Essays on the Sorrows of Young Werther

In the form of a semi-autobiographical epistolary novel, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) composed the highly emotional Die Leiden des jungen Werther within a matter of weeks. Suitably known as a “Briefroman” in German, the novel is a compilation of letters from Werther to his...

As the referent of the individual, the body functions as a site for contradiction, resistance, and reassertion. It embodies a set of rules that delineates individual space through an exclusion of that which is not self. In Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, corporeality problematizes...

The novel The Sorrows of Young Werther engages with a complex discourse of communication. It deals with a society highly lacking in personal communication, yet desperately in need of it. Although Werther longs for intimate face to face communication, books mediate his life, which leads...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s epistolary novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, made waves in the German literary scene almost immediately upon its publication in 1774. Just five years later, the novel was translated into English, attaining a comparable level of popularity in England (Long 169)....

From the beginning of The Sorrows of Young Werther, Werther emphasizes his connection to Nature in order to embellish the tragically creative persona he presents to Wilhelm. As his infatuation with Charlotte grows and he laments the injustice and misfortune of his situation, his views...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther is the embodiment of the Sturm und Drang literary movement that swept through Europe. Werther reached the height of popularity and inspired many young people, even leading them to dress like him. Werther, with the temperament...

In “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, by Goethe, one of the prevalent themes is the control that passion wields over one’s actions. Passion may cause one to act irrationally, a belief that Goethe espoused despite the paradigm that dominated the society of his day: that...

In Plato’s Symposium and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, the two protagonists are overcome by their love and dedicate an eulogy in the form of a speech or a series of letters to their beloved. The multitude of letters composed by...

“What wastes my heart away is the corrosive power that lies concealed in the natural universe – in Nature, which has brought forth nothing that does not destroy both its neighbor and itself.” (Goethe, 66) In Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe’s novella, The Sorrows of Young...

J.W Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther is heavy with a sense of malaise, as it describes a young man’s decent into mental instability which ends in his suicide. The cause of this sense of malaise lies with the narrator himself, as his own mental...

Literary critics such as Karl Grun and Johannes Scherr have propped up Johann Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther as revolutionary social criticism that paved the way for many of the rebellions in 1848 – Grun even arguing that the novel prepared the grounds for...

It is presumable that the main character of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther is a man from whose thoughts we can glean wise and important statements about life. Throughout many of the passages, Werther offers us his unique perspective on various elements of living...

“Feeling” is the Descriptor of “Reason” By looking at the way Werther speaks of his emotions in relation to Charlotte, it can be seen that “feeling” is just what alters “reason”. The two are not separate; they must go together. It is similar to the...