Dr. Faustus Essay - Pride, Insolence and the Fall of Doctor Faustus

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Pride, Insolence and the Fall of Doctor Faustus

As a highly revered individual - a doctor of theology who is also involved in liberal arts, medicine and law - Doctor Faustus possesses limitless knowledge. Nonetheless, unfortunately the more people know the more curious, thirsty and greedy for knowledge they become. Thus, wanting to know more and therefore, gain supernatural power, Faustus creates his own fall through pride, insolence and child-like behavior - the by-products of the dominating id that overpowers the superego in this particular case.

The above excerpt was provided to make the student aware of the focus of the essay, the complete paper begins below:

"...Man builds towels of the spirit from which he may survey larger horizons that those of his class, race and nation. This is a necessary human enterprise. Without it man could not come to his full estate. But it is also inevitable that these towers should be Towers of Babel, that they should pretend to reach higher than their real height; and should claim a finality which they cannot posses," quotes Sylvan Barnet in his introduction to Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" (xiv). Doctor Faustus lives in such pretension. Due to Faustus' extraordinary, celebrated, restless and insatiable mind that differs from the ordinary minds, the quote above stands as the basic premise for Marlowe's play. As a highly revered individual - a doctor of theology who is also involved in liberal arts, medicine and law - Doctor Faustus possesses limitless knowledge. Nonetheless, unfortunately the more people know the more curious, thirsty and greedy for knowledge they become. Thus, wanting to know more and therefore, gain supernatural power, Faustus creates his own fall th...

... middle of paper ...

...ioned by his immediate circumstances...He wants to be man. He is not content with his truth. He seeks the truth...His restless mind seeks to comprehend the meaning of all cultures so that he may not be caught within the limitations of his own" (xiv).

Works Cited and Consulted

Beddow, Michael. Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus. Cambridge: Cambridge, 1994.

Carnegy, Patrick. Faust as Musician: A Study of Thomas Mann's Novel Doctor Faustus. London: Chatto & Windus, 1973.

Guerin, Wilfred L., Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, Jeanne C. Reesman, John R. Willingham. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.

Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus. Ed. Sylvan Barnet. New York: Signet Classic, 1969.

Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.

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