"To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world."

I'm sure many of you from comp/lit recognize the quote above from the Ayn Rand essay contest from last year. I found it to be quite appropriate for this particular post.

To me, the soul is the metaphysical embodiment of one's values, ego, and capacity of judgment. To sell this is quite an act and voids oneself of nearly all that makes a human a human!
Yet, as Faustus proves and Roark goes on to say, people do it nearly every day.

Today's world is no exception. Yet today, one who would sell their soul would probably not take the form of a man of knowledge like Faustus, nor would the one who bought the soul take the form of a devil. Instead, they both might the form of a door to door salesman.

Every day, the salesman goes out and travels from door to door to peoples' houses that he doesn't know and tries to sell things that will somehow make their lives better or easier. In this action, he not only attempts sell useless items to unsuspecting suburban dwellers, he offers up his soul. Like I said before, I believe the soul to be an amalgam of a number of essential human characteristics. In the case of the salesman, the one that might be forfeited first is one's values. The primary goal of a salesman is to get the potential customer to buy the product. Sometimes, by any means necessary. These practices may include exaggerating the effectiveness or abilities of a product, in which the salesman lies to the customer. Not only does the salesman lie to the customer in this act, he lies to himself. This is a destruction of any honest man's values. He is selling a product on false pretenses and destroying the honesty of the company that allowed him to sell it. Another salesman practice is to "sell" the product. This practice includes entertaining the buyer or charming them while telling them how wonderful the product is. A prime example of this is in the "Shamwow" commercials seen on TV and nearly all of Billy Mays' commercials. In such commercials the salesperson is seen jumping from place to place showing how effective the product is, or simply screaming about how wonderful it is. Though these commercials are entertaining, it is important to realize how much work these people are putting into selling towels or cleaning products. It is almost like these people are placing the products in front of themselves, desperately trying to sell them while silently losing parts of their souls as they pour bits of them into selling these products with such fervor.

At the same time, a salesman could be the Mephistopheles of this world. When the salesman sells his product, he must first convince the potential customer to purchase it. As said before, a salesman will do nearly anything to sell his product. Even an uninterested customer might eventually be charmed into buying a product. Yet, there is something more in this than simply being "charmed" into buying something. By buying a product they were originally uninterested in, they have forfeited their chief interest: remaining true to what they want. This is something incredibly important in keeping one's soul. By submitting to the words and charms of another, they have sold their soul by submitting to the will of another (the will of the salesman to buy the product)

As others have stated, a modern Faustus would be different, but definitely not improved.