Dr. Faustus By Christopher Marlowe

Thesis: Goodman Brown’s state of mind between good and evil could have been caused by a combination of Puritanism obsession with the devil, its resemblance, and other prejudices such as ergot poisoning.

The children In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter play a major role in the Puritan society. With their honest opinions of Hester and Pearl, the children are presented as more perceptive and more honest than adults. Due to their innocence, children are capable of expressing themselves without constraints; there are no laws or regulations that they are bounded by. As an adolescent go through the stages of life and grow older, they begin to be more conscious of the how they act as they are more aware of society and the things that are occurring in the world, creating a filter for their actions. When they remain as the children, on the other hand, are adventurous; they are still exploring the universe that seems to fill with mysteries that are bound to be solved. They tend to attach to the truth and they are not afraid to speak it freely. Children differ from adults in their potential for expressing these perceptions. With their obliviousness to the things that are actually going on around the town, children therefore react differently compared to the adults, who are more knowledgeable. Perceived to be immature, young children are presented as more perceptive and more honest than adults due to their innocence, how they are unaware of the reality and the crimes that are presented in society by the adults enables them to be blithe and not afraid of saying what they feel like. Due to their naivety, when they express what they perceive to be true, they do not get punished,

In William Shakespeare’s, Romeo and Juliet, there are numerous of dramatic purposes that the characters serve in the building of the story. One major character that stands out is Friar Laurence who is a wise and holy man respected by everyone in Verona. However, you should not let that presentation of him fool you. There are a variety of times Friar Laurence has committed sins of dishonesty and deception. The few but many dramatic purposes Friar Laurence has in Romeo and Juliet include: being a mastermind with medicine, peacemaker, and the main reason for Romeo and Juliet’s death.

A child stealing candy from the bowl when she knows she isn’t supposed to; a drug addict coming forward to admit he has a terrible plight; a student cheating on their final exam after choosing not to study; a young girl admitting to pushing another child down on the playground; a husband cheating on his wife. Some stories of these subjects are known by all, able to heal and move forward with a clear conscience, while others are sheltered within them, left to fester and grow in destructiveness. All of these examples portray a subject either bound, or given peace by the truth of something depending on whether it is concealed or uncovered. The power and significance of exposed/hidden truth is something utilized in writing all the time when an

Nathaniel Hawthorne was quite progressive for his time and his novel, The Scarlet Letter, is a wonderful example of this. Before he married his wife, Sophia Peabody, Hawthorne joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist group (Nathaniel Hawthorne). According to Merriam Webster, transcendentalism is, “a philosophy that emphasizes the a priori conditions of knowledge and experience or the unknowable character of ultimate reality or that emphasizes the transcendent as the fundamental reality” (“Transcendentalism”). Put simply, transcendentalists thought that intuition and knowledge of ourselves is more a more important reality than the scientific, sensual reality. As a group, these people held very progressive views on women’s rights, education,

Teens in the stage of growing up needs the trust and support from their family and friends to be able to survive in this world. Most teens are like puppets who become the person that their parents want them to be, but as they mature into adults, they have their own desires and ways of thinking, which enable them to break free from the puppet control and become who they really are. In the play Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, the playwright used the Nurse, Lord Capulet, and Friar Lawrence to show how taming the wills of the teens and forcing their wishes upon them could turn the play Romeo and Juliet into a tragic love story.

Imagine your inner soul trying to rip out of your body all tell people of all of your sins. Also, imagine your sin is floating around letting you see others sin. Finally, you are a product of sin, your life is full of evil, and torture. Until your sin is revealed by your unknown father. These events happened to the character in Nathaniel Hawthorns The Scarlett Letter. Their sin affects the way that these characters live. The Nature of sin can bring the worst and best out of people. Whether it is hidden or know, the sin can bring good and bad things to the people who have sinned. Dimmsdale’s sin was locked inside him, as he ended up breaking down and decoding sick, and then died after revealing his sin. Hester’s sin was know and she

The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne was set during the 1600s in a New England town during what is now known as the Puritan past of America. In the novel, the Puritan religion was not only observed but criticized as well. During this time, the Puritans were an extremely religious group of Protestants that were known for their intolerance of other religions and their strict guidelines for a righteous lifestyle that often lead to violence or cruel forms of punishment. Nathaniel Hawthorne is a perfect portrayal of a Puritan historian because he himself was born as a Puritan and witnessed first-hand the extreme pressures associated with the Puritan religion to include arguments about the Puritan society and the treatment endured within the religion. Although The Scarlet Letter was set in the 1600s, the novel was written in the 1840s and dealt with issues during the Antebellum Era specifically when it came to the Women’s Movement and the Second Great Awakening.

apparent in Doctor Faustus in the scenes with the Pope. The Renaissance was also a time

In Christopher Marlowe’s play, Doctor Faustus, the idea of repentance is a reoccurring theme with the title character. Faustus is often urged by others to repent his decision to sell his soul to the devil, but in the end he suffers eternal damnation. Faustus was resigned to this fate because he lacked the belief in his soul of God. He was once a moral and devout man, but greed led him to sin.

Just as each Devil’s motivation for enlarging his kingdom varies, so do their relationships with God. This differing in goals also reflects the change in humanity’s religious pursuits between the time periods. When Faustus tries to seek God’s forgiveness, Lucifer expresses his displeasure when he says “We come to tell thee thou dost injure us […] Thou shouldst not think of God: think of the Devil” (Marlow 5). This Devil’s dislike for God is evident in his jealousy over Faustus’s pledge of allegiance. He can’t seem to stand it when Faustus talks about Paradise or creation. This ultimatum to only think of the Devil, as well as the previously identified thirst for power, alludes to some sort of conflict between the Devil and God in Dr. Faustus.

The Scarlet Letter (Figure 1) painted by Hugues Merle in 1861 depicts the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne. Hester Prynne, an adulteress forced to wear the letter “A” upon her bosom forever, becomes an outcast from the community with her daughter, Pearl. Merle was often known for painting scenes of mothers and children. He illustrates the scene of Hester and Pearl sitting in the town square as part of her punishment. The townspeople walk by, pointing fingers and making shrewd remarks. Merle’s painting, his biography, and other renditions of the novel and painting will be later discussed.

who seeks pleasure so much that he sells his soul to the devil for a

Mankind has always struggled with faith, and it always will. The human mind is not easily persuaded to blindly believe, and the concept of God or gods, since their conception, has always relied upon belief. The importance of faith in relation to one’s God was extremely relevant when Christopher Marlowe composed Doctor Faustus in the 16th century, for the waning influence of the Catholic Church and the general dispersion of religion had caused a drop in religious fidelity. In his tragedy “Doctor Faustus”, Marlowe shows the main character denying opportunities to repent not because of ignorance, but because of an inability to fully trust in a benevolent divinity, even in a circumstance where man does not question the existence of heaven or hell.

In a traditional tragic play, as pioneered by the Greeks and imitated by William Shakespeare, a hero is brought low by an error or series of errors and realizes his or her mistake only when it is too late. In Christianity, though, as long as a person is alive, there is always the possibility of repentance—so if a tragic hero realizes his or her mistake, he or she may still be saved even at the last moment. But though Faustus, in the final, wrenching scene, comes to his senses and begs for a chance to repent, it is too