A Comparison of Faust and Black Butler on the Theme That Humans Will Go to Great lengths to Satisfy Their Desires

Author: Joel Schmierer

 

A Comparison of Faust and Black Butler on the Theme That Humans Will Go to Great lengths to Satisfy Their Desires

 

A predominant theme of both Goethe’s Faust and Yana Toboso’s Black Butler is that humans will go to great lengths to satisfy their desires. Neither Heinrich Faust nor Ciel Phantomhive is a very happy camper in that they both have great desires. Faust suddenly snaps when he discovers he’s wasted the past fifty or so years of his life looking for happiness by learning the kind of useless knowledge that’s taught in school. Faust finds out the hard way that book knowledge does not bring happiness. In fact, he’s so fed up with school-related garbage he nearly commits suicide. Faust’s thoughts of suicide are connected to his isolation from nature and love but they also express how deathly serious (pun intended) Faust is to be fulfilled, as he believes suicide is a courageous way to end his painful, endless striving. Ciel Phantomhive is a young teen whose parents were killed by arsonists. Ciel swears revenge on the arsonists, and believes he can never be content until they are made to see the error of their ways—that is, embarrassed, tortured and killed.

 

Both characters hope to fulfill their desires by forming contracts with supernatural demons/devils that have cool superpowers like pyrokinesis, self-manipulation, lying, grape manipulation and hyperosmia. The theme that humans are willing to go to great lengths to meet their hearts’ desires is underscored by the fact that Faust and Ceil make deals with traditionally diabolical creatures. Ciel forms a contract with Sebastian Michaelis, a reliable demon who proclaims to be “one hell of a butler.” In exchange, Sebastian will be allowed to feast upon Ciel’s soul. Similarly, Faust makes a wager with the devil Mephistopheles: if Mephistopheles can make Faust experience a moment in which he’ll want to last forever yet not feel the urge to strive, then Faust will “be destroyed” at that moment (1702).

 

In wanting to achieve their respective ends, both Ciel and Faust heavily rely on their supernatural allies instead of simply resolving their issues themselves. Mephistopheles and Sebastian Michaelis are actually unnecessary for Faust and Ciel, respectively, to satiate the latters’ desires. For example, one could imagine that Faust, without the help of Mephistopheles, falls in love with a woman and thereby fills the void in his heart that was first created by his desire to experience the greatest happiness. One could imagine that Ciel, who is rich, could hire detectives to reveal the identities of the arsonists who incinerated his home and parents. Then, Ciel could hire bounty hunters to take good care of/kill the arsonists. Perhaps our protagonists are strivers of such caliber that they will do anything to achieve their goals.

 

The theme of humans striving to achieve the ends they perceive as good is encouraged by the two works. Ciel believes he is in the right light to avenge his parents, even if he must commit crimes. At the very end of Black Butler—warning: this blog may contain spoilers like “all the characters in Faustand Black Butler die, just kidding, but there’ll be spoilers, so keep reading—Ciel survives all of Sebastian’s attempts to devour his soul, Ciel changes into an awesome demon, and he ends up owning Sebastian as a butler for eternity, which seems like a pretty good fate. Also, Ciel does succeed in the gruesome murders of the arsonists/spiritually-integrated hermaphroditic/male angel (hence arsonists not arsonist). Thus, Black Butler promotes the theme of striving to achieve perceived good ends because Ciel accomplishes his goal and is rewarded. I believe Faust goes to Heaven in large part because he is an exceptional striver and he doesn't stop, even though his striving is often wayward. Tragically, Faust kills Gretchen's brother, makes a deal with Mephistopheles, and almost certainly would've committed suicide had he not literally received help from God. However, it seems Faust's one defining trait is his hunger to strive, and Goethe wants to make a point that those who always strive will be rewarded.

 

It is strongly suggested that when man’s will to strive ends, he is in the devil’s hands. In Faust, the instant Faust becomes complacent, he loses the wager and dies. In Black Butler, after Ciel no longer needs to strive because his desire has been fulfilled, Sebastian consumes Ciel’s soul (technically, Sebastian didn’t, but he would’ve hadn’t another demon by chance stolen Ciel’s soul and guarded it beforehand, which was obviously a deux ex machina that allowed there to be a season 2).

 

The endings themselves of both Faust and Black Butler leave the audience with many desires that perhaps will never be satisfied. Mainly, the audience wonders whether the endings to Faust and Black Butler are tragic. For example, Faust does make it to Heaven, which may either deny or assert that Faust is a tragedy, as some agree and some disagree that he should go to Heaven based on his actions. In the case of Black Butler, Ciel satisfies his darkest desires, but he also becomes a demon, which may be interpreted negatively because demons represent evil. Audiences likely find their desires left unsatiated as it extremely difficult to read part II of Faust and also dissatisfying that there’s no third season to Black Butler, as the beloved demon Sebastian, who ranks highly among the hottest manga characters, is left to slave as Ciel's butler for eternity. Although, some fans feel it’s perhaps a happy ending that Ciel’s soul isn’t devoured by Sebastian and that Ciel becomes a demon in control of a loyal demon butler for eternity—pretty wicked.

 
I also have awesome photos. Just copy/paste the links or do what you gotta do:

Sebastian Michaelis—“I’m simply one hell of a butler.”
Picture courtesy of: http://www.roleplaygateway.com/roleplay/code-geass-return-of-a-empire/characters/demon-champion-of-the-geass-kingdom

Ciel Phantomhive dressed casually.
Picture courtesy of: http://www.zerochan.net/221958

Faust and Mephistopheles

Picture courtesy of: http://henryfaust.wordpress.com/

P.S. I'm sorry if I didn't get everything right because I didn't have time to read part II of Faust, so I went off other's shortened explanations, and I didn't read any Black Butler manga and watched about one hour of the anime, although I did briefly read each episode synopsis.

Resources for the writing:

I read two webpages:
1) http://www.jstor.org/stable/30154412?seq=11
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Black_Butler_episodes