Foreshadowing, Essay Example

Foreshadow, forecast, and predict are frequently used interchangeably:

A forecast is typically based on statistics, data, facts and figures, numbers, information, or details by which a very probable occurrence will happen. Foreshadow usually means to suggest the future rather than to predict it through an evaluation of subtle hints or clues. Predict is to declare or approximate that a specified occurance will take place in the near or far future, or otherwise be a consequence of a particular incidence. Foreshadow, currently interpreted as the most vague of these three words, can apply to anyone or anything that casts any indication of what is to occur.

*This is based on the New Oxford American Dictionary Oxford American Apple Dictionary.

Nonetheless, Mephastophilis is how foreshadow is spelled in this work. Mephastophilis, the Devil character, is also proof that Faust developed the theme around Christianity. Rather, Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe is therefore Christian-based.

One of the main themes of Christianity is a single exaction of the fear appeal: Hell. However, Marlowe’s Mephastophilis maintains a combination of motives. For one, of course, that Christian fear appeal, whereas Mephastophilis is the catalyst (completing Faustus’s link to Lucipher) who completes Faustus’s damnation (3.47–49: “when we hear one rack the name of God, / Abjure the Scriptures and his savior Christ, / We fly in hope to get his glorious soul”):

Faustus:

What, is great Mephastophilis so passionate

For being deprivèd of the joys of heaven?

Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude,

And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.

(3.82-86)

The second, the conceptual and developmental persuasion by Mephastophilis, uses Faustus repentance with Lucifer as that persuasive means to keep Faustus from leaving Hell. In the first, Faustus is the subjective character; the second, Mephastophilis becomes the subject:

Mephastophilis:

Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.

Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God,

And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,

Am not tormented with ten thousand hells

In being deprived of everlasting bliss?

(3.76–80)

Evidently, by the end of this tragedy, that fear appeal became cemented when Mephastophilis persuaded Faustus: Ah Faustus, Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damned perpetually. (13.57–59)