Preview

Sorrows of Young Werther

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1394 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Sorrows of Young Werther
WERTHER AND SELF DECEPTION

Romanticism was deeply interested in creating art and literature of suffering, pain and self-pity. With poets pining for a love long gone and dead and authors falling for unavailable people, it appears that romantics in literature were primarily concerned with self-injury and delusion. In Goethe's novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther", we find another romantic character fulfilling his tragic destiny by falling victim to extreme self-deception.

Werther's story may appear simple and even trite to some- a young man falls in love with a woman he can never be with and deludes himself into believing that she loves him too only to be severely disappointed in the end. When nothing is left to look forward to, Werther kills himself. Durkheim describes this type of suicide as egoistic suicide where a person kills himself to make other people feel sorry. "Egoistic suicide," Durkheim writes, "results from man's no longer finding a basis for existence in life" (258). But on closer analysis, this story is anything but simple. It is a psychologically complex tale that fully unearths the extreme internal mental conflict that a person in such a situation would undergo. Many claim that this story is autobiographical in nature but that is beyond the scope of our present discussion.

Romantic literature was on the one hand concerned with tragedy and on the other it also dwelled on sympathy. It was the aim of most romantic writers and poets to engage in development of characters that would attract sympathy and pity. However in this novel, while it may be sympathy, pity or self-injury that served as one of the motivating forces behind creation of the character of Werther, it also appears that psychological exploration of the mental state of a person caught in this unfortunate situation was the main aim. Werther's character is seriously delusional. He deceives himself regularly making himself believe that Lotte, the woman he had fallen in love with, was



References: 1. Durkheim, Emile. Suicide: A Sociological Approach. Trans. John A. Spaulding. New York: Free, 1951. 2. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. The Sorrows of Young Werther and Selected Writings. Trans. Catherine Hutter. New York: Signet, 1962.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the excerpt “Place of Sorrows” from On the Road with Charles Kuralt, by Charles Kuralt, there it explains the battle of Little Big Horn and all the unfortunate event that lay there during it. Three main literary styles used in this excerpt are diction, syntax, and organization. The name of this excerpt shows that it will be saddening and sorrowful type of story.…

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In conclusion, Dark Romanticism was popular in the nineteenth-century in America. The most common themes of Dark Romanticism works involve the subject matter of the conflict between good and evil. Both Hawthorne and Poe, in “The Minister’s Black Veil” and “The Raven,” became known as Dark Romantics because they tended to view the world as egotistical rather than optimistic. They had a fascination for the mysterious, supernatural, and the Gothic. Their philosophical perspective is supernatural and melancholy…

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Mukcrakers 5.02

    • 265 Words
    • 2 Pages

    -Romantic writers believed that all people were encouraged torward self-development, and that everyone is valued as individuals from birth. They also believed in expressing themselves in ways that they chose, like art, and all kinds of expression.…

    • 265 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Romantic movement, often known as Romanticism, was a literary, intellectual, and artistic movement starting in the late 1700’s into the 19th century. It originated in and traveled through Europe, inspiring its writers. Literary works during this era emphasized the reader’s imagination and emotion. They also had interests in nature and strive to be different from the standards that have been set by previous works. Romantic pieces almost become unrealistic with its fantasy or imagery. “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving is a good example of the Romantic movement. This short story uses imagery and symbolism including elements of nature, it has the common Romantic theme of challenging the character about their past and their inner feelings, and the emotions of the other characters are heightened.…

    • 550 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    2. What is the significance of the narrator’s use of "we" to tell the story? What values does the narrator appear to hold? Are there points in the story where he offers his own commentary? How does it affect your experience of the story?…

    • 317 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Scientific Revolution Dbq

    • 1563 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The political arena in this time was a boiling pot, as the Industrial Revolution was in full force. These facts led to the changes seen in the arts. Unhappy with the ways of rationality, materialism and objectivity; the Romantics saw humans as feeling first and foremost, then thinking. Romantics were more attentive to matters of the heart, beauty, love, dreams and all things different. For example, the author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe exemplifies the Romantic Movement perfectly in his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Benton describes the plot as: “It’s main character, Werther, is discontented with Enlightenment ideals of objectivity and rationality. He seeks, instead, the greater meaning of life. Werther does not find either happiness or satisfying love, and he commits suicide” (219). This novel tells a story of individual feeling of human beings during the Romantic era, after the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, the inner-self lost to a wave of machinery, methodology and materialism. In addition, a belief in the strange for this time period would definitely include philosopher George Hagel, who believed a “synthesis” between eras would occur based on the spirit of each individual period. In other worlds, he believed that periods in time are opposites that must combine into one new era. The individualistic artists of the era, such as Emerson and Thoreau,…

    • 1563 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    According to Mr. Young, “Romanticism was a nineteenth-century literary and artistic movement that placed a premium on imagination, intuition, emotion, nature, and individuality.” These principles are reflected in many Romantic authors including Irving, Poe, Dickinson, and others. The compendium of poems with Romantic origins differ incredibly, but the dominant themes of imagination, intuition, nature, and individualism unify Romantic poetry.…

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Emile Durkheim was one of the most influential people to write about suicide and its causes. Suicide had previously been thought to be a moral and psychological problem whereas Durkheim related suicide to sociological problems in modern society. He believed and worked to prove that suicide was not related to individualism but linked to the effects of the external influences of modern society. External social influences upon an individual covered the broad and varied aspects such as culture, religion and family. Durkheim believed that suicide was directly related to the level of social integration and/or regulation of a person in society. He developed groups into which an individual was categorised according to their level of integration or regulation. Although he received criticism at the time, his findings still have a great influence on modern sociologists; with many of their theories being based upon his initial findings.…

    • 2013 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Written in 1818 by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein is widely considered to be among the novels that fully exemplify Romantic-era literary achievement. The Romantic movement is a general term used to denote the intellectual evolution in literature and the arts, primarily in 19th century Europe. Substantial facets of literary Romanticism include belief in the innate virtue of humans, the bounds of nature, as well as the polarity of human emotion, all of which are embodied in Shelley’s Frankenstein. Through reading Shelley’s novel, some of the fundamental ideals of Romanticism genuinely become obvious.…

    • 1511 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the Romantic Era, the Dark Romantics sought to oppose the ideas of the Transcendentalists, who believed in following one’s own heart alone. A quintessential Dark Romantic, Edgar Allan Poe uses literary devices, the theme of death, and the creation of a paranoid mood to exemplify insanity and evil in humans. “The Raven,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Oval Portrait,” all show the dangers of following human intuition alone, contradicting the ideas of the Transcendentalists.…

    • 685 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”, Poe explores how self-inflicted isolation can lead to madness through the persona’s changing moods as he comes to terms with the full meaning and irrevocability of death.…

    • 1489 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Writers – Romantic modes of thought flourished in conjunction with the revival of religion, increased interest in history, and rising nationalism – many poets used the anguish, depression, and despair in their lives to summon a higher…

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The letters at the beginning of the novel strongly portray the key Romantic ideas of the time – cultivated individualism, reverence for the natural world, idealism, physical and emotional passion, and an interest in the mystic and supernatural. This is mainly seen through the narrator-protagonist Walter, who shows himself as a Romantic, with his “love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous,” which pushes him along the perilous, lonely pathway he has chosen to follow.…

    • 408 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Romanticism was a literary movement that occurred in the late eighteenth century to the mid nineteenth century which shifted the focus of literature from puritan works, to works which revolved around imagination, the beauty of nature, the individual, and the value of emotion over intellect. The ideas of the movement were quite revolutionary as earlier literature was inhibited by the need to focus on society and the rational world it effected. Romanticism allowed writers to be more creative with there stories and to explore an irrational world which before, would have been at the very least frowned upon if not outright rejected. The short story, "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne is an example of a romantic work because it showcases the individual over society, exalts emotion and intuition over reason, and keeps a strong focus on nature throughout the story.…

    • 836 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Romanticism, commonly known as American romanticism, is writing in which feelings and intuition are valued over reason. It had a great influence over literature, music, and painting in the early eighteenth and well through the nineteenth centuries. It was commonly thought of as a trip into our imagination and could be written as stories, music, and paintings, but it was mainly found in poetry. In this essay, I will discuss the romantic qualities of “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving, “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant, and “The Pit and the Pendulum” by Edgar Allen Poe.…

    • 603 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays