Jennystopheles on Mephistopheles Act II Scene III 29/09/2011

Sorry for the title, I'm all out of inspiration for today's blogging sesh. I'm only going to do one blog for both of Thursday's lessons as they were both focused on the same scene [2.3] .
Today, I'm going to blog about Mephistopheles again, in a kind of gathering-my-thoughts kind of way in preparation for the essay writing we're going to do on Thursday.

It was raised, last Thursday, that the relationship between Faustus and Mephistopheles may have in part a homoerotic tension between them,

(Mephi) "I tell thee, 'tis not hald so fair as thou"

I can see why some people might think this if you take what Mephistopheles says on a literal level. That said, I think he is actually being quite sarcastic and droll with Faustus. Once Faustus has sold his soul to the devil in [2.1] Mephistopheles starts to change the way that he treats Faustus. No longer is he the sympathetic little devil warning Faustus 'oh how horrible' hell is. Instead, he is dry, "Think'st though heaven is such a glorious thing?", and unaccommodating, "Move me not, for I will not tell thee". As a result in this character shift and Mephistopheles perhaps feeling he can actually show his real attitude to Faustus I would say that he is taking the opportunity to mock the stupid man who thought selling his soul was a good thing.

This lead me nicely on to another observation about Mephistopheles. He patronises Faustus because in fact he is smarter than Faustus. The man who claims that his "common talk" is "sound aphorisms"[1.1] must ask Mephistopheles about things he wants greater knowledge of, "But tell me, have they all one motion, both situ et tempore?"[2.3]. Moreoever, Mephistopheles has the power to deny Faustus the knoweledge he craves and knows just how divert Faustus wishes into Mephistopheles' wishes for example exchanging the idea of a wife with the idea of concubines. The language of intelligence, latin, has often been used as evidence to illustrate Faustus' amazing brain power yet Mephistopheles uses the language too, "Per inaequalem motum respectu totius"[2.3] Yet Mephistopheles doesn't use latin to show off as Faustus does, he doesn't use the language flamboyantly in order to make the audience feel belittled in fact his matter of fact use of the language in some sense belittles Faustus for making so much fuss about it. Ultimately, the gist of what I've been trying to get at in this blog post is that whilst Mephistopheles might not be that sweet little devil he was in act one, in scene two it is definitely Mephi who is pulling the strings.

Satan 20/09/2011

In the second lesson on Tuesday we were asked to draw a picture what we believed the devil to look like. This was part of an effort to introduce us to Mephistopheles, the miniature devil that acts as the intemediatry between Faustus and Satan to broker a deal for Faustus to sell his soul. Interstingly though, Mephistopheles really challenged the class's ideas about how a devil should act, he is a sympathetic and even warns Faustus against selling his soul. All of this talk of devil's got me thinking about the way that the devil is presented in different religions. Obviously, the Christian faith teaches that Lucifer is a fallen angel that rules as the overlord of hell. But what do Islam, Judaism and Buddhism have to say about the devil?

In Islam, the devil (Iblis) is a great deciever. He is a jinn, created from smokeless fire by God. The Islamic story of the devil goes that Iblis refused to bow before Adam (humanity) as God desired him to. He deliberately disobeyed the will of God causing him to be cast out by God. Iblis is seen in Islam as being the enemy of humanity, not the enemy of God. It is aim to try and tempt human beings into sin and away from God so that when resurrection day comes and Iblis is cast into the fires of hell, all of those that he has decieved will be cast their too.

Interestingly enough, Judaism does ot have a concept of the devil like Christianity does. This really surprised me as it is one of the three Abrhamic relgions. Instead mainstream Jews consider the devil to be "the adversary" which translates directly from the hebrew word ha-satan. Wikipedia states that the reason why the devil is viewed as an adversary or prosecutor is because of the need to recognize God as the ultimate judge.

Buddhism's devil-like figure is Mara. Mara is the thing that tempts people, even Buddha himself. He tries to make things that are bad seem good as well as distracting people from their tasks by making other things seem more appealing, it is Mara that causes procrastination (somewhat ironic as I am on facebook at the same time as writing this). Buddhist's view Mara not as a separate entity but as part of the mind itself, something that must be overcome in order to lead a spiritual life.



Buddha battling Mara...