The Romantic Hero in Goethes Faust Essay -- Papers Essays Goethe Faus

The Romantic Hero in Goethe's Faust Works Cited Not Included Long hailed as the watershed of Romantic literature, Goethe’s Faust uses the misadventures of its hero to parallel the challenges that pervaded European society in the dynamic years of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Faust is the prototypical Romantic hero because the transformation of his attitudes mirrors the larger transformation that was occurring in the society in which Goethe conceived the play. Faust’s odyssey transports him from adherence to the cold rationale of the Enlightenment to a passion for the pleasures that came to define the Romantic spirit. Faust not only expresses the moral contradictions and spiritual yearnings of a man in search of fulfillment, but also portrays the broader mindset of a society that was groping for meaning in a world where reason no longer sufficed as a catalyst for human cultural life. The period of German Romanticism in which Goethe wrote Faust was plagued with the same intrinsic turmoil that Faust himself felt prior to making his deal with Mephisto. The destruction that the French Revolution had exacted on the European consciousness was evident in the attitudes of the people most touched by the tumult of the era – people who came to realize that absolution was no longer a pertinent intellectual goal. The cold rationale of the Enlightenment was no longer adequate to explain the significance of life in a society where everything had so recently been turned upside down. Romanticism was the expression of this society’s craving for answers and fulfillment. Everywhere, people embraced life passionately and lived as... ...emption, despite her sins, because â€Å"all her crime was love† (line 4501). Goethe’s Faust is a work in which a new type of hero emerges to satisfy the needs of a changing society. With Faust, Goethe succeeded in representing a microcosm of the tensions that accompanied the shift from rationalism to Romanticism. Complex and dynamic, Faust, like the great men of his era, is a hero whose most notable achievement is his transformation of the lives of others as well as his own. In this respect, the lesson of the Romantic hero is comprised less of romance than of utility. Following the trends of the Goethe’s contemporary evolving society, the means by which Faust succeeds in accomplishing his goals are largely selfish, brutal, and unethical. This is perhaps Goethe’s single greatest reflection on the modern nature of heroism.