OTTO958

Summary

Margarete and Faust enter Martha’s garden together. Margarete wants to know her lover’s religion, but he hushes her. He tells her that he’d die for those dear to him, and implies that he does not believe in faith or church. This upsets her. Faust says that he feels the immensity and blessedness of the universe, and knows this feeling to be everything. He says that names for it, like God, are just sound and smoke. Margarete finds this acceptable, because her priest says something similar but in slightly different words. Faust says that all hearts everywhere say this in their own language.

Analysis

Faust’s spiritual sense comes from his recognition of the universe’s immensity, which is grand to consider and stirs intense feelings within him. It is this feeling, moreover, which Faust boldly declares to be the what words like “God” and “love” are actually referring to. This is a very Romantic conception—that what we call God is actually something inside of us. It’s also an idea that evolves in the drama as Faust experiences more.

Summary

There’s a hitch, however, for Margarete. Faust doesn’t hold to Christianity, and she’s distressed by the company he keeps. She finds Mephistopheles repellent and dreadful, with his expression half of mockery, half of anger. He seems to have no interests and to be incapable of love. Faust praises Margarete for her angelic intuitions. She goes on: when Mephistopheles is around, she thinks she no longer loves Faust.

Analysis

Margarete is being rather tolerant in overlooking Faust’s neglect of society’s religious customs and conventions. Unlike Martha, who flirts with the devil, Margarete perceptively senses that Mephistopheles is dangerous. She is the only character spiritually sensitive enough in the play to be repulsed the devil at first sight.

Summary

Margarete announces that she must go. Faust asks when he will be able to stay and rest upon her heart and join souls with her. Margarete is worried, however, that her mother might catch the two in the act of lovemaking. Faust offers her a vial of potion. He tells her that three drops in anything her mother drinks will harmlessly put her into a deep sleep. Margarete says that whenever she looks upon her lover something makes her do whatever he desires. She exits.

Analysis

We later learn that this vial of potion contains a poison, which ends up killing Margarete’s mother. It is unclear whether Faust knows this now, or whether he too is being deceived by Mephistopheles into thinking the potion is safe, but the latter is more likely to be true. Margarete trusts Faust unconditionally, and she is too innocent to even be suspicious of the potion.

Summary

Mephistopheles enters. He has been watching the conversation and heard Faust lecturing about God and religion, and he hopes this will do Faust some good. Faust calls the devil a monster, incapable of understanding how such a loyal loving soul as Margarete suffers in regarding her lover (Faust) as a lost soul. Mephistopheles calls Faust a sensualist, and relishes Margarete’s sense that he is in fact the very devil. He is very excited for what will happen in the coming night.

Analysis

Faust says that words are empty, which is perhaps why the devil mocks him for saying so many words about subjects of which the scholar is, by his own admission, ignorant. Margarete quite rightly worries about the fate of Faust’s soul. Stirred by lust, he goes out to seduce her after this scene, even knowing that the satisfaction of his lust means Gretchen’s doom.

Summary

Gretchen and a girl named Lieschen are at the well with their pitchers. Lieschen gossips about a stuck-up girl named Barbara who was scandalously impregnated out of wedlock by a man who ran off. Gretchen pities Barbara, but Lieschen thinks the girl got what she deserved for not keeping busy and for violating social convention. She’ll learn to conform and do penance in her sinner’s smock, Lieschen says, and if she follows after the boy and marries him the village boys and girls will taunt and harass her.

Analysis

Between this scene and the last, Gretchen and Faust have sex—suggested by the image of filling jugs with water. Gretchen’s fate then parallels Barbara’s. Lieschen represents the petty cruelty of society, the ordinary people who are so spiritually deficient that they can’t understand or experience true love like Gretchen’s for Faust. They think that love is merely lust, and punish lovers accordingly.

Summary

After Lieschen exits, Gretchen walks home. She says that once she would have criticized a girl for doing wrong like Barbara. She would have worked herself up about the sins of others and declaimed them with sharp words. But now she’s prey to sin herself—and yet what brought her to sin was so good and so sweet!

Analysis

Love has opened Gretchen’s mind—she is less judgmental of other lovers—but sex has taken her innocence, at least in society’s opinion. This scene (what is so “good and sweet”) is the first hint we get that Gretchen is pregnant with Faust’s child.

Summary

In a niche in the wall there is a shrine with the image of the Mater Dolorosa, the Blessed Virgin Mary in her sorrows, surrounded by jars of flowers. Gretchen enters and places fresh flowers in the jars, then prays to Mary to have mercy on her in her distress. Racked by pain, Mary is raising her eyes to her son Jesus’s death. Only she can understand Gretchen’s pain, the sorrow that causes her to weep constantly. Gretchen says that the flowers she placed in the jars she watered with her own tears. She asks Mary to save her from shame and death.

Analysis

Gretchen feels guilty and seeks forgiveness for her sins. Mary is a figure of purity and innocence, and therefore represents what Gretchen was before she had sex, and what she hopes to be restored to through her penitence. As Marys’ son (Jesus) died, so too does Margarete’s. But Margarete kills her son, and so her story becomes a tragic parody of the Bible.

Summary

This scene is set in the street outside Gretchen’s house. Her brother Valentine, a soldier, enters. He recalls how his comrades used to get drunk and toast to pretty girls, while as he sat relaxed, unconcerned by their bragging talk, until he would ask if there was any girl who could compare with his own sister. The men would all agree that Gretchen was the flower of her sex. Now, however, Valentine fears that his sister’s honor has been compromised, and it maddens him to think how she’ll be talked about.

Analysis

By this point in the play, news of Margarete’s sex out of wedlock has spread around town, bringing shame on her and her family. It’s also quite likely that Margarete’s mother is dead by this point, poisoned by the sleeping potion Margarete gave her. Valentine is deeply invested in social and religious conventions.

Summary

Faust and Mephistopheles enter, and Valentine swears that if his sister’s lover is one of these two, then that man won’t escape alive. Faust is tranquilly ecstatic, while the devil is energetic, for Walpurgis Night is approaching. Faust wishes he had a gift for Margarete, but Mephistopheles tells him not to worry about it. The devil then sings a song (accompanying himself on a guitar he happens to have) about a woman named Kate, who loses her virginity to a rogue.

Analysis

The cerebral Faust is ecstatic to see Margarete again, and oblivious to how he’s played a part in bringing her to disgrace. The devil already knows about Margarete’s fall, and is surely relishing her suffering. Mephistopheles’ song about Kate parallels Margarete’s story, and the devil sings it with the sadistic purpose of enraging Valentine.

Summary

Valentine advances on Faust and Mephistopheles, cursing the devil’s song and breaking his guitar. He says it’s time to break some heads. The devil urges Faust to duel Valentine. Faust does so, drawing a sword he carries on his person; he is magically aided in parrying the soldier’s thrusts. Valentine feels his hand becoming numb, presumably as a result of magic, and the devil orders Faust to strike Valentine. Faust stabs him and Valentine falls in pain, mortally wounded. Cries of blood and murder are heard, and Faust and Mephistopheles escape into the night.

Analysis

Mephistopheles is like the playwright and theater director here, coordinating a duel and then scripting the fates of the duelists with malicious glee. Faust has no good reason to fight Valentine. He doesn’t even know who he is, it seems, and so we can only assume that Faust fights him because of the devil’s bad influence. He came to see Margarete, but instead he’s now killed her brother.

Summary

Martha, Gretchen, and some townspeople pour into the street, bringing light, and they discover that a brawl has taken place: the murderers have fled, and Valentine lies dying. Gretchen mourns for her brother, but he tells her in front of all the townspeople that since she is a whore now she should make that her occupation. Gretchen is appalled. Valentine says that he knows of her secret lover, claims that soon she will have many more, and foresees the time when all the townspeople will avoid her for being a slut as they would avoid an infection-breeding corpse. She’ll be damned as long as she’s on earth, he says.

Analysis

With misogyny and cruelty, Valentine condemns his sister’s behavior in the most unforgiving terms. Her life, he predicts, will become a living hell. He shortsightedly sees the world only through the lens of human society and convention, without recognizing the divine scheme of things—the whole of which humanity is just a part. Gretchen must be deeply shaken by her brother’s cruelty, which in part motivates her to kill her infant.

Summary

Martha tells Valentine to commend his soul to God in his dying hour, not to slander his sister. Valentine says that if only he could lay hands on the scrawny vile body of his sister and kill her, he’d hope to get abundant pardon for his sins. He demands that Gretchen not shed tears. He tells her that she gave his heart the fatal blow. Valentine dies.

Analysis

Martha is right to remind Valentine that human society isn’t everything, especially when one is about to leave it for the afterlife. But Valentine draws all of his life’s meaning from what happens on earth, hence his disturbed and disturbing last words.

Summary

About a year has passed since Valentine’s death. It is April 30th, Walpurgis Night—a dark celebration in the devil’s honor, held on Brocken’s summit in the Harz Mountains of central Germany. Faust and Mephistopheles are hiking in a labyrinth of valleys among welling and plunging waters, elements of nature that make Faust feel energetic and alive. He feels spring in his limbs, but the devil feels like it’s winter inside of him, and the red moon seems dreary. Mephistopheles summons a will-o’-the-wisp, a fairy-like flame, which guides the two to Brocken.

Analysis

At this point, Faust does not know what has befallen Gretchen—she has killed her infant and been imprisoned for it—and he is still in love with her. The devil’s boredom suggests that the year since Valentine’s death has been uneventful for him, perhaps because Faust has been too racked with guilt to take advantage of the devil’s services.

Summary

As they hike, Faust and Mephistopheles see many wonders, like the glowing, mist-surrounded palace of Mammon, a devil of wealth. A storm begins to rage and Mephistopheles instructs Faust to grab a nearby rock so he isn’t hurled to the bottom of the gorge. Witches riding on both broomsticks and pigs approach, all singing in a chorus, followed by warlocks. Mephistopheles, however, is master here, and he tells the mob to make way so that he and Faust can join a small club of naked witches who are accompanied by their veiled elders. It’s an ancient practice, he says, to make small worlds inside the great one.

Analysis

Wicked beings associated with bodily pleasure and blind appetite take to the mountains on Walpurgis Night. Among these are Mammon, the lewd, naked witches, and their pigs. The devil enjoys asserting his power over them, dominated by he is with ideas of mastery, slavery, and indebtedness. He has power here, in this demonic microcosm, but only here—in the macrocosm of the universe he is impotent to do anything but ultimately serve the divine will.

Summary

With his cloven foot, proof of his identity as the devil, Mephistopheles serves as spokesman for the tongue-tied Faust. First the two approach a group of old gentlemen who complain about how one can trust neither the Government nor the People, how nothing’s stable, and how impudent the young have become. Looking suddenly very old, the devil anticipates that the Judgment Day is near, when the physical world will be destroyed and the kingdom of heaven revealed. A witch tries to sell to the devil a variety of objects that have done great harm to people and society, but he tells her that she is behind the times and should sell not objects of the past, but novelties instead.

Analysis

The old gentlemen are bitter and cynical, which is perhaps a justifiable attitude based on the world they live in, but they, like the devil, are content to just talk negatively, never acting creatively to actually make the world a better place. Buying and selling, which draws the human mind away from higher pursuits, is associated with devilry throughout the play.

Summary

Faust hopes his mind remains intact, because he’s never seen such a lively carnival as this. Lilith, the first man Adam’s first wife—now a temptress and demon—is there along with dancing witches. Faust and Mephistopheles join in with them, with Faust singing about apples in a tree (a reference both to breasts and the fruit which Adam and Eve ate in Eden, leading to the Fall of Man from paradise), and the devil singing about a gaping hole in his tree, which suits him just fine. A mortal who doesn’t believe in ghosts approaches, and says it’s impossible that these supernatural beings should be dancing together—and yet here they are.

Analysis

Walpurgis Night is a highly sexualized nightmare, a fitting context for us to learn about the tragic aftermath of Faust’s love affair with Gretchen. Lilith, a demon who kills children, anticipates the revelation that Gretchen killed her infant. Lilith is contrasted with the Virgin Mary, whose son Jesus died to redeem humanity. Faust sings about the Tree of Knowledge, while the devil’s Tree is one of negation. Knowledge for him is just a pit, an absence.

Summary

Faust leaves his dance, disturbed when a red mouse leaps from his partner’s mouth. He also confides in Mephistopheles that he saw a deathly-pale lovely girl who looks like his own dear Gretchen (whose fate he has no knowledge of at this point). Leave that alone, the devil advises. He says it’s mere sorcery, a woman who appears to every man as the woman he loves. This sorceress, he points out, can also transport her head between her arms. The devil observes that Faust has not yet lost his craving for illusions, and urges him on to a theater he sees, where a play is scheduled to begin.

Analysis

That the deathly-pale girl can hold her head between her arms anticipates the fact that Gretchen is set to be executed by beheading the following morning. The devil intentionally withholds this news from Faust, however, perhaps because he worries that seeing Gretchen again alive might move Faust to change his life for the better. The devil instead tries to distract Faust with more illusions.

Summary

Faust and Mephistopheles watch the amateurish play, staged in the mountains, which presents the wedding of the king and queen of fairies, Oberon and Titania. During the wedding, insects and frogs play in an orchestra and a pageant of characters enters, each one commenting on the devilish event.

Analysis

This scene, the title of which alludes to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is in large part a satire of Goethe’s contemporaries. It serves as a transition from Walpurgis Night back into the action of the drama.

Summary

A young witch, for example, flaunts her healthy nudity. A weathervane praises the delightfulness of the gathering but says it will go on down to hell itself if the ground opens to swallow the wedding guests. Satiric verses announce Satan to be their father. One character, a dogmatist, concludes that the Devil must exist, since he is seeing devils. Another, a supernaturalist, infers from the existence of all these devils the existence of good spirits too. A skeptic says that Doubt is the Devil’s companion and so he, the skeptic, is right where he belongs. The orchestra winds down, clouds and mist grow brighter, and the pageant vanishes.

Analysis

The play is a sensual pageant, full of lustful devil-worshipping and high-flown nonsense. The dogmatist and the supernaturalist, for example, both make unsound arguments in proving the existence of the devil and good spirits, respectively. This is part of Goethe’s broader critique on reason: people often try to turn their feelings and prejudices into subtle arguments, when it would be more intellectually honest to have faith in the feeling itself.

Summary

Faust and Mephistopheles enter an expanse of open country under an overcast sky. Faust has learned that Gretchen is miserable and despairing in prison—for killing her newborn child, Faust’s own. Speaking in prose for the first time in the drama, Faust curses the devil for concealing this from him and for attempting to distract him with worthless entertainment. He demands that the devil save Gretchen, but the devil says he has no power over a society avenging bloodshed. Faust demands, then, to be taken to the prison himself, where with his own human hands he will free Gretchen. This agreed, the two exit.

Analysis

It is implied that since the last scene, Faust has searched for Gretchen and has discovered the doom his seduction condemned her to. Although he recognizes the evil effect of associating with Mephistopheles, Faust nonetheless insists on employing his services, as though the devil were a necessary evil at this point. The prose gives this scene a raw, visceral passion and explosive realism.

Summary

Dashing along on a black horse, Faust and Mephistopheles see a group of figures by a stone block. Neither knows what these figures are doing, exactly (at least the devil claims not to know): brewing or making something, soaring, bending and bowing, scattering things and consecrating them. Mephistopheles identifies the figures as witches and says that the two must hurry on.

Analysis

The stone block is the scaffold to be used the next day for Gretchen’s execution. Mephistopheles is evasive when answering Faust’s questions about the figures on the scaffolding, so some critics think they might not be witches at all, but instead good spirits preparing to save Gretchen’s soul.