits were believed to really exist and figures that could be conjured so it must have been quite an evolutionary idea to think of hell as a state of mind. If hell is thought of as a state of mind it is easy to believe that Faustus may have been damned from the very beginning because there have been many times when Faustus has wanted to repent but has been distracted by the devils and hasn’t been strong enough to beat these distraction. This happens repeatedly in scene 5 where Faustus first experiences doubts, then persuasive efforts are made to influence him like the devils have used a dance and a parade of the seven deadly sins to make Faustus change his mind and once again become more resolute. Marlowe represents God cold and unmerciful at the end of the play when Faustus cries, “My God, my God, look not so fierce on me!” and even though Faustus cries for Christ he still goes to hell. In Marlowe’s time Faustus’ sin could have viewed in the same way as the sin of Adam and Eve. The attitude towards damnation must have been a very frightening one, and we can see this from the way that the devils came and dragged Faustus away and in Marlowe’s time this would have been a realistic end if devil’s were believed to be real figures. Damnation, then, could be seen as inevitable like Faustus says in the beginning, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there is no truth in us. Why then belike we must sin”.
From “Dr Faustus” we can assume that the attitude towards sin was that it was pointless and that there is nothing to gain from opposing God. By sinning in this way Faustus loses God’s love, cannot give love to a wife, gains no power to control anyone, and does not come to know more than he had discovered after being “graced” with a doctor’s name. The play also shows that pride was the cardinal sin which led to all the other sins and the irrevocable sin – despair. The attitude of the people in Marlowe’s time would have been that this despair of God’s mercy, rejected you of God’s mercy because without faith you cannot forgive with the hope of being forgiven and were therefore damned. The 16th century idea of damnation, was terrifying devils, fire and hell but damnation was also seen as a state of mind and that you could be on Earth but still in “hell” which Faustus could be considered to have been in from the very beginning, making him incapable of repenting. However we can still argue whether Faustus is damned because he sells his soul or he sells his soul because he is damned.
