The Sorrows of Young Werther: Exploring Beliefs and Emotions

To most people, analyzing The Sorrows of Young Werther is a simple task. Relying on the worldview of a pragmatic, technology-driven, and self-assured society, they look at Werther and see a young, romantic who, because of personal weakness, developed an obsession with a woman probably because he knew he could not have her. Gradually, as he realized the folly of his attraction, his fanciful emotions turned into a psychosis and a desire to hurt those who had rejected him through suicide. The perverse mental disease underlying the his wild yearnings is thus revealed and the wickedness of his actions thoroughly understood. This description of Werthers obsession and his "perverse mental disease" is hardly any less sympathetic than Alberts when he calls Werthers passion "intoxication". Dismissing Werther comes easily for most people. They may call him a tragic figure or a spurned lover but their sympathy denies the motivations at the heart of his obsession. Many probably read the story and immediately put it away because they feel Werthers passion has no bearing on their lives. Their dismissal of Werther is conspicuous. They seem to want to suppress him like some sort of strange rebel representing passion, romance, and all sorts of fanciful notions. They have no idea that Goethe, brilliantly, has forced them to suppress themselves. Werther is a rebel who becomes isolated from society because of his beliefs, and, as a result, must directly confront the loneliness from which most people hide. His failure to overcome his loneliness results in his obsession with Lotte and reveals the universal need for empathic love and mankinds denial of that need.

Werther represents, on one level, the individual whose beliefs, emotions, and social position isolate him from society. To begin with, artists powers of perception and sensitivities to beauty and nature generally separate them from most people. Werthers sensibilities, including his reverence for nature and feelings about love, disrupt his ability to involve himself with the townspeople in the story. His disdain for the Princes superficial knowledge of art, for example, demonstrates his inability to tolerate anyone who does not share his artistic inspiration. He empathizes with many of the characters in the story, including the mother at Walheim and the schizophrenic who fell in love with Lotte, but his relationship with them is hardly mutual. His involvement with the mother, for example, only provides him with a subject for contemplation while, in the case of the schizophrenic, the relationship only serves to underscore his own sense of dejection while arousing a sense of pity. No where in the story does Werther find an equal or a superior. Even Lotte, in the end, lacks the powers necessary to resolve his passion and longings. Other than his artistic abilities, psychological difficulties along Freudian lines seem to hinder Werthers ability to interact with others as well. The language of the novel constantly associates Werthers love with motherly love. For example, he falls in love, presumably at first sight, with Lotte when he sees her carrying out the maternal duty of serving bread to her brothers and sisters. His written promise to Lotte that he will visit her mother in heaven after he commits suicide and his references to the innocence of children in his letters to Wilhelm are all signs of a socially disruptive Oedipal dilemma.. Class distinctions also isolate Werther. Goethe appropriately places Werther in a position between the lower and higher classes, making it more difficult to find his place in the social hierarchy. His middle-class status first plagues him in town where the lower classes fear he is trying to condescend to their level. His forced exit from a gathering of social elites during his tenure with the ambassador especially increases his sense of isolation as well as his bitterness about the world.

Bitterness about the division of classes relates to the aspect of Werthers personality most responsible for his isolation: his social critique. Werther condemns every social class, from the "rabble" to the aristocracy. He clearly expresses his reasons for scorning the upper class in his description of some of the guests at Count C.s weekly social gathering. "Then in came in the most gracious Lad von S., with her spouse and in passing they gave me looks and twitched their nostrils in their usual, oh-so-aristocratic way: and, since I cannot abide this breed, I was about to take my leave" (81). Werther cannot tolerate superficial pretense of any kind. He also demonstrates this bitterness towards pretence in his diatribe against "ill-humor" and its close connection to vanity. Werthers belief in passion, speaking from the heart, and complete sentimentality renders him extremely sensitive to the impressions of superiority created by others who must subconsciously nullify their deepest feelings in order to protect themselves. People are terrified of revealing their feelings because they feel others will take advantage of them. In turn, they jealously chastise others who have the courage to open their souls to the world, causing a vicious cycle of bitterness and denial.