Just as Faust rightly guesses, he does not specifically need the services of the witch in order to carry out his plan, although he lamely protests that for him to make such a brew himself would be too much of a bother. He is slowly working against Faust s psyche and is preparing to catch the sharp, alert professor and amateur necromancer unaware. Faust first cries when he comes upon the hearth and the cauldron with its strange fumes rising up from it. His introduction to the witch is the beginning of the process by which Mephistopheles dispels his delusions and breaks him down. The intention of Goethe s devil does not seem to be to recreate man in his own image, because mere man is hardly capable of such evil, but to make man disgusting and yet have him retain the pride which will prevent true self-awareness from causing him to turn to the only source which will free him from his bonds.
Hell starts above ground.
Apparently, he did not realize the full importance of that conclusion, that his own conversion is out of his own hands, for although he thinks he can quell scruples and doubts, and though he does not fear devil or hell, he is merely deceived, because the drama forces us as well as Faust to conclude that the devil was to be feared after all. He starts out convinced that he is independent of heaven and of hell. Many sorts of characters set the tone in the witch s kitchen, and they represent the different characteristics of the devil and mirror his varying strategies. Faust is blind to their significance, but the monkeys tending the cauldron are vulgar extremes of the same fate to which he is being steered. These greedy monkeys, however, share Faust s sins and failings in less refined form.