I am currently listening to an Audio version of Faust. Audiobooks comprise a good two thirds of my 'reading' because I have very little to occupy my mind at work. I occasionally have to discern between ambiguous white minerals with the aid of acid or steel pick, determine the magnitude of a fault, or decide if the green clay is black enough to be black clay or if the black clay is a seam or veinlet, but by-and-large my work has become little more than rote drudgery. Well...ok worm burrows and stylolites are still pretty cool.
There is something primal in the story of Faust that I think all knowledge/information workers can identify with. Many of us get into the work, whether a science field or otherwise, because we have a desire to explore the mysteries, and not just the mysteries of spreadsheets. That exploration changes you. Often for the better, but not always. The abyss stares back, doubts gather like shadows around a lone candle flame. Unlike Faust most of us come to realize that the ambition of knowing everything is not only impossible, but dangerous. Beyond knowledge workers Man has always been curious about what is really real. And in this reality each person looks for an increase in happiness in the future and an abatement, if not extinction, of the pervading angst that results from uncertainty.
The pessimist author divines apocalyptic visions of near future dystopias of every sort from 1984 to the Maze Runner, whereas the optimist prognosticates technological utopias of varying degrees, all of which are suspicious to the realist who sees the future as possessing the same variegated strata as today however shaped by advances in our understanding. Individuals, and societies change, but human nature does not. You can lead a man to reason, but you can not force him be reasonable.
Faust is a lovely admixture of the story of Job and the story of Icarus. It is a classic because it cuts to the heart of the conflict between human desire and rationality. This primal temptation is frequently found in classics and fairy tales, but lost on most modern fantasy. Instead of this, and other inner conflicts, we are often served up derivative archetypes treading the same old Campbellian monomyth. Sure the monomyth applies to Faust, but that's not the point. Changing the clothes on a puppet won't bring it to life. Nor will convoluted magic systems, flawed characters, or crisis for the sake of crisis. Sure all those things can help, but they don't replace desire, hubris, a sense of destiny (or self-loathing), or a sense of overcoming for breathing life into a story.
If we look at some of the great characters of fantasy, the ones that aren't just stand ins for the reader to identify with (Frodo, Harry Potter), we see desires and aversions that drives them to irrational acts. This leads to a crisis wherein they either overcome and triumph or submit and suffer tragedy, in the really great stories they experience both. This irrational desire is often personified as some Other, whether Mephistopheles, the One Ring, the Man with Thistledown Hair etc. Its deeply satisfying, in a primal way, when the hero overcomes the Other (the dark one), because it allows us to watch the drama in an almost clinical manner. We can identify with the hero as he overcomes the enemy without having to identify as the dark one ourselves.
Sometimes, and more commonly of late, we find that our heroes are not so pure and the dark one isn't so dark. They are, the both of them, relatable and disturbing. This leads to a moving resolution as the tension of the climax abates. We are relieved, but saddened. This is often the case with heroic fantasy, sword and sorcery, and grimdark. I find this to be less satisfying in the primitive manner of high fantasy except to the degree that the characters move closer to the extremes of the good/evil scale. In such works the writer's prose needs to be very sharp to carry the story. Of course, there are plenty of people who enjoy violence and grit for the sake of violence.
In soap operas such as A Song of Ice and Fire we find characters that range from the realistic to ridiculous. This panoply of personality types, sprinkled with just enough dragons and magic to make it fantasy (and therefore allow for a distancing veil), coupled with keen prose, is, what I suspect, makes the story so gratifying to such a broad range of people. But, it is just a Soap Opera. There are no grand ideals, no deep revelations, no cracking of the marrow of the human experience, which is another reason it is popular entertainment.
In truly atrocious works of fantasy, the characters are merely caricatures that trade on the familiarity of their derivations. So powerful is the sense of the familiar that people will turn to them again and again no matter how bad, no matter how repetitive the story becomes (Drizzt Do' Urden). Faust is a fantasy of high and low order. It explores, like any epic fantasy, the various levels of society. It does so with an eye to human nature that most, but not all fantasy, lacks.
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