ENRON FAUSTUS critical quotes

" Man has overiding desires whose realisation is denied by any form of servitude, and the order of god is... an order of servitude"

Nicholas Brooke: 
Application to Doctor Faustus

• Faustus embodies this conflict perfectly. His “overriding desires” — to “command all things that move between the quiet poles” — are denied by the servitude demanded by God’s order.

• His rejection of “Divinity, adieu!” expresses rebellion against the servitude of faith; he will not be bound by divine limitation.

• Yet, his attempt to free himself from that order leads only to another servitude — bondage to Lucifer.

• Marlowe thus exposes the paradox: ambition that seeks absolute freedom ends in a deeper form of enslavement. Faustus’s desire to be godlike proves the impossibility of escaping divine order.

Application to Enron

• In Enron, Prebble translates that same rebellion into secular, capitalist terms.

• Skilling’s ambition - to “change the world” and “redefine business” - reflects the modern desire to transcend economic and moral constraint.

• For him, the “order of God” becomes the regulations and ethical norms of the market — systems that restrict his vision. He wants total freedom: “We are on the side of the angels!” reimagines rebellion as virtue.

• But, like Faustus, Skilling’s rebellion against constraint leads to self-created servitude: he becomes enslaved to illusion, ego, and the image of success.

• His supposed liberation from moral order ends in exposure and ruin - a modern damnation.

"The Christian structure of the play stands firm around eruptions of blasphemy, and does not break" Paul Kocher 1946

Paul Kocher 1946
Applying Kocher’s idea to Doctor Faustus

• Faustus’s “blasphemy” - his cry of “Divinity, adieu!” and his desire to “be a mighty god” - erupts against the Christian framework. Yet, his damnation at the end reasserts that framework.

• His ambition appears revolutionary, but Marlowe ensures it collapses back into orthodoxy: Faustus’s fate reinforces divine supremacy.

• In this sense, Faustus’s ambition is not truly liberating - it is a contained transgression. The “Christian structure” of the play resists his rebellion; his punishment restores order.

So: Faustus’s tragedy shows that human ambition cannot break the limits imposed by God - it can only expose them.

 Illuminating Enron through Kocher’s idea

Prebble’s Enron, however, removes that moral structure entirely - and this contrast is where the quote becomes powerful in comparison.

• In the modern, capitalist world of Enron, there is no divine order to “stand firm” around blasphemy. Skilling’s “eruptions” -his godlike arrogance (“We are on the side of the angels!”) and rejection of ethical restraint - are not contained by any higher moral framework.

• The “order of God” in Marlowe becomes the “order of the market” in Prebble - but that market is amoral, self-regulating, and illusory. There is no absolute law to judge or redeem Skilling; only exposure and collapse.

• So, where Marlowe’s play reaffirms faith, Prebble’s exposes its absence: Skilling’s downfall is not divine punishment but the logical outcome of a system without moral boundaries.

""knowing good and evil" grow dim in the unhallowed splendour
of the promise, "ye shall be as gods"" -

Edward Dowden:
alluding to genesis, Thus, Faustus’s tragedy reflects how moral perception fades under the intoxication of ambition. He doesn’t reject morality outright; he simply stops seeing it clearly.
Skilling, like Faustus, becomes blind to “good and evil” because the splendour of his own creation feels righteous. Prebble uses this to expose how ambition in late capitalism functions like religion: it sanctifies greed as genius.

Meaning: The lure of becoming godlike blinds humanity to morality -ambition dazzles and corrupts.
Faustus: Moral sense fades under the splendour of knowledge; his desire “to be a mighty god” leads to damnation.

"beside whom friar Bacon sinks into a tame forger of bugbears"
there is mention of bacon by Valdes A1 S1 “bear wise Bacon and Abanus’ works”

H.N Hudson : Bacon had a reputation as an unconventional scholar, pursuing learning in alchemy and magic - interests which earned him the soubriquet 'Doctor Mirabilis'. This led to his rejection
from the Franciscans and eventual imprisonment. He died in Oxford not long after his release.
credited with originating the scientific method-believed that arguing logically could prove the truth. something fundamentally wrong in the way people judged what was true and false. something fundamentally wrong in the way people judged what was true and false. devised four main sources of error: authority , popular bias, vanity, reliance on logical arguement. etc-----> see sheet

"Marlowe intended to typify the inevitably continuous degredation of a soul that has renounced its ideal"

James Russel Lowe 1887: “Continuous degradation” implies a slow moral decay rather than an immediate fall.

“Renounced its ideal” means rejecting the moral, spiritual, or intellectual principles that once gave one’s life meaning.

The quote suggests that Marlowe’s tragedy is not only about damnation but about the psychological erosion that comes from betraying one’s own moral centre.

Meaning: Once one abandons moral or spiritual ideals, decline is inevitable and gradual.
Faustus: Rejects divinity and truth for power; his intellect decays into vanity and despair.
Enron: Skilling renounces his ideals of innovation for greed; his ambition degrades into delusion.
Comparative point: Both dramatise ambition as a moral unravelling — the soul’s corruption through self-betrayal.

"Renaissance man who had to pay the medieval
price for being one,"

RM Dawkins

"the pride of will and eagerness of curiosity"

J.C. Maxwel

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the
world: the unreasonable one persists in trying
to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

George Bernard Shaw,

capitalism automatically generates
arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities
that radically undermine the meritocratic
valueson which democratic societies are
based.”

Thomas Picketty

“Over a long period of time, the main force in
favor of greater equality has been the diffusion
of knowledge and skills.”

Thomas Piketty

“At the heart of every major political upheaval lies a fiscal revolution.”

Enron literally stages a fiscal revolution: the deregulation of the energy market and the creation of abstract financial products (like mark-to-market accounting and the SPEs).

Skilling’s ambition is framed as visionary , he believes he’s building a new economic order, where value can be invented rather than earned.

But this “fiscal revolution” leads to political and moral upheaval: corruption, collapse of trust, and the exposure of the illusion that capitalism is fair or meritocratic.

Prebble uses this to critique neoliberal ideology , showing how financial innovation, when unrestrained by ethics, becomes destructive rather than revolutionary.

 "There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad"

Oscar Wilde quote