Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus as a Tragic Hero

The eponymous protagonist of Christopher Marlowe’s remarkable tragedy, Doctor Faustus is a tragic hero of contradictory characteristics, like grandiloquence, vaulting ambition, and unusual, even deliberate myopic vision and a propensity to squander powers achieved at the expense of bartering his soul to the devil. When the character is first introduced in the play, he is aspiring to be a musician. The introduction of the Chorus is imbued with the premonition of the ominous future of Doctor Faustus, but when Faustus cogitates on the wondrous deeds, he is about to accomplish with his magnificent powers, it appears glorious .He reflects on the prospect of acquiring wealth from all over the world, and envisages reconstructing the boundaries of the European countries, and availing access to the vast knowledge existing in the world about the entire universe. Faustus may be a presumptuous and megalomaniac, but his ambitions are very impressive and the reader is compelled to sympathize with him. By discarding the medieval notion of God centered universe, and accepting huge potentials of human, Faustus becomes the representative of the spirit of the Renaissance. The initial depiction of Faustus’s character, as an aspiring magician personifies those huge possibilities embedded in every human being. Apparently, Faustus’s character is not impervious to any opaqueness as he makes the pact with Mephistopheles to accomplish his aspirational goals refusing to realize what the pact actually stands for. On several occasions, he consoles himself by saying that hell is not as bad as we imagine it to be, and only fortitude is required to confront it. Even when he mentions to Mephistopheles, making him gasp in disbelief, that he does not believe in the existence of hell. In spite of his being nonchalant about the impending damnation, Faustus is dubious right from the beginning, fraught with doubts which forms a recurring pattern in the play, where he contemplates to contrite, only to be recoiled from it at the last moment. It is not clear why he withdraws himself from repenting each and every time. Maybe, His Pride and Soaring ambition thwarted the way, or maybe he convinces himself that God will not salvage his soul .It was not difficult on the part of the playwright to dismantle the character of Faustus, as after the glorious and magnificent character portrayal at the beginning, with his huge ambitions and visions, the middle of the play unveils the real petty nature of the tragic protagonist. After achieving the powers he yearned for, he is unsure about the use of it. Marlowe vaguely implicated that the desire for true knowledge ultimately leads to God whom Faustus has already repudiated. The attainment of absolute power corrupts Faustus’s mind and all his gigantic visions were neglected by him. His achievements were reduced to petty things like trudges around Europe, playing tricks on yokels and performing necromancy to impress the emperors of various states. He exchanges his marvellous boon for trivial and insignificant things and entertainment. With all his areas of possibilities narrowed down, he visits more noblemen and continues to perform more trivial tricks to impress them until the Faustus of the initial act is completely engulfed in mediocrity.