Tintin Forums

Herge uses a 'devil and angel' technique to show when a character is battling with their conscience, in two Tintin books (unless I've missed another occurrence). Name the two book titles and the characters.

Snowy - Tintin in Tibet (with the temptation of whisky)
Captain Haddock - The Red Sea Sharks (with the temptation of whisky) on board Allan's 'rescue' boat.

You are correct, well done Tintinrulz! Your turn for the next question.
Tintin in Tibet page 19, Red Sea Sharks page 42.

Does anyone know when the earliest representation of a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other was made? By which, I mean depicting a struggle with one's conscience.

This isn't a trivia question, just a point of interest!

Ed

edcharlesadams wrote: Does anyone know when the earliest representation of a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other was made? By which, I mean depicting a struggle with one's conscience. This isn't a trivia question, just a point of interest!

I would guess that this first appeared in animated cartoons. Disney in the 30s, maybe? Didn't Donald Duck have this kind of struggle in numerous occassions?

In Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus the main character's conscience appears in the guise of a good angel and a bad angel, who tussel with him over the temptations of life. This dates from 1604, and is based on earlier work, so it is a pretty old conceit.

Thanks Mikael and jock, that's very interesting.

Through Google I've found a 1938 film, <a href="http://imdb.com/title/tt0030068/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Donald's Better Self</a>, the poster for which gives a typical representation:

[link no longer works]

As for Faustus, I'd clean forgotten the reference! Presumably Hergé knew the story: he makes enough references to Gounod's version... And of course Rastapopoulos, as the Marquis de Gorgonzola, dresses as Mephistopheles in The Red Sea Sharks, only a few pages before Haddock's moral dilemma.

Ed

Third scene with 'devil and angel':
Snowy - 'Tintin in Tibet' (with temptation of a bone, p.45) !
-------------------

Concerning Gounod's Faustus**, it might be worth mentioning that Rastapopoulos & Castafiore do match respectively:
- Mephistopheles, via his disguise in The Red Sea Sharks (p.38 + see above)
- Margarita, via her dress in The Calculus Affair (p.53) and her Margarita's song in The Emerald (p.36)

...as if some narrow unseen* link between them had been amplified* via external data* liable to make it visible.

* please search for related threads.