Unlike the epic journey of the poet Dante, who progressed from the "Inferno" to the "Purgatorio" to the heights of the "Paradiso" before returning to the surface of the earth, according to the poet Goethe's text of "Faust," the protagonist makes no such a return, ethically, morally, or physically. "Faust" is thus not an epic play of descent and return. In other words, Goethe's Faust does not return to the earth with a more profound understanding of humanity's moral and ethical struggles, filled with a determination to live a more ethically coherent life, as does the earlier medieval poet Dante.
             Dante's poetic trilogy functions as a kind of poetic spiritual autobiography. But had Goethe's creation of Faust been allowed to return to the earth, the purpose and intent of the plot of the poet's Goethe's work would have been thwarted. Faust is not merely a stand-in for the author. Rather, Goethe hoped to show, in the poem's refashioning from Marlowe's original "Dr. Faustus," a scholarly man who attempted to press the limits of human ethical discourse and interaction, rather than a man who strove to grow subservient to the will of God, or even a man who strove for greater philosophical knowledge of humanity's relationship with the divine. Unlike Dante's final coming to joy and understanding of God through Beatrice, Goethe's understanding is not willing and open, and thus extracts a material price from the protagonist. As he refused to obey God's law of the human limits of knowledge, Faust must die.
             But, for the purposes of ethical surmise, imagine that Goethe did return to the world and to earth after his demise. If he did, he would have to abandon the life of the scholar he once led, and seek a different
             modality of understanding God, a humble and physical life, much like the existence he once scorned. In short, he would have to adopt the life of the woman he ruined.
             At the end of "Faust," Margarete, Goethe's Beatrice or female mu...