Goethe resisted all attempts on the part of his critics and admirers to draw oversimplified and final messages from Faust—an understandable reaction, since why should anyone bother with the dramatic trappings if the meaning can be summed up in a few abstract statements? He told Eckermann that people constantly came to him asking the meaning of Faust—as if he knew! It was not in his line, he said, to try to embody anything abstract. Goethe's thought process is dialectical, and for almost every one of his aphorisms which seems to illustrate one side of a matter there is another illuminating the opposite side. Goethe carried this tendency so far, in fact, that he once remarked to Eckermann that his Philemon and Baucis had nothing to do with the traditional couple. He added, almost in the same breath, that the persons and the situation were nevertheless similar. Before examining the meaning of Goethe's verse in detail, a brief summary of the action taking place in the fifth act of the second part of Faust is necessary:
A Wanderer returns to a land, now Faust's kingdom, where he had been ship wrecked long ago and had found shelter in the home of Philemon and Baucis. He learns from the old couple, who are still alive, that their house on the hill now stands in the shadow of Faust's castle. Faust wants them to move to the lowlands, which he has reclaimed from the sea with the aid of Mephistopheles, but they have so far refused to obey him. Faust's animosity toward the old couple is then depicted. In the end he assigns to Mephistopheles the task of eviction. Philemon and Baucis resist. They are killed, the Wanderer is dispatched along with them, and the house is burned down. Faust's blindness and death soon follow, but not before he attempts a final project, the construction of a canal.