Final Essay

Good and evil, the spectrum of choices that guide every creature, human and otherwise. The choices of these creatures made through living, day in and day out, action after action, within a realm of choices seemingly guided by free will. Yet, these choices, this illusionary free will, itself, could be nothing more than fate’s mocking mistress. Good and evil not a choice, but rather a predestinated vision preparing to occur. While both Milton’s Paradise Lost and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus explore the opposition between free will and fate, Milton ponders such through his analysis of Satan and the fallen angels, while, in contrast, Marlowe focuses upon humanity. In the beginning of Paradise Lost, we the reader are introduced to Satan and his fellow

“O then at last relent! is there no place Left for repentance, none for pardon left?” () Through Satan’s admission of regret, one is to wonder if even Satan, the embodiment of evil himself, is redeemable at this point of time, or if it is merely Satan’s fate to stand as the darkness to God’s lightness. “Hadst thou the same free will and power to stand?” (Milton 66) Satan, himself, questions at this point if his own fall from grace was predestined to allow for the free will of others; whether or not if his fall was merely so that humanity would have free will. Without Satan’s rebellion Death and Sin have no place within God’s creation and more specifically within humanity. “quote” Without Satan’s rebellion there is no evil or wickedness to balance God’s goodness. Adam and Eve would not have the choice to eat of the fruit, to sin. Whether or not Satan’s fall was a choice that came from his actual being or if it was merely a predestined action fated to occur, determines the true prevalence of free will and fate within the religion of

The Old Man even insists that if Faustus repents that he might see the glory of heaven. “Ah Doctor Faustus, that I might prevail To guide thy steps unto the way of life, By which sweet path thou may’st attain the goal That shall conduct thee to celestial rest. Break heart, dropblood, and mingle it with tears, Tears falling from repentant heaviness” (Marlowe 26-31). Because in the end Faustus never truly repents, one is not to know whether or not Faustus could have been redeemed or if he was fated for hell. The reader is left questioning free will and fate. Throughout both Paradise Lost and Doctor Faustus, the reader is called to question the ways of choice and fate; whether it be through Satan’s possible inevitable fall within Paradise Lost or Faustus’ intrenching desire for intellect and power within Doctor Faustus. Both texts call into question the interpretation of the bible and therefore key concepts of redemption. By examining the importance of fate and free will these texts are thereby questioning where the truth lies between Calvinistic doctrine and other Protestant