The Role of Helen of Troy in Doctor Faustus
To adequately describe the role that Helen plays in Doctor Faustus, it is necessary not only to look at the scene in which she features, but also all the instances that Faustus takes some form of pleasure from physical and sensual things. We need to do this because this is what Helen is symbolic of; she represents the attractive nature of evil in addition to the depths of depravity that Faustus has fallen to.
It is fair to say that Faustus represents the quintessential renaissance man - it is his thirst for knowledge that drives him into his pact with Mephastophilis, indeed it is the Evil Angel that best summarises this:
Go forward, Faustus, in the famous art,
Wherein all
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Scene 5, lines 139-141
This marks the descent of Faustus from the intellectual seeking pleasures of the mind, to the hedonist seeking more sensual pleasures.
The appearance of Helen not only represents the fall from high minded intellectualism, but also the seduction of the classical, pagan, world. Faustus' desire to return to the ancient world is represented by not only Helen, the most beautiful woman that the ancient world produced, but also by the presence of the scholars. Classical Greece is supposed to be a time of great thinkers, plays and writers, so Faustus desires to go to this time. Helen's arrival is attended by the scholars, people of learning, who, by their dumb-foundedness, show the beauty of Helen:
Since we have seen the pride of Nature's works,
And only paragon of excellence,
Let us depart; and for this glorious deed
Happy and lest be Faustus evermore.
Scene 12, lines 21-24
It is the somewhat tame verse that these scholars supply that shows that the beauty that Helen represents is beyond mortal comprehension - her beauty, and what that beauty represent, are far more serious than Faustus gives them credit for. Indeed, when the scholars ask to see Helen, Faustus treats it as if it were just another conjuring trick, as was summoning Alexander the Great. This is, however, no ordinary conjuring trick; it
As Helen said “Have you a favorite mortal man there too?”, she regarded Aphrodite as the embodiment of sexual desire, implying that Aphrodite was trying to use her immortal power of lust to enslave Helen as the sex partner of Paris. Holding the one cardinal idea that she is not supposed to be a sex slave, Helen used her words to punch Aphrodite right in the face, as she replied “Is that why you beckon here beside me now with all the immortal cunning in your heart?” But with the infuriated reply “Don’t provoke me — wretched, headstrong girl! Or in my immortal rage I may just toss you over, hate you as I adore you now…”, Aphrodite had implied that she could either love or hate Helen. More importantly, Aphrodite also noted that if Helen chose to be hated, then Aphrodite as an immortal could use her power to make other people hate Helen, as she said “withering hate from both sides at once… then your fate can tread you down to dust!” This had really left Helen with a great shock, as she could not afford the consequence of being hated by both the immortals and mortals. So as a result, she had no choice but to obey Aphrodite and return to Paris, failing to establish her agency. Bear in mind that Helen was the daughter of Zeus and she got such treatment, it could be even worse for other
They fought for Helen as if she was an object in which they had to have as their property. This also shows what role a woman’s beauty can have in a Greek man’s life.
Read the following passage from Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Discuss how the passage contributes to the portrayal of Faustus as a
In the beginning of the play, Dr. Faustus dismisses his previous education as unfulfilling and makes a point to reject Divinity. This abhorrence of
Helen displays her flirtatious attitude to Hector, however it could also be inferred that she is unsatisfied with Paris and Menelaus. During her argument with Aphrodite, she claims she does not want to be looked at poorly by the Trojans for serving Paris is bed. This shows a sudden desire to be socially accepted and looked beyond just her beauty or as a nuisance by the Trojans.
Christopher Marlowe's play, Dr. Faustus, is the story of the struggle of one man who is battling with himself over what he values most in life, and to what extent he will go to obtain what he desires. The battles over the control of one's ego and what a person values in their life are the two underlying struggles in this work. Faustus is a very educated and high member of society, but he was born in a lower class and has struggled all his life to be a wealthy person. He attains this opportunity to become wealthy when he learns how to call upon Satan, and he makes a deal with the devil to attain all the riches in life for his soul. Through out the play Faustus
I think that this play is an example of a damning folly. The reason behind that is that Faustus is not a good guy. It is also a damned folly because he sold his soul to the Devil and that is not a good thing at all. I think that this play is kind of confusing as well. Faustus said that he could not take it anymore and so he decided to sell his soul to the Devil. I do not think that was good of him to do so. He also said that he would do anything to stay with the Devil. I think that he should have made a better decision when it came to his life. This play was to have specific things about certain things. I do not know what else to think about. I think that Faustus is also a romantic person. The reason behind that I because he was asking
There are two stories which one can analyze and put into comparison, that being the stories of the mighty Beowulf and that of the arrogant Doctor Faustus. In Beowulf a story is told from the view of a warrior becoming a hero and displaying amazing feats. While in Christopher Marlowe “Doctor Faustus”, he is recognized as an ambitious self- centered individual with an eager sensation to learn more knowledge of the Arts. He decided to takes his learning a step further and ultimately becomes his main wrongdoing for his entire life. By reviewing the text of both tales, there are a set of both similarities and differences able to be made between Beowulf and Faustus.
All female mortals in the tale of the Odyssey seem subservient and a source of weakness, but are underratedly clever and deceptive and control the men around them. The strong and adventurous men in Homer’s poem are the ones first thought of as the source of power. But whether it is as large and bold as starting a war like Helen, or as quiet and tricky and playing with men’s emotions like Penelope, the women have a great deal of supremacy. Although Penelope is portrayed as sorrowful and pitiful character, she leads the suitors on enough to keep their hopes up, with no intention to fulfill any promises of love or sex.
Doctor Faustus) , she is brought up in a story of the Trojan war during a feast Telemachos attends when searching of news of his father. King Menelaos states while hiding in the trojan horse, “Then you came out there...Three times you went around the hollowed ambush… making your voice like that of all the wives of all the Argives… Odysseus held us back, although we were eager to go.”(4.240-250) Helen used her beauty to present danger, something that would have costed the war had Odysseus not resisted her pull. She falls into the role of the dangerous seductress, a theme Homer shows with a lot of his female characters in The Odyssey. Helen in particular shows how the dangers of women almost brought the fall of
the many constraints to which she is subject.Helen appears in only six encounters in the Iliad, with a different audience
In this paper, it will discuss the theme of Faust and Duc de Nemours: sagas of disillusionment and thwarted ambitions in both novels Faust, Part 1 and The Princesse de Cleves. At first glance one must be able to understand what disillusionment and thwarted ambition is. When one talks about disillusionment, it is referred to as a feeling of disappointment resulting from the discovery that something is not good as one believed it to be. Thwarted ambition refers to the opposition or prevention from something we desire or want to achieve. The stories of Faust and Nemours play a significant role in coming to terms with this theme because of their many attempts at happiness and irrational actions. Faust is disillusioned and demoralized
who seeks pleasure so much that he sells his soul to the devil for a
II. Doctor Faustus is contrived of the following: Faustus, a man well learned in medicine and other knowledge’s known to man is dissatisfied with where his life is heading so he calls upon the Lucifer and His accomplice, Mephistophilis, to teach him the ways of magic. They agree to be his tutors only if Faustus will sell his soul to Lucifer and be His after 20 years. Faustus agrees and goes through trying times where he is unsure of his decision and considers repenting but then is persuaded again and again that the magic powers of the Devil are far more
The play is a human tragedy for not only is Faustus tragically constituted in his boundless ambitions but, at the same time, the play questions the effectiveness of the cultural aspirations that shape his ambitions. Consequently, the play provides a complex interaction between the human dimensions of the dramatic character and the ambiguities and ambivalences of the cultural situation the character is placed in.