Faust, in all his tragedy

In his work All That is Solid Melts into Air, Berman Marshall talks about the persona of Faust. He points out there has been many versions of the character of Faust through the ages, verging from the serious and tragic, to the funny and absurd. However the one he states ‘surpasses all others in richness and depth of its historical perspective, in its moral imagination, its political intelligence, its psychological sensitivity and insight’’ is Goethe’s Faust.

Goethe spent most of his life writing Faust, so as Faust was going through his different experiences and finding/understanding himself through his different ‘stages’, so was Goethe. Through the character of Faust we are to understand that there is constant growth in man because of his wants, and his willingness of how much he will do to get what he desires. What Faust wants above all, in Goethe version, is development itself, all of it, good and bad. It is the devil that allows him to be able to change. Through his transformations, Faust reflects on the idea of change and the need for the new. He starts coming up with new possibilities, to create a better, ‘perfect’ world.  There is a need, a craving that builds within him to continue to experience new things, to try and reach a higher state of being. Once he has started, he can’t stop, gets addicted. It is once he is ‘full’ in his own progression, that that he is ready to develop for others. He has ‘filled’ himself with the maximum he can give himself that he continues with the rest of humanity. Faust want to improve the world is full of good intentions: “he is not building for his own short-term profit but rather for the long-range future of mankind”. However, to him the new can only come by destroying the old.  Faust believes it to the point that he destroys everything that gets in his way. He is unable to see what is really helpful, useful to be able to progress.

It through analysing this text that we see that even if progress in necessary it always brings negative consequences as well a positive ones. It can bring destruction as well as a new better world. There is a need for personal growth before any possible greater development. There is also a need to something to aspire to. However this perfect world, this ‘utopia’ that we should all crave, we should know it can never be achieved as well. Everyone’s ‘utopia’ is different, which makes no one achievable. It is only by wanting it but knowing that that it is unachievable that you’re willing to do as much as you can to develop it, without trying to destroy everything else in the process. With this thought, you find another, maybe less good solution to the problems but a solution where there is no need for any great ‘casualty’ for the benefit of the ‘greater good’. In my previous entry, about the Beat Generation, I had written that in each new generation there is a need to go against its predecessor for progress to happen. After reading this text, I am even more convinced by it. However I am as equally convince that challenge does not mean destruction, bloodshed, etc.