There are similarities between Dorian Gray and Dr. Faustus
as Marlowe writes him. One contrast that exists is with Goethe's Faust, though. While
Faust shuns the company of people, Dorian comes to be shunned by people. Dorian is evil
and dissolute so that people come to despise his company. Faust, on the other hand,
begins life as a solitary scholar who never cares about the normal associations and
passions of life.
Faustus can not find a balance between the pursuit
of knowledge, power bestowed by knowledge and morality that puts godliness and human
goodness above knowledge. Similarly, Dorian will not balance an obsessive adoration of
beauty--beauty at all costs--and resulting selfish behavior with moral and responsible
behavior: he comes to kill at will and disguise his crime without
hesitation.
In the end, Faustus repents his self-centered pursuits
that exclude godliness and goodness, yet cannot find a way to repent. His soul is
captured by Mephistophilis and taken to torment in a life devoid of
God.
Faustus: Adders and
serpents, let me breathe a while!
Ugly hell, gape not! come not,
Lucifer!
I'll burn my books!—Ah,
Mephistophilis!
Similarly.
Dorian comes to repent his life in the end, yet is persuaded by Lord Henry that
alteration is useless, even undesirable. He ends in torment with the wounds in his own
breast that are meant for the evil doppleganger
portrait.
Dorian: Was it really true
that one could never change? He felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his
boyhood- .... it would kill the painter's work, and all that that meant. It would kill
the past, and when that was dead, he would be
free.
By contrast, Goethe's
Faust is saved by the love and prayers of Gretchen and snatched to Heaven before
Mephistopheles and his demons can snatch him to the inferno.
Mephistopheles: They’ve
stolen a great, a unique treasure:
That noble soul, mortgaged to my pleasure,
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They’ve snatched it away, with cunning
even.
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