Mephistopheles

Mephistopheles is a demonic figure from German folklore who was made famous in the legend of Faust but would become a stock character in Germanic literature as a type of folk-devil and a personification of evil.

Faust
Despite his scholarly eminence, Faust is bored and disappointed. He decides to call on the devil for further knowledge and magic powers with which to indulge all the pleasure and knowledge of the world. In response, the devil's representative Mephistopheles appears. He makes a bargain with Faust: Mephistopheles will serve Faust with his magic powers for a term of years, but at the end of the term, the devil will claim Faust's soul and Faust will be eternally damned. The term usually stipulated in the early tales is twenty-four years.

During the term, Faust makes use of Mephistopheles in various ways. In many versions of the story, in particular, Goethe's drama, Mephistopheles helps him to seduce a beautiful and innocent girl, usually named Gretchen, whose life is destroyed. However, Gretchen's naive innocence saves her in the end and she enters Heaven. In Goethe's rendition, Faust is saved by God's grace via his constant striving -- in combination with Gretchen's pleadings with God in the form of the Eternal Feminine. However, in the early tales, Faust is irrevocably corrupted and believes his sins cannot be forgiven; when the term ends, the devil carries him off to Hell.