As Benedict Anderson makes evident in Imagined Communities, literature and the nation are often intertwined in a multitude of ways. In the case of Goethe's Faust, a single literary work became so significant to the German people that they made it their national text and used it, consciously or unconsciously, to help them decipher what it means to be German. The story of Faust itself conveys truths about nationalism and nationhood; during their travels, Faust and Mephistopheles encounter various portraits of nations, and Faust also strives to create his own nation. Among the principles transmitted by the text include the idea of ​​the nation as a people linked to the past and the present, the existence of the nation as an expression of a homogeneous community and the symbolic importance of women in the national imagination. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay What is a Nation? by Ernest Renan? is an overview of an important definition of nation. Over the course of his analysis Renan develops this definition in a series of points. It is his belief that people who wish to become part of a greater nation must show active consent in doing so. He also argues that members of a nation should share both a common past and a desire to display commonalities in the present. He states: “A nation has a soul, a spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other in the present. One is the possession of a rich heritage of memories; the other is the desire to live together and enhance the common heritage”. Consider Faust's nation and its inhabitants; two members don't seem to fit. Philemon and Baucis are in many ways the antitheses of Faust; they are perfectly content to stay where they are, worship God, and live a relatively meager existence. For this reason it is clear to both parties that the old couple do not consent to be part of Faust's nation, and in lines 11275-77 Faust requests their transfer: “Then go and set them aside for me! –/ Know the land, with my approval, / Set it aside for the relocation of the old. Since Faust, Philemon, and Baucis do not share a past and do not wish to live together in harmony, they cannot effectively form a nation together. For a nation to grow strong and prosperous, there must be other nations to which it can compare itself. In Faust Part 2 Act II, Faust and Mephisto travel through Greece, and as they survey the area, Mephisto points out the sins of the Greek people, saying, "They draw the heart of man to happier sins: /While ours, one ever find, they are dark things. (Goethe 6974-75) This comparison is significant not because of the opinions it presents, but because of the very fact that there is a very clear situation of "us against them". the ideas presented in Anderson's Imagined Communities; Mephistopheles takes on the general qualities of both his own people and this foreign entity, even though he cannot personally know any significant percentage of the people about whom he is making these judgments. Anderson argues that this is the basis of what a nation is; there is a sense of familiarity and brotherhood that is felt throughout the nation. It turns strangers into family and, as Anderson states, “Ultimately, it is this brotherhood that has made it possible , over the last two centuries, to so many millions of people, not so much killing, as being willing to die for such limited imaginations.” .” This clarifies why it is so easy for Mephisto to discern the supposed differences between the two nations. Faust ends with a scene in the heavens where several important women from the Bible appear,.