Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

Doctor faustus is one of the most famous play of Christopher marlowe. Here I am going to discuss about three questions
1.

What does this last scene (the image of lucifer) signify?

It it obvious from this image that lucifer is celebrating his victory. Evil wins at the end of the play. After a lots of dialogues between Doctor Faustus, Lucifer wins in tempting Doctor Faustus with the help of Mephistophilis. In the last scene Doctor Faustus regrets a lot and did not want to go to hell, but it was already too late for redemption. Doctor Faustus says "or let this hour be but a year, a month, a week, a natural day, that faustus may repent and save his soul!"

Doctor Faustus wants more hour, one more day, or one more year to repent so that his soul may save from devilish world that is hell. But his own decisions led him to fall in hell. Now nothing can be changed. So this is the full victory of the prince of Satanic world Lucifer which is clearly shown in the above image.

                                                                                           2. Is God present in the play? If yes where and how? If no, why?

We can think about God in two perspective, that is mentally or physically. God is not presented in the play physically but mentally he is present throughout the play in the mind of Doctor Faustus. In the first scene of the play Doctor Faustus wish to be like God, he wants to equate himself with God. And at the end when his end was near, he recall God for redemption. He wants to repent for all the sins he commited. Doctor Faustus is responsible for his own fall. With the help of necromacy he calls Mephistophilis for the quest of knowledge. But Mephistophilis the evil draws Doctor Faustus to the world of lust,greedness and also there is written contract between them that after four and twenty years he gives his soul to Mephistophilis to the hell.

                                                                                        3.

                                                                                        3. What reading and interpretation can be given to this image with the reference to central theme of the play Doctor Faustus?                                                                                                   This is the image of two Greek mythological character- The father Daedalus and his son Icarus.

Icarus wants to fly in the sky so his father makes waxen wings for his son and warns him to do not fly near sun otherwise his wings would have melt. Icarus ignores his fathers's warning and therefore he fall and drowned into the sea. He is responsible for his own fall. Similarly in the play Doctor Faustus drowned in the world of evil by ignoring the warnings of the good angel, the old man, his two good friends. All this good characters warns him a lot to do not listen evil voice and constantly told him to repent for all the sin he has done but Faustus did not listen and at the end when his death comes near he wanted to repent but now it was too late. In this way ignorance and declining from all moral values leads to his tragic end.

Icarus also does the same thing of ignorance and leads towards his tragic fall. Therefore this image is connected with Doctor Faustus.