Blind Faith In Moliere's Tartuffe

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Tartuffe has an easy game with Orgon, whose blind faith and obsession render him an easy "bait to fish", in line with the Enlightenment Era, which challenges religious hypocrisy and irrationality caused by blind faith. Even the simple and linear structure of the play used by Moliere reflects the style of an era, looking for spontaneity and realism not only in the text but also in acting. Initially, Orgon praises Tartuffe without giving any proof as evidenced by these verses, “If you only could know him as I do, You would be his true disciple, too. The universe, your ecstasy would span. This is a man . . . who . . . ha! . . . well, such a man." At the end of the opera, Tartuffe is unmasked and loses all power over Orgon, who claims to have always doubted him, “Just stop a minute there! You move too fast! Delight and rapture? Fulfilling desire? Ah! Ah! You are a traitor and a liar! Some holy man you are, to wreck my life, marry my daughter? Lust after my wife? I’ve had my doubts about you, but kept quiet” (58). In contrast, the style of Goethe's Faust is fragmented and chaotic, responding to …show more content…

In Goethe's Faust, Mephistopheles is a sort of mirror that reflects the human smallness, which vainly tries to grab the elusive. FAUST What am I, then, if it can never be: The realization of all human possibility, That crown my soul so avidly reaches for? MEPHISTO In the end you are—just what you are. Wear wigs high-piled with curls, oh millions, Stick your legs in yard-high Hessians, You’re still you, the one you always were (442). In both works there is a blatant exposure of human fragility, easily deceived in the presence of a blinded obsession, with religion in Tartuffe, and highest knowledge in