Thence up he flew and on the tree of life

sample essay:

Compare/contrast

Satan and

Mephistopheles I) Similarities between Goethe's Mephistopheles and Milton's Satan

Milton's devil, the larger than life anti-hero of Paradise Lost, chastises the sun and possesses a paradoxical nature of darkness and light. He clearly creates a hell within himself. Goethe's devil, on the other hand, with his humorous self-deprecation and self-mockery, is a comically entertaining antagonist; there's even a portion of good will in Mephistopheles, who doesn't treat his victims badly. Apart from whether he really does always desire evil, often enough, Mephistopheles seems concerned to achieve truth. ​Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles share similarities and differences.

II) Milton's Satan is envious and vengeful, and wants to corrupt Adam and Eve, whereas Mephistopheles, who does not directly cause any actual harm to anyone, feels compassion for humanity and even possesses some good will.

a)​ Milton's “Adversary of God and Man” wanted to attain power and strove to compete against God, and he now feels anger towards “the Almighty Maker” for casting him out of Heaven. Satan feels belittled and antagonized by Heaven, and if God's objective is to bring forth good from evil, Satan's purpose as the antagonist will be the reverse: “ All good to me is lost;/ Evil, be thou my good” (4.109-110). Satan's overweening pride and misguided ambition caused his downfall; he acknowledges how he was “glorious once above they sphere,/ Till pride and worse ambition threw me down/ Warring in Heaven against Heaven's matchless king” (4.20-21).

→ The “Arch-Fiend” deplores his own existence and feels jealousy towards the father of the human race, Adam, who is God's new favorite: “ All hope excluded thus, behold, instead/ Of us outcast, exiled, his new delight/ Mankind created, and for him this world” (4.83-86).

→ Later in Book 9, Adam even warns Eve of venturing out alone as she might encounter a “malicious foe,/ Envying our happiness, and of his own/ Despairing, seeks to work us woe and shame/ By sly assault” (9.253-256).

→ As Satan watches the “conjugal attraction” between Adam and Eve, he feels jealousy and even gives them a dirty look: “Aside the Devil turned/ For envy, yet with jealous leer malign/ Eyed them askance” (4.502-504). Satan even admits that he dreams of “Honor and empire with revenge enlarged/ By conquering this new world compels me now” (4.390-391).

→ to Satan, the love scene between the pair becomes: “Sight hateful, sight tormenting! Thus these two/ Imparadised in one another's arms,/ The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill/ Of bliss on bliss, while I to Hell am thrust,/ Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire,/ Among our other torments not the least,/ Still unfulfilled with pain of longing pines” (4.504-511).

→ Satan wants to wreak vengeance against “the World's Great Author” indirectly through the weaker Adam and Eve; “Our grand Foe” wishes to conquer humanity. Sitting disguised as a bird of prey high on a perch where they cannot hear him, Satan tells the couple that his vengeance is a consequence of God's actions: “Ah! Gentle pair, ye little think how nigh/ Your change approaches, when all these delights/ Will vanish, and deliver ye to woe,/ More woe, the more your taste is now of joy” (4.366-370).

→ The “Antagonist of Heaven” has terrible intentions: “ Hell shall unfold,/ To entertain you two, her widest gates,/ And send forth all her kings; there will be room,/ Not like these narrow limits, to receive/ Your numerous offspring” (4.381-385). Unlike the narrow gate of salvation, the gates of Hell are wide.

b)​ Although Goethe's devil does also have malicious tendencies, he feels sympathetic towards humanity when he likens mankind to a grasshopper that leaps into the air with its long legs, but constantly lands back on the ground, implying that human endeavors result in continual defeat: “Man moves me to compassion, so wretched is his plight./ I have no wish to cause him further woe” (Prologue in Heaven 54-56). In fact, Mephistopheles not only feels compassion for Faust in particular, he wants to help the disillusioned scholar pursue pleasures and to gain life experience outside the academic realm.

→ Milton's “undaunted Fiend” epitomizes selfish egotism and wanted to supersede God and even surpass Him in power, but Mephistopheles – though at times destructive in purpose - is humble about his status and acknowledges his low rank when he tells the Lord: “You see me, too, as if I were a menial./ I cannot speak as nobly as your staff” (Prologue in Heaven 32-33). Goethe's devil does not intend to outdo God in greatness

→ Unlike Milton's Satan, Mephistopheles addresses the Lord with respect and even asks Him for permission to save Faust by helping the despondent scholar find earthly pleasures

→ When the rascal devil first glimpses Gretchen's room, he's impressed by its cleanliness

→ the devil acknowledges Gretchen's goodness and innocence when he first meets her, saying of her to himself: “You good, innocent child” (The Neighbor's House 144); when Gretchen has a moment of humility, Mephistopheles tells her that she does not need to feel shame before any king on earth

→ In a comical scene, Mephistopheles brings Faust to a drinking tavern where the devil teases the university students, then makes them think that they're consuming wine, which turns out to be fire (the devil conjured flames). This is just a practical joke, and students are not hurt (Auerbach's Keller 228)

→ although the devil encourages evil propensities, it is Faust who vows that both he and Gretchen will be destroyed, since he cannot overcome his desire and passion for her. He compares himself to a roaring torrent that will destroy Gretchen's calm existence: before he proceeds with his seduction, Faust realizes the gravity of the harm he will cause her and eloquently compares himself to a roaring waterfall (“cataract”) that will destroy everything in its violent course and thereby undermine her calm existence: “As, like the cataract, from rock to rock I foam,/ Raging with passion, toward the abyss?/ And nearby, she – with childlike blunt desires/ Inside her cottage on the Alpine leas/ And everything that she requires/ Was in her own small world at ease./ And I, whom the gods hate and mock,/ Was not satisfied/ That I seized the rock/ And smashed the mountainside./ Her – her peace I had to undermine./ You, hell, desired this sacrifice

upon your shrine./ Help, Devil, shorten this time of dread./ What must be done, come let it be./ Let her fate come shattering on my head,/ And let her perish now with me” (Wood and Cave 147-150)

→ Mephistopheles is both an accomplice and a facilitator but does not directly initiate criminal actions; it is actually the protagonist who brings about the death of Gretchen's mother, the murder of her brother Valentin, Gretchen's imprisonment for their baby's death in the dungeon before her death, and his abandonment of Gretchen as he pursues a life of debauchery

→ unlike Milton's Eve, Faust is the one who intentionally conjures spirits in his pursuit of transcendence and earthly pleasures

→ Faust has consistently sought an association with the devil; it is Faust who initially wishes to form a pact with the devil, who first insists that an agreement must wait until their next meeting (Study 237)

→ In fact, these tragedies are the results of Faust's actions, and at the end of Goethe's epic poem, when Mephistopheles asks Faust:” Who was it that plunged her into ruin? I or you?”, a remorseful Faust is silent and has no answer (Dismal Day 37).

→ Although the devil is a corrupting influence and lures Faust away on a provocative adventure in Walpurgis Night, resulting in Faust's abandonment of Gretchen in her time of extreme distress, Faust does not resist Mephistopheles' temptations

→ As a tempter figure, Mephistopheles at times advises restraint when Faust has wild provocative longings; Faust himself is a morally problematic character, and his immorality stems from his own will

III) Milton's Satan is an agent of damnation, whereas Mephistopheles is an agent of salvation.

a)​ Disguised as a bird of prey, Satan – the Arch Enemy” - flies into the Tree of Life in Eden where, ironically, he devises death for Adam and Eve upon first glimpsing the innocent pair: “ Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of Life,/ The middle tree and the highest tree there that grew,/ Sat like a cormorant; yet not true life/ Thereby regained, but sat devising death/ To them who lived: nor on the virtue thought/ Of that life-giving plant, but only used/ For prospect, what, well-used, had been the pledge/ Of immortality, So little knows/ Any, but God alone, to value right/ The good before him, but perverts best things/ To worst abuse, or to their meanest use” (4.194-204).

→ Satan - “the first grand thief into God's fold” - takes away from our first parents the gift of immortality

b)​ The true objective of the diabolical temptation of Faust - according to the Lord – is not to allow Mephistopheles any opportunity of winning Faust's soul, but of prompting Faust forward and refusing him any opportunity of relaxing; the devil forces Faust to continue striving, which without the roguish devil's help, Faust may give up

→ Although the devil traditionally leads mankind away from God's objectives, ironically, Mephistopheles is like his conscience, forcing Faust to face the truth, making him accept responsibility for his actions, and pointing out Faust's self-delusion

→ The Lord even says that the value of the devil is in provoking mankind onwards into action; rather than being an impediment to all that is good, the role of evil is one that ironically acts as a catalyst to Faust's salvation, and Faust must grasp every temptation of Mephistopheles in order to be saved

→ When Faust feels dejection and despair, Mephistopheles encourages him to seek joy in life: “Come on! Let your reflections rest/ And plunge into the world with zest!” (Study 299-300)

→ in the Witch's Kitchen, the witty and infernal Mephistopheles again tries to bring cheer to Faust: “Relax! It's fun – a little play;/ Don't be so serious, so sedate!” (200 - 201)

→ Mephistopheles will be an instrument and a catalyst for Faust's ultimate salvation, and the devil's activities are a part of the plan of the world

IV) Milton's Satan is dramatic and conscience-stricken, whereas Mephistopheles is funny, witty, and always entertaining.

a)​ Satan suffers emotionally from his exile from Heaven and in his new home in the depths of Hell: “now the thought/ Both of lost happiness and lasting pain/ Torments him. Round he throws his baleful eyes/ That witness huge affliction and dismay” (1.54-57). The “false archangel” has lost all hope due to the plight that has befallen him: “So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear!/ Farewell remorse! All good to me is lost” (4.108-109).

→ Although Satan just left Hell and is approaching the Garden of Eden,“Hell's dread Emperor” finds that he's still in Hell: “Me Miserable! Which way shall I fly/ Infinite wrath and infinite despair?/Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;/ And in the lowest deep a lower deep/ Still threatening to devour me opens wide,/ To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven” (4.73-78).

→ For the “lost archangel”, Hell is a state of mind: “The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven” (1.254-255).

b)​ Mephistopheles always belittles himself; his humorous self-mockery make him a likable character, and in the first scene, even the Lord likes him since the devil provides laughter throughout this otherwise serious play. His humorous self-deprecation makes him a likable character: “I'd wish the Devil took me straightaway,/ If I myself were not a devil” (Promenade 5-6).

→ Mephistopheles is witty and lighthearted in many scenes, and one example is with Faust's student in the Study scene, where he impersonates Faust and dons the scholar's academic robe, acting as a faculty mentor to Faust's ingenuous student: “You bore yourself and bore your students?/ . . . The best that you could ever know/ You may not tell the little boys” (Study 308-312).

→ rather than advising the earnest student about academic matters, the rascal Mephistopheles gives provocative advice – about carnal temptation - to the naïve student with Faustian traits. Um, I cannot print this (outrageous) lascivious advice, but here's the passage: (Study 490-497).

→ Look at the counsel - about enticing and seducing women – that Mephistopheles gives the reverent student instead of academic learning and the discipline of medicine: “And if you seem halfway discreet,/ They will be lying at your feet./ First your degree inspires trust,/ As if your art scarcely had any peers;/ Right at the start, remove her clothes and touch her bust,/ Things for which others wait years and years./ Learn well the little pulse to squeeze,/ And with a knowing, fiery glance you seize/ Her freely round her slender waist/ To see how tightly she is laced” (Study 498-507).

→ Mephistopheles tries to guide the eager student into temptation, and the light satire in this scene makes the devil an endearing character

→ Faust always seems to be in a state of despair, wishing he “had tears to drown the sun” (Study 26)

→ at one point, he even despairingly rails against virtues and pleasures: “A curse on wine that mocks our thirst!/ A curse on love's last consummation!/ A curse on hope! Faith, too, be cursed!” (Study 74-76).

==> Mephistopheles – here, an agent of life – compares Faust to an animal and urges him to leave the malaise and narrow limits of the scholar's suffocating study and to return back into the human community: “stop playing with your melancholy/ That, like a vulture, ravages your breast” (Study 106-107). In another instance, Mephistopheles encourages Faust to seek new experiences: “Have you not led this life quite long/ enough?/ How can it keep amusing you?/ It may be well for once to try such stuff/ But then one turns to something new” (Wood and Cave 34-38).

→ Faust's imagination supersedes reality, so the devil's realism and rationality rather than Faust's idealism and emotional nature are closer to the reader's own thinking.

→ Mephistopheles is actually an honest character and makes Faust face the truth and hard facts, which in turn angers Faust

V) Both Satan and Mephistopheles deceptively disguise their true identity

a)​ The fact that Satan takes the form of a serpent is symbolic of his malicious ways, and he uses this guise to trick Eve, who had no idea she was speaking to Satan. Milton's “Arch-Fiend” also assumes other disguises: as a bird, a lion, a tiger, and a toad. His varying disguises reflect his moral descent, and “our almighty Foe” never reveals his true identity, which is indicative of his dishonesty.

b)​ Goethe's devil appears as a shapeshifting deceiver when he first disguises himself as a poodle (symbolically revealing his good intentions), then a roguish traveling salesman, and momentarily as Faust: an erudite scholar. Mephistopheles, unlike Satan, revealed his true identity of his own accord, highlighting his honesty

VI) Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles tempt the protagonists' sinful tendencies

a)​ In Book 9 of Paradise Lost, the arch-tempter Satan – disguised as a serpent – explains to a curious Eve that the forbidden Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil has given him human powers, including the faculty of speech, and can also render the “Mother of Mankind” and Adam to be god-like. Satan craftily tells her she will attain wisdom if she partakes of the forbidden fruit and even possess “what might lead/ To happier life, knowledge of good and evil” (9.696-697).

→ Satan lures Eve to have the fruit that will supposedly give her intellectual reasoning and knowledge

→ “Our almighty Foe” is an oratorical wizard, and his words are “replete with guile”, which persuade the unassuming but interested Eve that she will acquire divinity, or “godhead” (9.733, 790).

b)​ Just as Eve is attracted to the idea of achieving “godhead”, Faust – an irrational and impatient individual with vague longings – wishes to transcend human limits and to become a god; in his God-seeking striving, he manages to conjure spirits, including ultimately the devil himself

→ Faust is always dissatisfied with life, and nothing ever seems to please him. A melancholy figure who despairs his fate, he constantly tries to transcend ordinary human existence by becoming godlike and summoning spirits. The sign of the

macrocosm arouses in him a feeling of divinity within himself: “Am I a god”? (Night 86). Faust seeks to be godlike in his pursuit of attaining a higher existence

==> After he makes a pact with the devil, Faust thanks the Earth Spirit who has given him everything for which he has asked, including his companion Mephistopheles, resulting in “this happiness/ Which brings me close and closer to the gods” (Wood and Cave 25-26). The devil ridicules Faust's divine inclinations: “A supernatural delight!/ To lie on mountains in the dew and night,/ Embracing earth and sky in raptured reeling,/ To swell into a god – in one's own feeling -/ To probe earth's marrow with vague divination,/ Sense in your breast the whole work of creation/ . . . Gone is all earthly inhibition” (Wood and Cave 66-74)

→ unlike Milton's Satan, Mephistopheles does not conceal his intentions as Faust is well aware of his diabolical companion's commitment to evil; in the Witch's Kitchen, the rogue convinces Faust to drink a potion so that he will be magically rejuvenated and to awaken his physical lust

→ after Faust drinks the potion, which makes him 30 years younger and suffuses his body with lust, Mephistopheles promises he will revel in earthly pleasures: “You'll soon find with this potion's aid,/ Helen of Troy in every maid” (Witch's Kitchen 267-268).

→ when Faust deserts Gretchen in her moment of need, Mephistopheles wishes to keep him away from her by whisking Faust away in the obscene Walpurgis Night episode with witches and demons; although this scene is dominated by Mephistopheles, Faust is the one who has chosen evil, reaching his lowest moral point after abandoning Gretchen in her state of extreme despair

→ in this scene of deceit and illusion, Faust dances with a beautiful naked young witch, and Mephistopheles wishes to satisfy Faust with a moment of loveless sexuality, though Faust's compassion overrides his physical desire, and Faust sets out to heroically “rescue” Gretchen

VII) Both literary works warn about the pursuit of excessive learning and ambition beyond appropriate human limits, which Satan and Mephistopheles encourage in the protagonists

a)​ In Book 8 of Paradise Lost, the Heavenly angel Raphael warns Adam to be “lowly wise” and to not trouble himself with details about astronomy. Adam admits to having a desire for knowledge, but the “affable angel” Raphael teaches Adam the restraints on the pursuit of knowledge. Adam's questions about the astronomical systems brings a mild rebuke from the “ethereal messenger” Raphael, who says that nature is not always to be fathomed by human intelligence: “Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid,/ Leave them to God above, him serve and fear . . . joy thou/ In what he gives thee, this

Paradise/ And they fair Eve; heaven is for thee too high/ To know what passes there; be lowly wise:/ Think only what concerns thee and thy being; Dream not of other worlds” (8.167 – 175)

→ the “angel serene” Raphael says that Adam should not trouble himself with distant details, and the angel makes it clear that man should desire knowledge but only within bounds: “But apt the mind or fancy is to rove/ Unchecked, and of her roving is no end;/ Till warned, or by experience taught, she learn,/ That not to know at large of things remote/ From use, obscure and subtle, but to know/ That which before us lies in daily life,/ Is the prime wisdom” (8.188 – 194)

→ However, Satan, the “traitor angel”, wants to bring enlightenment to our first parents and to separate them from their ignorant state, to “excite their minds/ with more desire to know, and to reject/ envious commands, invented with design/ to keep them low whom knowledge might exalt/ equal with gods” (4.522-526). Satan wants the couple to acquire access to the power of knowledge.

→ Satan claims that “the great Creator” forbids knowledge, and he sees God's prohibition as a deprivation of knowledge: “One fatal tree there stands, of knowledge called,/ Forbidden them to taste. Knowledge forbidden?/ Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their lord/ Envy them that? Can it be a sin to know,/ Can it be death? And do they only stand/ By ignorance, is that their happy state,/ The proof of their obedience and their faith?” (4.514-520).

→ When Eve eats the forbidden fruit, she wishes to attain what the serpent had promised: ”expectation high of knowledge” (9.789-790). After she eats the fruit, she wonders if she should share her discovery with Adam or “keep the odds of knowledge in my power/ Without copartner” (9.820-821). Although her first instinct is to keep the knowledge to herself, she persuades Adam to follow suit , and he also falls prey to the allure of knowledge and intellectual growth from the fruit

b)​ Despite academic learning, Faust has failed to obtain absolute knowledge. He denounces the limits of empty scholastic knowledge and books and turns to magic to help his ignorance in his desire for knowledge of the actual powers that move the world: “Hence I have yielded to magic to see/ Whether the spirit's mouth and might/Would bring some mysteries to light,/ That I need not with work and woe/ Go on to say what I don't know;/ That I might see what secret force/ Hides in the world and rules its course” (Night 1 24-30).

→ in a moment to himself, Mephistopheles thinks that Faust will be lost if he wants to continue with his anti-intellectualism and disdain for knowledge and reason

→ Mephistopheles has magic powers at his disposal and offers Faust the assistance of magic as a potential shortcut to transcendent knowledge: Mephistopheles' magic cloak and the potion in the “Witch's Kitchen” - the devil's magic - are catalysts for experience

→ interestingly, Goethe believed that degeneracy results from any knowledge that is in excess of an individual's being, and he also felt that knowledge unearned (through magic) is not true knowledge

VIII) In both literary works, God, ironically, foresees and even allows the tragedies to unfold

a)​ Although Milton's God - “Heaven's all-powerful King” - has foreknowledge about the entrance of Satan into Eden and the subsequent downfall of Adam and Eve, he does nothing to stop this cycle of events: “And high permission of all-ruling Heaven/ Left him at large to his own dark designs/ That with reiterated crimes he might/ Heap on himself damnation while he sought/ Evil to others” (1.212-216).

→ God refuses to stop Satan. “The Great Maker” says that humans had the free will to fall, so He did not need to stop Satan, thereby allowing “our Adversary” to execute his diabolical plan: “For what can escape the eye/ Of God all-seeing or deceive His heart/ Omniscient who, in all things wise and just/ Hindered not Satan to attempt the mind/ Of Man, with strength entire, and free will armed” (10.5-9).

→ Beelzebub, among the most powerful of the rebel angels in Hell and Satan's next-in-power, argues that by committing evil, the devil and his followers are simply playing into God's master plan: “Or do Him mightier service as His thralls/ By right of War, whatever His business be:/ Here in the heart of Hell to work in Fire/ Or do His Errands in the gloomy deep” (1.149-153).

b)​ One can argue that Milton's Satan is not necessarily to blame for causing the downfall of humanity, as with Goethe's Mephistopheles; in the initial scene, Mephistopheles acknowledges the Lord with reverence, and it is initially the Lord who gives him permission to tempt Faust; ironically, the Lord Himself makes a bet with the devil about Faust, and He employs Mephistopheles to make Faust discontented so that he will continue to strive, although to strive is to err.

→ The Almighty Creator acknowledges that the devil's activities are a part of the plan of the universe and even gives Mephistopheles a free hand to propel Faust on to continued activity and to help Faust seek pleasure and experience as long as Faust lives: “I grant that you may try to clasp him,/ Withdraw this spirit from his primal source/ And lead him down, if you can grasp him,/ Upon your own abysmal course” (Prologue in Heaven 81-84).