Dr. Faustus Essay: The Role of Helen of Troy -- Doctor Faustus Essays

The Role of Helen of Troy in Doctor Faustus To adequately describe the role that Helen plays in Doctor Faustus, it is prerequisite not only to look at the scene in which she features, tho also all the instances that Faustus takes some form of pleasure from physical and base 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 renascence man - it is his thirst for knowledge that drives him into his pact with Mephastophilis, indeed it is the Evil ideal that best summarises this Go forward, Faustus, in the famous art, Wherein all natures treasury is contained Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky, Lord and commandant of these elements. Scene I, lines 74-77 It is the restless spirit of the renaissance that drives Faustus to seek knowledge. He has already attained what he locoweed through mor e conventional means, his bills (are) hung up as monuments, and his common talk found aphorisms. Faustus compares himself to the more or less famous figures of the Graeco-Roman period to Hippocrates, to Aristotle and to Galen. He sees himself as having go on to the end of what he can learn through his human tools he needs something that will permit him to move outside the realm of nature, something supernatural. This is the reason why he came into speck with Mephastophilis, as he sought to use the new power that would come to him to further his own knowledge. It has been said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts dead - this is what has happened to Faustus. He ceases to become the seeker of knowledge, but become... ...ed in the use of slap-up punishment as the result of trying to break his end of the bargain. Faustus sedition against his deal (a repetition of his bodys rebellion against his signing of the contract) is only short lived, and his hurriedness is ass ured when Helen arrives. Helen, then, represents the dangerous beauty of evil, the seduction of the past, and the desire for things pleasurable. Faustus desire for her, for the most beautiful woman who has ever lived, seems understandable (though not reasonable) to us, because we all devote a little bit of Faustus in us. It is, however, unlikely that any of us have a sufficiently Faustian nature to sell our nous to the Devil.Works CitedMarlowe, Christopher. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Eds. M.H. Abrams et. al. impertinent York W.W. Norton and Co, 1993.