Baucis and Philemon Character Analysis

Characters whom Goethe derived from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Baucis and her husband Philemon own an estate that includes a cottage, a grove of linden trees, and a chapel, where the couple happily lives in peace. After building his seaside kingdom, however, Faust becomes obsessed by the fact that he himself does not control their estate—it is the last piece of land in Faust’s kingdom that eludes his grasp. Unjustly, Faust orders Mephistopheles and the Three Mighty Men to seize the property, although with due compensation and without violence. Instead the devil and his thugs murder Baucis and Philemon, along with a traveler staying with them, an act that outrages Faust and leads him, at last, to renounce the use of magic.