Mephistopheles

The protagonist of Kurosawa’s Ikiru is a government official in Japan who does nothing but stamp papers to perpetuate the ineffective political bureaucratic machine that he is a part of. After he learns he has terminal stomach cancer, he goes through a period of desperate confusion and despair, until a sudden realization prompts the total transformation of his personality and personal sense of meaning. The emotional depth of the protagonist and the changes he goes through in order to reveal the…

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every monstrous creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.” (Dickens) This quote by Charles Dickens means that behind every creature, there will be a furtive and cryptic background behind every fiend. With this, the finding of the chupacabra was a remarkable discovery in the Caribbean and an unbelievable recovery for past agriculturists. With these results, the chupacabra was sighted in various locations with immense…

In Christopher Marlowe 's play Doctor Faustus, the plot focalizes around John Faustus, a character that sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge. Similarly, in William Shakespeare 's Hamlet, the ambitious King Claudius murders his own brother to achieve wealth and power as the King of Denmark. These sinful crimes compromise the integrity of both male characters and inflict devastating consequences on their well-being and ability to coexist peacefully within their respective plays.…

Known as the ‘Russian Byron’, Mikhail Lermontov is revered for his radical interpretation of the Romantic antihero in A Hero of Our Time. He sought to fashion “a portrait built up from the vices of our whole generation” (Lermontov, preface), to create a character who would embody the spirit of the contemporary Russian man. In what would be his only prose work, Lermontov employs traits commonly associated with the Byronic hero as the basis for the character of his protagonist, Pechorin, such as…

serialization in 1866, after her travels in Europe and about two years before Little Women was published, her manuscript was rejected as "too long and too sensational". Several years later, Alcott brutally edited her novel and submitted as A Modern Mephistopheles for her publisher 's "No Name Series". The original manuscript was set aside and not published until 1995, after it was discovered by the editor, Kent Bicknell, in 1993. (pp.…

profoundly, the decorous manifestation of a psyche which…is bound by its own egoism" (Altman 376). In reality Faustus is so limited by his sense of self that in his first experience with Lucifer 's henchman, he thanks that he has really conjured Mephistopheles and starts to order him as his minion, rapidly proving his want of dominance. Yet Mephostophilis soon shows him of the presence of powers which lie past even Faustus '…

Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus complicates gender in a variety of ways. First, the text has a very sexist view towards women. Helen of Troy, the Furies and women in a general sense are treated as lesser beings because of their sex. women in this text are objectified and in complete power of the males surrounding them. The men in the text are insecure about their masculinity. Faustus, Benvolio and the Emperor are all characters that have difficulties with their masculinity. The…

Passion, love, and desire encourage transgression, which eventually leads to Gretchen’s death sentence in Goethe’s Faust and Catherine Sr.’s and Isabella’s death from fever in Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. The women have passions for passion and desires to be desired that they discover through their involvement in forbidden romantic relationships with the male protagonists. Goethe’s Gretchen acts well-behaved until she becomes tempted by the beauty of “such jewels! [A] rich array” (I.2791), and…