Hamlet and Faust as Tragic Pro
All great literature, throughout time, has attempted to explain the true human condition. It has attempted to show why man has always questioned his purpose. In doing so, many writers also have portrayed man's quest for heavenly knowledge. Hamlet, in Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Faust, in Goethe's Faust, exemplify this type of tragic protagonist. Both of these characters ask the same questions and search for the same answers in life; however, they both differ greatly in how they arrive at their epiphany, how they attempt to achieve their goals, and what final conclusion they arrive. In most tragic literature, especially Greek, the protagonist reaches his catharsis through a tragic moment. Hamlet experiences this moment. He had been a student at college when he received the news of his father's death. Along with the upsetting event, he was faced with the surprising semi-incestuous marriage of his mother and his father's brother, who allegedly killed his father. As
Both Hamlet and Faust show great literary merit in their portrayal of the endless human quest for knowledge. They show how each author, Shakespeare and Goethe, interpret life's questions of the reason for existence. Both works, however, seem to illustrate the same point-some questions in life can never be answered. Another contrasting attribute these two works share is the source from which they receive their answers. Searching internally, Hamlet seeks no other outside assistance in his quest for knowledge. This is extremely evident in Hamlet's "soul searching" dialogue-his soliloquies. The most famous one, the "To be or not to be" soliloquy (III, i, 64) gives the reader a true evidence to Hamlet's inner conflict. Similarly, in Faust, Goethe shows Faust's inner conflict. However, the "soul searching" element comes from an exterior source-the devil. Faust asks Mephistopheles to help him by letting "every wonder be at hand" through "magic veils, not pierced by sk
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Approximate Word count = 653
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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