Everyman - the term points to such a character in which
all humans can see a projection of their own characters. Everyman represents all
humankind. Similarly, Marlowe's Faustus is represented as such a character who stands
for universal multiplicity of human gray features.
Faustus
is a combination of black and white. Like Sophocles's Oedipus or Shakespeare's Macbeth
and Lear, he is blinded by greed, ambition and pride. Still, he is a profound scholar
who rescues his country from the attack of plague. He is efficient in almost all the
fields of worldly knowledge. He is the teacher at a German university. Yet, all his
wonderful qualities are overshadowed by his evil deeds. Crossing the limit makes him a
loser after all. Like Icarus, his wings melt and all his good features go in vain. He,
in spite of that, has an "amiable soul" inside the
wrong-doer. He chooses the wrong path, deals with the devils, but many a times, we have
seen him willing to repent and return, though he could not at
all.
Marlowe's Faustus is neither a demon, nor an angel; he
is totally a human being, an 'everyman' in this sense. As humans possess both good and
bad attributes, Faustus, also, takes a grayish position.
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