Faustus and His Power

    Faustus is a very determined and smart man. However, throughout the book you can witness a very interesting development of him and his desires. He is very ambitious to gain as much knowledge as he can, but to what expense? He starts out with a desire for more knowledge and power and says “O what a world of profit and delight/Of power, of honour, of omnipotence/Is promis’d to the studious artisan!”. This leads the reader to believe that Faustus is ready to use the knowledge that he gains in order to become a noble artisan, and I believe that in the beginning it may have been a truthful and honest statement to say that he wanted to use his power for the betterment of others and himself. We see an example of this during Act I when Faustus talks of all of the lavish things he will do like having the spirits “wall all of Germany with brass” and have them “fill the public schools with silk” which seems to be for the good of others. However, it soon becomes clear that the power and magic he is given transforms his goals and ultimately everything Faustus does and the knowledge that he gains, is used for his own selfish reasons.

Faustus compares himself to a ‘studious artisan’ and strives to be recognized as a scholar. However what he does not realize is a scholar studies for better understanding and self improvement, not frivolously for personal gain. It is important to have a good understanding of Faustus and his relationship not only with the power that he receives, but with the power that he does not yet obtain but still strives for. When you examine the way he uses his power you can see how selfish he really is. He tries to use his powers throughout the entire play for his own personal gain. We can see this demonstrated in Act one Scene one when he states “All things that move between the quiet poles/Shall be at my command.” In this particular example Faustus desires to be the master of all. His reference to the quiet poles demonstrates his longing to rule the entire world from North to South. He also wants to be remembered for forever from some noble act that he fulfills. We see this when he states that he wants to “be eterniz’d for some wondrous cure”. However, no matter how hard he tries, he never really achieves anything with his magical gifts. His gifts do not help him become immortal. The reader is reminded that Faustus is just a man: “Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man,”. Faustus only ever talks of what he will do with his powers. He never uses the magical gifts to accomplish any of the acts he so nobly insisted his powers would achieve. Knowledge in Faustus’ eyes is equal to money. It is a rich for him to squander, instead of use nobly. He uses his powers for his own selfish reasons. We see this illustrated in Act four Scene six when the Horse-Courser recalls his encounter with Faustus. It was clear to him that Faustus had done nothing noble with his powers he had received. He aims to use his magical gifts to gain power, wealth, knowledge, and immortality. He aims to be just like God who is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. However, he becomes so obsessed with these things and his dreams never become reality because he never actually pursues his desires and use the magical gifts he was given in order to obtain them. Instead he wastes his time with them and ends up with nothing. He finds no pleasure in making himself a more noble person.His lack of self-betterment proves that he has in fact squandered his powers instead of using them to become a noble and knowledgeable artisan worthy of the powers that he possesses. Faustus is a great illustration of how men with god complexes will never be God because all men are fallible no matter how much power they think they obtain. This further demonstrates how weak Faustus’ character is and how dangerous power can be if given to the wrong man. The right man will use it to become a noble artisan, but the wrong man will squander it in his own selfish desires. In this case Faustus proved himself to be the wrong man to be empowered with such gifts. He proves that his intentions were always selfish and that he should have never of been given such great gifts because he was not fit to handle them in a way that a noble man should.