Faustus' mind is pulled in conflicting directions

Faustus' mind is pulled in conflicting directions.Discuss

Faustus' mind is "pulled in conflicting directions by two compelling forces."  The two compelling forces are the Good and Bad Angels, each conflicting with their own view of eternal time.  The Good Angel explains to "sweet Faustus" that there is always time to repent, while the Bad Angel encourages Faustus to turn to the book of black magic, therefore following Lucifer.  Just as Faustus is pulled between the good and bad forces.  The Good Angel represents forgiving and eternal factor and implies that there is "always time to repent," while the Bad Angel represents lust for immediate power.  Faustus has to choose between power and wealth vs. eternal life with God.

Conflicting value systems are always around, especially where death is involved. So in the tragedies of Everyman, Doctor Faustus and Hamlet there are many conflicts to face. These include personal moral conflicts with individual characters of the plays and also opposing values between the different characters in the play.. Conflicting value systems may even stretch to how the audience interprets the play and the beliefs and culture at the time.

Dr Faustus, a moral tragedy faced many of the same conflicting value systems as Everyman, however, with much more temptation from the seven deadly sins, Faustus finds it much more difficult to be moral. Faustus gets into a moral conflict with his mind, and the good and bad angels are symbols of this.

O Faustus, lay that damned book aside. (I.i.68)

The Good angel encourages Faustus to remain good.

If thou repent, devils will tear thee in pieces. (II.ii.82)

The bad angel tries to persuade Faustus not to do the right thing. The society around Dr Faustus is putting him in the middle of a moral conflict by telling him what to do.

Mephistopheles also creates conflict by doing whatever Faustus asks). This means that Dr Faustus is able to commit any sin that he wants. The people in the society around him give him knowledge of what will happen to him if he does not repent, yet he won't repent through fear of punishment. So even though Dr Faustus turns to worldly delights to put off confrontation of the real problem, the problem is always there. This means that the conflict in Dr Faustus mind hasn't gone away, he is just trying to forget that he has a dilemma.

The society in which Dr Faustus lives is split into two with people telling him different things. The figure of the old man shows that there is still a chance for Dr Faustus to repent and to be saved. Here is a quote showing that there are two sides of an argument in Dr Faustus:

It is also thoroughly Renaissance in its treatment: the conflict of choice is made convincing as it would not have been in a medieval play (Wynne-Davis, 1989, p.463)

This quote again shows that there were two sides in Dr Faustus and this made it hard for him to make the right decisions. For example, Beelzebub, the seven deadly sins, Mephistopheles and Helen of Troy all lead to Dr Faustus being damned.

Again, as in Everyman, the conflict of all of the individual characters and the moral conflict between them is not the only conflict that goes on in this morality play. There are also conflicts between audience interpretation. For instance, the audience at the time of Dr Faustus was continually changing their religion as the king kept swapping the countries beliefs from Catholic to Protestant and back again and again. Because of this it often depended on whether the audience were Catholic or not as to whether Dr Faustus was damned. If the audience was Catholic, then they believe that Dr Faustus would not have been damned, but if the audience was Protestant, they believed that Dr Faustus wouldn't have constant chances to repent and would most certainly be damned. Therefore there could be conflict between the audiences as they believe that two different things would have happened to Faustus. Catholics would believe that Faustus could not be damned, therefore, the rightful ending to the play relies on Christian ideology as Faustus was eventually sentenced to eternal damnation.

Hamlet, another tragedy has many conflicting values. Hamlet is often forced to think about his actions because of the society around him. In the play, Hamlet is placed in an impossible situation. He faces moral conflicts and dilemmas in his own mind.

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