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Faust: Summary & Analysis (continued V)

Summary and analysis of Faust from Part 2: Act 2: A Broad Landscape to Part 2: Act 5: Mountain Gorges

PART 2: ACT 5: A BROAD LANDSCAPE

Summary

At this point, apparently, Faust has given half a lifetime to his project of driving back the ocean. A traveler enters a broad natural landscape, intent on visiting old acquaintances who live in a nearby cottage. He gives a shout and a little, very old woman called Baucis enters, along with her husband Philemon. Philemon tells the traveler that the godless Faust has succeeded in creating paradise-like new lands on the Empire’s coast, as well as a palace built not without human sacrifice and torment. The three sit for a meal in the couple’s garden, where Baucis goes on to say that Faust covets their cottage. He’s even offered an estate in new land, adds Philemon. But the pious couple refuses to trade.

Analysis

After securing his fiefdom (the lands he rules as a feudal lord under the Emperor), Faust has now succeeded in creating new lands. More than that, he has learned how to rule so that his kingdom thrives—in stark contrast to the Emperor. But Faust is also a harsh ruler, for in building his palace he caused much human suffering. In keeping their estate, Baucis and Philemon are setting a limit to the expanse of Faust’s kingdom. Faust never accepts limits gracefully, however, and that will be the case here, too. Baucis and Philemon are characters from Greek mythology, a pious couple rewarded for being hospitable to a god in disguise.

PART 2: ACT 5: FAUST’S PALACE (BEFORE THE PALACE)

Summary

Faust, now a very old man, a hundred years old, paces in a large formal garden outside of his palace. He is obsessed by the fact that he has not acquired Baucis and Philemon’s cottage, or the nearby linden grove and chapel. He cannot bear the thought of shade that’s not his own. He wishes he were far away.

Analysis

He was unable to transcend the world, and Faust is likewise frustrated in attempting to control the world. The thought that he possesses only a part and not the whole agonizes him.

Summary

A splendid, richly laden vessel appears in a nearby canal, bearing Mephistopheles and the Three Mighty Men. They disembark, and the vessel’s cargo is unloaded. The devil praises the trinity of war, trade, and piracy by which such treasures are acquired, and says that might makes right.

Analysis

Faust’s kingdom is prosperous in large part due to its ruler’s bad alliance with the devil, who does not create value but violently steals what’s of value from others. As long as Faust relies on the devil, his efforts will be tainted.

Summary

Despite this success, Faust looks grave and somber. He desires what is not his—the cottage, the grove, and the chapel—so that he can build a panoramic platform from which he can survey in one inclusive look the masterpiece he has created. So it is that, tired of being just, he orders Mephistopheles and the Three Mighty Men to evict Baucis and Philemon from their cottage. The devil says that Faust’s will shall be done—they’ll just carry off the couple, set them down, and give them a nice new place—and he adds to the audience that this is an old story, ever the same.

Analysis

Faust’s idea of earthly success here has to do with absolute control. Faust is not a brutal tyrant, however, as he wants to be just. It’s just that the autonomy of Baucis and Philemon is too much for him. He orders that the couple be evicted and their land seized—but peacefully, and with due compensation. He should know better, though, than to send the devil out on a peaceful errand.

PART 2: ACT 5: FAUST’S PALACE (FAUST ON THE BALCONY)

Summary

The keeper of the palace watchtower is looking out over Faust’s realm while night falls, singing all the while. Suddenly he sees, through a grove of lindens, sparks explode and a fire swirl in rage. He worries that Baucis and Philemon will be victims of the smoke. The fire destroys the grove and the nearby chapel. What was once a joy to see, says the keeper, now belongs to the past.

Analysis

The devil and the Mighty Men barbarously set fire to Baucis and Philemon’s property, against Faust’s specific orders. Like Helen and Euphorion, the quiet domestic joy of this couple consequently vanishes from the earth. The devil ruins all he touches.

Summary

Faust appears upon the balcony, having heard the watchman’s sad song. His inmost being is offended to see the linden grove burn. Mephistopheles and the Three Mighty Men enter. The devil excuses the bit of trouble they’ve all caused, but says Baucis and Philemon were unresponsive to requests and threats. They didn’t suffer much, he says: they simply died of fright. A traveler was with them, and the devil and Mighty Men knocked him flat, leaving him to die in the fire.

Analysis

The devil is flippant about having just murdered three people, for to him it’s just a prank to relieve the boredom of existence. However, this needless act of violence only plants in Faust’s heart the desire to build a more just and prosperous society—and it is this desire that saves him from damnation. The devil ruins himself here.

Summary

Faust is outraged and curses this senseless act of savagery. Mephistopheles and the Three Mighty Men simply respond that people should gracefully obey the commands of Force. All four exit. Alone, Faust watches the fire die down, and notices strange shadows drifting toward him.

Analysis

Faust’s outrage with the devil’s violence is also outrage with himself, for relying on the devil’s services. He does not want to rule by force but with justice. The four shadows are the figures of Want, Debt, Distress, and Care.

PART 2: ACT 5: FAUST’S PALACE (WITHIN THE PALACE)

Summary

At the last stroke of midnight, four gray women appear in the courtyard of Faust’s palace: Want, Debt, Distress, and Care. The first three cannot get in, for the palace’s owner is wealthy, but Care succeeds in entering though the keyhole. Outside, her sisters see the clouds gather and the stars disappear. Far away their brother is coming—Death.

Analysis

These four gray women personify the afflictions for which they’re named. Faust is afflicted only by Care, and so only this sister gains entrance to Faust’s palace. Death is approaching in the distance, coming to claim the old dissatisfied Faust at last.

Summary

Within the palace, Faust murmurs to himself that he saw four gray women come but only three depart, and he heard them speak the name of Death. He states that he is not free, and wishes he could rid his path of magic. Care enters. Faust urges himself not to use an incantation to drive her away. He tells her that there is no seeing into the Beyond, and that only fools imagine themselves to be godlike. Men, he says, should satisfy themselves with the earth, life’s pains and joys.

Analysis

Faust wishes to free himself from his reliance on magic. He takes the first step in realizing this wish when he refuses to cast out Care with a spell. He has avoided Care his whole life, but her presence now leads him to introspection. He no longer desires to be a god, only to be wholly human, a part of the world that knows and honors its place in the whole.

Summary

Care responds that once she possesses a man all is darkness in his heart, and he ceases to rejoice in his treasures. Faust orders her to leave and asserts that he shall never acknowledge her power. Care breathes on Faust, blinding him, and then vanishes. Though darkness presses in about him, Faust senses in his inner being a radiant light. He resolves to fulfill his plans. He orders his workmen to rise and make his designs a reality.

Analysis

Faust refuses to surrender to Care, who would lead him into mere frustration and worry. He is victorious over her, signaled by her vanishing, but now that he is unprotected by magic, Faust is vulnerable to the effects of old age like blindness. Nonetheless, his sense of purpose is strong, and he resolves to realize his Utopian dream.

PART 2: ACT 5: FAUST’S PALACE (THE LARGE OUTER COURTYARD)

Summary

The courtyard of Faust’s palace is now lit by torches. Mephistopheles enters, leading a group of Lemures, spirits of the restless or malignant dead in Roman mythology. The devil sets them to digging a grave for Faust, for his death is near, though Faust himself thinks that the Lemures are working on a canal in accordance with his plans.

Analysis

Faust confuses the sounds of his grave’s construction with his canal being built, but this confusion expresses a deep reality—that Faust will achieve transcendence and meaning only after his death, when his body is in the grave and his soul is in heaven.

Summary

Faust dreams of draining a contaminating marsh as his crowning last achievement, so that millions of people can live, not safe but free to work nonetheless in green and fertile fields. He wishes that he could see the people’s teeming life, and their autonomy on unencumbered soil. If this ever came to pass, he’d say of the moment: “Tarry a while, you are so fair” (the words in his contract with Mephistopheles, which, when spoken of a moment experienced, forfeit Faust’s soul to the devil). Thus envisioning the heights of happiness, he enjoys now his highest moment.

Analysis

Faust’s final vision is of the Utopia he hopes to build on earth. It is a vision not of domination but of justice, prosperity, and love. Although Faust is never satisfied, and dies before he can realize his vision, he nonetheless learns at last to find happiness in desire and progress, not just accomplishment. He never gives into bodily pleasure and idleness either, but is always striving, and this striving saves his soul.

Summary

Faust falls back dead and is caught by the Lemures, who lay him on the ground. Mephistopheles says that nothing satisfies Faust, and so he just keeps chasing shapes that always change. But time triumphs, and now Faust is dead. The devil says that the past and nothingness are the same thing, and that he’d prefer Eternal Emptiness to creation.

Analysis

The devil’s comment that nothing satisfies Faust seems to be a concession that he, the devil, has not won Faust’s soul by the terms of their contract. Being the devil, he attempts to take Faust’s soul nonetheless.

Summary

The Lemures begin to bury the body of Faust. Mephistopheles says that if the dead man’s soul tries to rise, he’ll show his blood-signed contract to it, even though, he sighs, there are so many ways to cheat the devil of his souls these days. Mephistopheles conjures devils to assist him in arresting Faust’s soul, and he orders them to bring with them the hideous mouth of hell, which opens its jaws to the Flaming City.

Analysis

The devil has not fairly won Faust’s soul, and so he must resort to force in securing it for himself. The Flaming City of hell is a sharp contrast to Faust’s Utopian vision, one that emphasizes the devil’s commitment to negativity.

Summary

The glorious host of heaven enters from above, singing of forgiveness. Mephistopheles hates their nasty, androgynous songs, for they have cost him many souls. Angels begin to scatter roses about, making the devils flinch. In agitation Mephistopheles orders his minions to shut their mouths and noses, but it is too late, and their strength and valor is giving out. He curses them while they stand on their heads, cartwheel about, and plunge back into hell.

Analysis

Mephistopheles can win human battles, but illusions cannot help him now against the angels, even though armed only with roses. His minions’ panic and flight suggests that the devil is about as competent a ruler as the Emperor is, despite his love of domination. The roses represent mercy and are contrasted with hellfire.

Summary

Mephistopheles fights off the roses that drift about him. His head is on fire and his body burns. He is surprised, however, to find the angels not an offensive sight, as he used to, but instead to be lovely, even attractive. He wants to kiss them like a lover, and suggests that they could wear less clothing, instead of these long prudish robes. He lecherously admires the angels’ buttocks. These rascals really whet his appetite, he says.

Analysis

The roses would stimulate true love in anyone but the devil himself. The closest thing he can feel to love is lust, and so he begins, outrageously, to sexually pine for the angels. In his sensual madness, however, the devil ignores the fact that Faust’s soul is escaping him. He ignores the whole situation and is distracted by only a part.

Summary

The angels rise, bearing off the immortal part of Faust from his gravesite. Mephistopheles begins to regain his composure. Even though he finds himself afflicted with boils now, he is pleased to find the love-illusion dissipated and himself still every inch a devil. The angels have succeeded, however, in robbing him of a great treasure: Faust’s noble soul. Mephistopheles calls himself a bungler who’s wasted a great investment all over some erotic silliness. The very height of folly defeated the devil himself.

Analysis

Faust’s grave is not a prison, but a doorway to salvation. Thanks to divine love, the great man finally leaves the world that so limited and frustrated him. The devil, in a way, has ultimately succeeded only in spurring Faust on, teaching him to learn his limits and how best to work within them. Willing Faust’s damnation, Mephistopheles has instead contributed to Faust’s salvation.

PART 2: ACT 5: MOUNTAIN GORGES

Summary

Amid gorges, forests, and rocks, where religious recluses live, Fathers of the Church (including Pater Ecstaticus, Pater Profundus, and Pater Seraphicus) sing about love purified of trivialities, and how Love gives all things their form and sustains them such that nature is expressive of the Divine. A cloud of innocent children who died at birth floats through the forest, happy with existence—but Pater Seraphicus instructs them to fly to a higher sphere.

Analysis

Fittingly, Faust’s last glimpse of earth is of nature at its most sublime. Indeed, the Fathers of the Church suggest that nature itself is really the language through which God expresses his infinite love. The cloud of children recalls Faust’s two dead children, by Gretchen and Helen, and suggests that at least his child by Gretchen is in a better place.

Summary

Angels hover in the upper sky, bearing with them the immortal part of Faust. They sing of how this worthy member of the spirit world was rescued from the devil. Younger angels exult in how their falling roses drove away hell’s legions. More perfect angels find it distasteful to bear Faust’s soul in its current state, for it is too intermixed with the base elements of earth. Only Eternal Love can disunite two natures conjoined in a single entity like this, they say.

Analysis

Faust’s restlessness saved him. He was never satisfied with mere idle pleasures, but always wanted to improve himself and, in the end, to improve his world. He was a far from perfect man, suggested by his contamination here with base elements, but he did strive to harmonize with the whole of the world.

Summary

In the highest and neatest cell in the mountainside, Doctor Marianus, a saint, sees heaven’s High Queen, the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is surrounded by other women ascending upward, penitents anxious for mercy. Three sinful women who have achieved redemption—Magna Peccatrix (the Biblical Mary Magdalene), Mulier Samaritana (the Biblical Woman of Samaria), and Maria Aegyptica (a saint)— all ask the High Queen that another penitent (Gretchen) also be granted her forgiveness.

Analysis

Mary completes the trinity of women important in Faust’s spiritual journey, along with Gretchen and Helen. She is a figure of mercy and divine forgiveness. Earlier, Gretchen prays to Mary after being corrupted by Faust. Now, other penitent women are praying on behalf of Gretchen’s soul, which also achieves salvation.

Summary

The penitent (Gretchen) clings to the Blessed Virgin Mary, asking her to look down on Faust, the love of her, Gretchen’s, youth, who has now returned to grace. The penitent watches as Faust’s soul frees itself from all earthly bonds with youthful vigor. Mary instructs the penitent to rise to higher spheres, where Faust, sensing her presence, will follow.

Analysis

Faust has achieved transcendence, not through his own actions but through divine love. He still needs guidance, however. Mary instructs Gretchen’s soul to lead Faust’s to eternity, an image that contrasts with the tragic image of Euphorion chasing the chorus girl into the sky and falling to his death.

Summary

A mystical chorus concludes the drama. They sing that all that is transitory is only a symbol. What is impossible on earth is done in heaven, and what can’t be described below here is a fact. They conclude that Eternal Woman shows us how to rise on high. Thus ends Goethe’s Faust.

Analysis

The chorus declares that by acting within our natural limits we harmonize with the divine, completing the theme of parts, wholes, and limits. Women have always aroused in Faust love and a desire for the ideal, and through the chorus Goethe suggests that this is universally the case (for men at least). Despite all his dealings with the devil, Faust is ultimately saved by his constant striving and intellectual restlessness.