Mephistopheles Limitations

Mephistopheles criticizes mankind’s limitations as well as Faust’s, someone whose dissatisfaction with life drives their pursuit of limits. Mephistopheles is unrestrained in his statements on humans’ limits in his response to Faust’s criticism of his attitude towards Margareta’s condition. Mephistopheles indicates Faust’s current anger is “the end of our wit’s tether” to say that there is no strength left in Faust’s sense of mind. The end of the tether is where Mephistopheles states “poor human brains always snap” to generalize to the whole human condition. The tether symbolizes a limit to the capacities of Faust’s or any human’s mind. Limits are also projected onto the whole of a human rather than just a mind when Mephistopheles questions