Boundaries in Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Havel’s Temptation :: Comparison Compare Contrast Essays

Boundaries in Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Havel’s Temptation With every trip around the sun, the human race continues to push forward. Frontiers begin to fade, the horizon becomes less of a mystery and more of a pastime and the greatest challenge seems to be finding areas where advancements can still be made. Since we have become so good at extending boundaries, the question of whether or not an un-crossable boundary even exists becomes especially relevant. Indeed it is easy to think that there may be nothing that humans are incapable of achieving. For centuries, however, literature has been very imaginative while still holding on to the notion that at some point, crossing boundaries results in trouble. It might be said that in works of this type a distinction is made between pushing limitations and overstepping boundaries. In such literary works as Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Vaclav Havel’s Temptation, the main characters push boundaries farther than they have been pushed befo re inevitably causing negative consequences for the characters and the people that surround them. The work entitled Dr. Faustus centers around the character thus named who aims solely to lift every limitation and exceed every boundary he encounters. From the very opening of the play after the chorus in the first scene, Dr. Faustus explains his dissatisfaction with the boundaries he has already met: Is not thy common talk found aphorisms? Are not thy bills hung up as monuments, Whereby whole cities have escaped the plague, And thousand desperate maladies been eased? Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man. Couldst thou make men to live eternally, Or, being dead, raise them to life again, Then this profession were to be esteemed. (19 – 26) This excerpt reveals that Faustus, although he has had much success and is widely recognized for it, yearns for further discovery, a limitless experience, a power that physically is beyond him. Later in the same scene, he clearly states his solution to this quandary, â€Å"A Sound magician is a mighty god. Here Faustus, try thy brains to gain a deity† (63 – 64). In order to achieve this for even a limited time however, he must exceed natural human boundaries. In his search for a means to do so, he forms a new boundary, namely the loss of control over his soul, in scene 5 through a contract with Lucifer.