Mephistopheles, the devil, bet with God that the unsatisfied pursuit of human beings will eventually lead to their own depravity. God believes that although human beings will inevitably make mistakes in their pursuit, they can finally hit the truth. So the devil came down to seduce Faust.
Faust is now an old scholar over half a century old. He has been reading extensively all his life and delving into all kinds of knowledge in order to understand the mysteries of nature. However, at this age, he suddenly realized that this knowledge is useless, and his study is really like a prison, isolating himself from nature. He was so miserable that he wanted to commit suicide and seek a way out in another world. The Easter bell called back his will to live and took him to the suburbs. He was deeply inspired by the thriving nature and the free and happy people. When I went back to my study to translate the Bible, it actually contradicted the idea that there was a way in early Thailand. At this time, the poodle he brought back from primary school became a scholar, and Faust asked him his true identity. He said he was "a combination of good and evil", but in fact he was the incarnation of the devil Mephistopheles. The devil promised to be Faust's servant and take him to start his life again, on the condition that once he was satisfied, his soul would belong to the devil. Faust made a contract with the devil.
The devil took Faust to the witch's kitchen and drank the magic soup, which turned him into a charming teenager and restored his lust. Then they came to a small town, and Faust fell in love with a civilian girl, Magen. Megan has a crush on Faust in tears. In order to meet, he accidentally gave his mother too much sleeping pills, which led to the death of the old man. Her brother Valentine died by Faust's sword again. After the novice drowned Faust's child because of the weight of public opinion, Ma Jiang went to prison in tears and was sentenced to death. At that time, Faust was having a party with a witch and rushed to the rescue, but Megan's tears had gone crazy. She was willing to accept the punishment and had no intention of running away. Faust left with regret. God forgave the kind Megan's tears. This is the end of the first part.
At the beginning of the second part, Faust healed the wounds of the soul in the beautiful nature and followed the devil to the palace of the holy Roman Empire. At that time, the dynasty was in chaos, the upper class was decadent and the people were hungry and cold. Faust won the favor of the emperor and eased the financial crisis by issuing more paper money. The emperor was whimsical and asked Faust to call Helen, an ancient Greek beauty, to watch. The devil cast a spell, so the illusion of Helen and Paris, the prince of Troy, appeared in the cigarette smoke. Faust fell in love with Helen at first sight. When Paris embraced Helen, Faust was so jealous that he touched Paris with his magic key, and the phantom disappeared at once. Faust fainted to the ground and the devil picked him up and slipped out of the court.
The darkness of officialdom made Faust disappointed in politics and turned to pursue the tranquility and harmony of classical beauty. The devil took him back to his study. Wagner, a student of Faust, created the rebel character He Mongolian Lutu in the flask. He Mongolia led Faust to Greece to find Helen. They got married and gave birth to a son named Ou Fuliang. O 'Fuliang's image is based on the English poet Byron. He is naturally fond of flying high and eager to fight. When he heard the call of freedom in the distance, he risked his life to fly high into the sky and unfortunately fell at the feet of his parents. Helen was heartbroken and flew away despite Faust's hard work, leaving only her white robe and veil in Faust's arms. They turned into clouds, brought Faust here and flew back to the north. Faust's pursuit of classical beauty ended in disillusionment.
Faust saw the rough sea in the air and suddenly had the ambition to conquer the sea. With the help of the devil, he helped an emperor put down the rebellion and got a fief by the sea. According to Faust's orders, the devil drove the people to move mountains and fill the sea for him, turning the sea into a mulberry field. At this time, Faust was a hundred-year-old man, and grief made him blind. The devil ordered the dead to dig his grave. Faust heard the sound of shovels and thought that the masses were digging ditches and rivers for him. Thinking of the great career he is engaged in, he can't help but blurt out: "You are so beautiful, please stay!" Faust fell to the ground dead. The devil was about to take away his soul when the rain of roses turned into flames and drove the devil away. The angel took Faust to heaven and saw the tears of the Virgin and the Redeemer.
Faust's self-improvement and pursuit of truth have gone through five stages: study life, love life, political life, pursuit of classical beauty and achievement. These five stages all have realistic basis, which highly condensed the spiritual course from Renaissance to1the early years of the 9th century when the bourgeoisie in Germany and even Europe explored and strived for the first place. Here, Faust can be said to be a symbolic artistic image, and Goethe shaped him into the incarnation of the fate of all mankind. Of course, the so-called all mankind is actually an expansion of the typical image of an advanced intellectual during the rise of the bourgeoisie. It is no different from other bourgeois thinkers in the Enlightenment, and Goethe also regards this class as the representative of all mankind. Faust out of the dark's study entered the natural and broad real life, which embodied the anti-feudal spirit from the Renaissance, the Religious Reform to the "Frontline" movement, awakened bourgeois ideology, denied religious theology and criticized the dark reality. The love tragedies in Faust and Margain's Tears reflect and deny the selfish philosophy of pursuing narrow personal happiness and hedonism. The political failure shows the illusion of the political ideal of the enlightened monarch in the Enlightenment. The unfortunate ending of the combination with Helen declared the disillusionment of modern people's aesthetic education and humanitarian ideal of classical beauty. In the end, Faust found the true meaning of life in the grand cause of mobilizing the masses to transform nature and create a paradise on earth. From this, we can easily see the shadow of the "rational kingdom" repeatedly described by the enlighteners in the18th century, and also vaguely hear the voice of utopian socialists calling for the future in the19th century.
The image of Faust has a higher philosophical significance. This is mainly manifested in the famous "Faust puzzle" and the "Faust spirit" shown in the face of this dilemma. With profound dialectical consciousness, Goethe reveals the complex relationship and development process between two contradictory factors in Faust's personality, namely, the factors of "affirmation" and "goodness" and the factors of "negation" and "evil", and shows Faust's precious spirit of never being satisfied, constantly overcoming obstacles, surpassing himself and constantly striving for the highest existence with optimism. In fact, the mystery of Faust is a common problem of human beings. It is a dilemma between "spirit" and "flesh", natural desire and moral spiritual realm, personal happiness and social responsibility that everyone can't escape when pursuing the value and meaning of life. These binary opposites constitute a serious internal contradiction to Faust and everyone. In Faust, this contradiction runs through the protagonist's lifelong pursuit, which is embodied in the interweaving of Faust's inner conflict and his conflict with Mephistopheles. In a sense, Faust's inner conflict is also the internalization of his conflict with Mephisto fellers, and his conflict with Mephisto fellers is also the externalization of his inner conflict. After becoming a master servant with Mephistopheles, the "father of all difficulties" and the embodiment of evil, Faust's future is in jeopardy, and he may degenerate into a slave of the devil at any time. However, constant pursuit, self-improvement, courage to practice and self-denial are the main personality characteristics of Faust, which saved him from sinking and realized the value and ideal of life. Here, evil has played a role in promoting "often doing good instead" from the opposite side. Goethe's dialectical view of the relationship between good and evil is not absolute opposition, but interdependence and mutual transformation, which reveals the profound truth that human beings overcome their own contradictions and make continuous progress in the struggle against evil. This is clearly reflected in God's exposition at the beginning of the poetic drama, that is, good people should work hard so as not to lose their way, and it is also reflected in the lyrics of "Those who strive for self-improvement can finally be saved" sung by angels at the end of the poetic drama.
Of course, this does not mean that Faust is an impeccable work. Ideologically, it tends to turn political revolution into spiritual exploration and social transformation into self-improvement, which embodies the inherent weakness and compromise of the bourgeoisie and its predatory nature as an exploiting class. From the artistic point of view, the content is complicated, there are many allusions and symbols, which makes the work obscure and difficult to solve. Especially in the second part, the image of Faust tends to be abstract and conceptual, which is difficult for ordinary readers to read and understand.
Faust is grand in conception, complex in content, huge in structure and changeable in style. It combines realism and Bowen's doctrine, and combines real description with imaginative imagination, contemporary life with ancient myths and legends. He is good at using the method of contradiction and contrast to arrange scenes and assign characters, sometimes humorous, sarcastic and praising, with various forms and mottled colors, and has reached a very high artistic realm.