Comedy Critique
Comedy Critique Goethe’s Faust and Voltaire’s Candide were two of the most interesting books that I have ever read! Both comedies were very different from each other in many ways. The structure of both books varied significantly. I enjoyed Candide more than Faust partially due to the structure. I found that because Faust almost entirely rhymed that it was harder to follow. It was very distracting to me and I felt as if the rhyming took away from the story. Candide was told more like a story and I found it easier to follow because of this. I did, however, like the characters in Faust better. I found the characters easy to relate to and loved the sarcastic wit of Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles represents evil and the Devil and is there to see if Faust will stay on the “right” path. Mephistopheles was a very comical character. He kept the story more alive and interesting. Faust was also a main character who was basically being tested by God to see if he would choose the Devil’s path. Faust is like Candide because they are both the protagonist. They are both on this journey to find out their true beliefs and they both find love along the way. Both comedies are black comedies. Black comedy is comedy that uses black humor which is dark humor and things that one would typically not find amusing were made to be comical. In Candide they made rape comical when normally things like that are horrifying. I did not find these things as amusing but they were not as harsh as they would be if it were not in a typical book. Faust also included death that was meant to be comical because it is a black comedy as well. There is also a great use of satire in both books. Satire is a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are help up to scorn, derision, or ridicule. Satire is used extensively throughout black comedy because it makes fun of things that are typically not found to be funny. In Faust there is satire used when the mother of Margret is