Like all heroes, Faust is doomed because his personality possesses a fatal flaw. In Faust’s case, his ego is the root of his damnation. The dominance of Faust’s ego, however, is one of the things that makes his heroism a particularly Romantic. The Romantic movement placed an emphasis on the self – on feelings, desires, and the abstract workings of man’s emotional depths. Faust, as a Romantic hero, constitutes the supercharged Everyman of his era. He proudly believes his particular passions are so voracious that all the pleasures of the world, even those conjured by the Devil, cannot possibly satisfy him. Satisfaction, in this context, would signal the abdication of the self in favor of a union with the earthly comforts of life. Faust cannot abide the prospect of satisfaction because to do so would be an admission of vulnerability and mortality.
Essential to Faust’s heroic character is the fact that he is a man whose life is plagued by contradiction. He states that “two souls live within me, alas, forever warring with each other” (lines 1137-38). The theme of struggle between learning and experience parallels a broader societal shift from Enlightenment to Romantic ideals. Through his studies, Faust has learned to value the principles of reason, knowledge, and critical thinking. Although Faust initially prides himself on his education and empirical philosophy, his depression at the beginning of the play is a direct result of the fact that he can no longer live a life destitute of pleasure.
Like many Romantics, Faust has rejected the conventional view of God and seeks a deeper form of spirituality to fulfill his hunger for meaning. He rejects the popular deism of the Enlightenment with the attitude that “feeling is everything” (line 3521). Happiness, God, and the heart form a mysterious single entity that flows through the universe. Faust’s choice to venture into the occult parallels the trend towards mysticism seen in Romantic culture. He summons the power of the supernatural through declaring himself a God. This act embodies the Romantic attitudes that glorified the primacy of the individual. Faust supports the idea of individual primacy when he tells Wagner that the self is the place from where everything originates (line 590). The context of Faust’s statement that he is “the one made in the very image of God” conveys the Emersonian notion that because God is invested in every man, a man rules his own moral universe (line 635).
Faust’s rejection of Enlightenment principles is evident in throughout the play. The contrast he makes between the rational world and the world of imagination (line 660) is a typical Romantic complaint about the rationalist period from which he was emerging. Like Goethe’s Romantic contemporaries, Faust glorifies the culture of past eras, where art expressed a mode of life driven by imagination – a far cry from the formulaic restraint of the Enlightenment. Faust’s interactions with Wagner further support his rejection of Enlightenment principles. Faust explains to Wagner that empirical knowledge may be impressive, but it is worthless if it is not backed up with the elemental force of heartfelt emotion. “But you’ll never get heart to cleave to heart – Unless you speak from your own heart” (lines 563-63). Wagner responds with the rationalist notion that one cannot simply use the heart as an instrument of expression – one must also strive to understand and master it. Faust argues that understanding is a shallow pursuit. The eternal truth of the heart cannot be reduced to a mortal explanation. Faust’s attitude towards nature further expresses his Romantic tendencies. Whereas Enlightenment scholars looked to nature for scientific information, Faust repeatedly refers to nature as a great mystery. “Great Nature, so mysterious even in broad day – Doesn’t let you unveil her, plead as you may” (lines 692-93).
Perhaps the most traditionally Romantic element of Faust’s odyssey is love. It is ironic that a man strong enough not to be swayed by any conceivable pleasure in the universe owes his demise to the simplest incarnation of human good. Perhaps the devastating effect of love is centered in its nature. Love is a product of two selves sacrificing autonomy in favor of the other and becoming a single dynamic unit in the process. Love is capable of destroying Faust because it castrates his ego, the very flaw that made him a hero in the first place.
Faust’s love for Gretchen exacts a remarkable transformation of his sense of self. Before he falls in love, he is interested in Gretchen as a sex object – something with which he can explore his newfound appetite for pleasure. When he begs Mephisto to make her his, it is obvious that his intentions are anything but honorable. Faust is introduced to the Romantic notion of courtship when he acts on Mephisto’s suggestion that his conquest of Gretchen will be sweeter if he is able to convince her that he is in love with her (line 2691). In the garden as Gretchen picks daisies, Faust expresses his feelings in the third person, saying, “He loves you” (line 3239). Goethe’s contrast of the first and third person attests to the respective states of mind of the lovers. Gretchen can say “I love you” because she is willing to claim full responsibility for her emotions, thereby surrendering to the implications of love (line 3264). Faust, whose love is merely the product of Mephisto’s spell at this point, uses the third person as if to transfer ownership of his emotion.
As his affair with Gretchen continues, it is clear that Faust comes under the same glamorous spell of love and emotion that captivated Romantic society. He develops a chivalric attitude and responds with contempt to Mephisto’s offhanded misogynistic comments about Gretchen. He feels remarkably guilty about what he has done to Gretchen and blames his lust on her downfall, exclaiming, “I wish I had never been born!” (line 4688). The tragic irony of the situation is that Faust only becomes capable of true love after it is too late to save Gretchen from her fate. The lesson of Gretchen’s heavenly salvation espouses the quintessentially Romantic notion of the spirituality of true love. This attitude allows for her redemption, despite her sins, because “all her crime was love” (line 4501).
Goethe’s Faust is a work in which a new type of hero emerges to satisfy the needs of a changing society. With Faust, Goethe succeeded in representing a microcosm of the tensions that accompanied the shift from rationalism to Romanticism. Complex and dynamic, Faust, like the great men of his era, is a hero whose most notable achievement is his transformation of the lives of others as well as his own. In this respect, the lesson of the Romantic hero is comprised less of romance than of utility. Following the trends of the Goethe’s contemporary evolving society, the means by which Faust succeeds in accomplishing his goals are largely selfish, brutal, and unethical. This is perhaps Goethe’s single greatest reflection on the modern nature of heroism.
