German Seclusiveness

Thomas Mann, in his speech “Germany and the Germans”, talks about “German world-seclusiveness and melancholy world-unfitness” as a particular German state of mind. He says that Germany and Germans are complex because their character is so puzzling because as he traveled around the world he realized that the original nature of the German is his seclusiveness and timidity to face the world around him. Thomas Mann believes that “ In the seclusiveness of there was always so much longing for companionship: indeed at the bottom of the very loneliness that made him wicked lay always the wish to love, the wish to be loved.” (Mann, 319) This means that although the German is lonely and doesn’t fit with the world, he longs for the wish
Werther says “In other respects I am very well off here. Solitude in this terrestrial paradise is a genial balm to my mind, and the young spring cheers with its bounteous promises my oftentimes misgiving heart” (Goethe, May 4) This quote supports the idea that the German misfortune is solitude, which in this case Werther likes because his self imposed isolation from the world enables him to pursue his emotional side or otherwise his wish to be in love or be loved. Werther’s isolation continues to encourage his melancholy world unfitness because he lives like a pessimist who believes that people are wasting their energies trying to provide mere necessities that prolongs their wretched existence in a world that feels like Prison walls. According to Werther, “children are certainly happy beings; but others also are objects of envy, who dignify their paltry employments, and sometimes even their passions, with pompous titles, representing them to mankind as gigantic achievements performed for their welfare and glory.” (Goethe May 22) Werther is envious of the fact that children are free willed and not forced to live based on the imposed rules in society, where man is supposed to gain titles that come with glory. Due to this notion of the world being full of vanity in Werther’s eyes, he creates his own world within himself where he has the freedom to
Werther sees Charlotte as perfect but impossible to describe. He yearns for her bodily presence since it seems like he is obsessed with her. Although Charlotte is not of noble blood, Werther detests the fact that society does not accept their relationship. Charlotte is engaged to Albert, a business man who cares for her as much as Werther does. According to Werther, “her image haunts me! Waking or asleep, she fills my entire soul! Soon as I close my eyes, here, in my brain, where all the nerves of vision are concentrated, her dark eyes are imprinted. Here—I do not know how to describe it; but, if I shut my eyes, hers are immediately before me: dark as an abyss they open upon me, and absorb my senses.” (Goethe, Dec. 6) After Charlotte chose to be with Albert, Werther continued to imagine a life with Charlotte which wears him down because he is lost without her. He imagines her to fill the void in his isolated world, when he closes his eyes he sees her and gets lost in her dark eyes. Without Charlotte to help Werther ease out of his own secluded world, he became filled with sorrow and discontent which took over his soul that left him dark. He gins to contemplate committing suicide when he says, “See, Charlotte, I do not shudder to take the cold and fatal cup, from which I shall drink the draught of death. Your hand presents