Book Report on The Sorrows of Young Werther

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is a German poet, novelist, playwright, courtier, and natural philosopher, one of the greatest figures in Western literature. In literature Goethe gained early fame with The Sorrows of Young Werther, but his most famous work is the poetic drama in two parts, Faust.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in Frankfurt am Main, the first child of a lawyer Johann Caspar Goethe, and Katherine Elisabeth Textor, the daughter of the mayor of Frankfurt. Goethe had a comfortable childhood and he was greatly influenced by his mother, who encouraged his literary aspirations. Due to troubles at school, he received education at home. At the age of 16, Goethe began to study law at Leipzig University (1765-68), and he also studied drawing with Adam Oeser. In 1774 he published his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, in which he created the prototype of the romantic hero, who wears blue coat and yellow breeches and commits suicide. The novel, written in the form of a series of letters, depicted the hopeless affair of a young man, Werther. Goethe's model was Charlotte Buff, the fiancee of his friend, whom he had met in Wetzlar in 1772.

Visiting an idyllic German village, Werther, a sensitive young man, falls in love with sweet-natured Charlotte. Though he realizes that Charlotte is to marry Albert, he is unable to subdue his passion and his infatuation torment him to the point of despair. These letters not only detail Werther's doomed love for the beautiful Charlotte, they also contain the most beautiful meditations on just about everything important in life: love, beauty, nature, philosophy, art, religion. The book was an immediate success and a cult rapidly grew up around it, resulting in numerous copycat deaths as well as violent criticism and suppression for its apparent support of suicide.

After reading the story, I think the sorrows of young Werther are exactly the sorrows of loving too much. In Werther, Goethe clearly shows us the problems inherent in loving and idealizing something a bit too much. I have a problem with the character of Werther. He is simply too romantic to be real, and then there will be those who will wonder how a man who is capable of uttering the most gorgeous and

flowing words about beauty, art and nature can fall so hopelessly in love with one woman that he seems to forget all else that he holds dear. Werther has invested all the emotion he feels for art, beauty, religion, nature in Charlotte. We have limited emotion simply as our vigor. Werther spends his entire emotion on Charlotte, and thus feels nothing pleasant beyond her. In this way, happiness to Werther only has two possibilities: to steal Charlotte’s heart or to have nothing to lose. It’s no wonder that Werther chooses to shoot himself after seeing no shred of hope, like resonance between two lovers. However, Werther is still the literary image portrayed in the era transforming from feudal society into capitalist society to impress the readers with the intense willing of pursuing individual liberation, emotional freedom, and interpersonal equality. What’s more, eighteenth century German literature was propelled by a revolution in romanticism, and writers such as Goethe celebrated their most cherished ideals in a manner as ornate and eloquent as possible. Therefore, Werther is an extreme tragedy due to excessive devotion to love, which is out of the imagination of ordinary people.

Leaving the blue Werther aside, he is a smart guy, who I admire a lot. There are many enlightening sentences which I hold as Bible. Here is one example about his opinions on bad mood. “We are apt to complain, but—with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days are many. If our hearts are always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes.” “Ill humour is a crime. Show me the man who has the courage to hide his ill-humour, who bears the whole burden himself, without disturbing the peace of those around him. No. Ill-humour arises from an inward consciousness of our own want of merit, from a discontent which ever accompanies that envy which foolish vanity engenders. We see people happy, whom we have not made so, and cannot endure the sight.” All sorts of bad temper not only harms ourselves but the people around us. Since God offers us so many fun and pretty things to appreciate in our daily life, why shall we tangle ourselves in trivial things? Refining our personality and purifying our heart by sucking vigor from nature existence is what I learn from Werther. Actually, it’s easier said than done. Werther himself doesn’t apply this generous attitude to his

problem-solving, or he won’t slide into the situation of committing suicide. “Must it so be that whatever makes man happy must later become the source of his misery?” This question is what Werther asks himself. In my opinion, we should be thankful to everything and everyone we gain or meet and meanwhile feel content about it. When confronted with the misery, recall the happy moments and draw strength from it.

That’s part of my reflections after reading The Sorrows of Young Werther, not profound but meaningful to me. This is the first book I’d like to read for the second time because some lines really inspire me and some lines really touch me. Reading the book is both a mind and a heart communication with the character.

第二篇：Reflections on The Sorrows of Young Werther

2009级 王娜

英语（师范）六班

学号：20091115020040

Reflections on The Sorrows of Young Werther

―Jeder Jüngling sehnt sich, so zu lieben, Jedes M?dchen, so geliebt zu sein.‖(German)：青年男子哪个不善钟情？青年女子哪个不善怀春？As a girl in my age, this translation by Guo Moruo attracted me so much. The story of young Werther behind these two sentences aroused my interest strongly, so I decided to read the short novel and finally lost in Goethe’s vivid description of Werther’s emotion and feeling. Werther’s deep love to Lotte, Werther’s enthusiasm, Werther’s struggle and inner pain, all of these were presented in front of me clearly. I suffered the whole thing together with Werther just like I had also come across a young boy but he refused to accept my love and I could do nothing to release my loneliness. In 1821, Goethe commented to his secretary, "It must be bad, if not everybody was to have a time in his life, when he felt as though Werther had been written exclusively for him." Though I have not got a chance to go through ―that time‖ of my own actually, my fondness of this novel drove me to learn more behind the short story.

The author

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,( 28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832)，was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature and the outstanding figure of world literature since the Renaissance. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long poem of modern European literature.As for his epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, which was published in 1774, it gained him enormous fame as a writer across the Europe, and can arguably be called the world's first "best-seller". For the entirety of his life this was the work with which the vast majority of Goethe's contemporaries associated him.

The inspiration of The Sorrows of Young Werther and the parallels between Goethe and Werther

Goethe mentioned in the first version of his R?mische Elegien that his "youthful sufferings" played a part in the creation of the novel. Having concluded his law studies in the spring 1772, Goethe found himself working for the Imperial Chamber Court of the Holy Roman Empire in Wetzlar. He befriended the secretary Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem and, on June 9, 1772, they attended a ball where Goethe was introduced to the 19-year-old Charlotte Buff and her older fiancé, Johann Christian Kestner. Goethe is said to have instantly fallen in love with Charlotte. Goethe pursued Charlotte and the relationship varied between friendship and rejection. Charlotte was honest with Goethe and told him there was no hope of an affair. On September 11, Goethe left without saying goodbye.

The parallels between this incident and the novel are evident. Charlotte Buff, like her counterpart in the novel, was Lotte. Goethe, like Werther, often found it difficult to complete work at Court. However, the novel also depicts a number of events that

have close parallels to the life of Goethe's friend Jerusalem who, like Werther, committed suicide. Goethe was told that the motive for the deed was unrequited love for another man's wife. Jerusalem had also gone on long moonlight walks that reflected his sad mood and had also borrowed pistols to carry out his suicide. And, just like Werther, he left a copy of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's play Emilia Galotti on his cupboard in the room where he died.

Effect on Goethe

Goethe distanced himself from The Sorrows of Young Werther in his later years. He regretted his fame and making his youthful love of Charlotte Buff public knowledge. He wrote Werther at the age of twenty-four, and yet most of his visitors in his old age had read only this book of his and knew him mainly only from this work, despite his many others. Goethe admitted that he saved himself from the despair and destruction of his unrequited love for Charlotte Buff by shooting ―his hero Werther‖, however, Goethe also described his distaste for the book, writing that even if Werther had been a brother he had killed, he could not have been more haunted by the vengeful ghost.

Cultural impact: the "spark" which ignited Romanticism

The Sorrows of Young Werther started a new era in Germany and the world. The thoughts Expressed in the novel were also the main characteristics of Romanticism. ? Deep love and respect to the nature can be found easily in the book.

―I am so happy, so absorbed in the sensation of a tranquil existence that my art is suffering. I could not draw a line a t this moment, and yet I have never been more of a painter than I am now. When the mist is riding from the lovely valley and the sun is high above the impenetrable shade of my wood , so that only now and then a ray steals into the inner sanctuary, and I lie in the tall grass by the falling brook, and discover a thousand different grasses on the surface of the earth; when I feel nearer to my heart the teeming little world among the blades, the innumerable, unfathomable creatures in the shape of worms and insects, and when I feel the presence of the Almighty Spirit who created us all in his image, the breath of the All-loving One who sustains us as we float in illimitable bliss!‖ ―I succumb to the splendor of what lies before me.‖ Goethe showed his awe directly and tried to escape from the corrupt and polluted urban civilization and find consolation in Nature.

? The eager search for ideal beauty and pure sentiments was revealed.

The main character in the novel Lotte can be considered a perfect young lady: her pretty appearance, her elegant behavior, her well-educated manner and so on. Goethe described an attractive woman without any shortcoming. From the first sight on, Wertehr’s love to Lotte was showed straightly and apparently. He was crazy about Lotte terribly and in his letters, he talk about this crazy feeling directly and didn’t want to cover his craze at all. The tendency to express man’s emotional nature was obvious.

? This novel was written for every one.

The Sorrows of Young Werther was written for every commoner—not just wealthy aristocracy and upper classes. Goethe expressed this opinion at the very beginning of his novel. ―The poor folk here know me already and have affection for me.‖ ―I maintain that anyone who thinks it necessary to hold himself aloof from the

so-called rabble, in order to keep its respect, is quite as blameworthy as a coward who hides from the enemy because he is afraid of defeat.‖ Meanwhile, Goethe didn’t conceal his hate to those meticulous officials and authority. ―And the gilded misery, the boredom among the loathsome people whoare assembled here! Their love of rand, the way they keep watch and guard to steal the smallest march upon each other, their most wretched and pitiable passions which they make no attempt to conceal.‖ The relationship between the ambassador and Werther and the plot that Werther handed in his resignation at Court also showed Goethe’s opinion towards the life of upper class. ? The fact that Werther ended with the protagonist's suicide challenged the

fundamental thesis of religion.

Suicide was considered sinful by Christian doctrine: suicides were denied Christian burial with the bodies often mistreated and dishonored in various ways; in corollary, the deceased's property and possessions were often confiscated by the Church. So that is why in the novel when Werther was buried, ―He was carried by workmen. There was no pastor present.‖ But, in The Sorrows of Young Werther, suicide was condoned by Goethe. There was a plot that Werther talked about suicide with another character Albert and Werther said ―Human nature has its limits. It can bear joy, sorrow and pain to a certain degree, but it succumbs when this is exceeded. The question, therefore, is not whether a man is strong or weak, but whether he can endure the measure of his suffering, moral or physical.‖ ―Let us see how man is circumscribed, how he is affected by impressions, obsessed by ideas, until finally a growing passion robs him of the power of calm reflection and brings him to grief. It is in vain that a cool, reasoning individual perceives the unhappy man’s condition and talks to him in a persuasive manner, just a s a healthy man is unable to inspire an invalid with even a modicum of his own vigor.‖ ―A man is a man, and the little reasoning power he may possess is of small advantage, or of none at all, when passion rages and he oppressed by the limits of humanity.‖ Through these pieces of speech, we could know why Werther chose to shoot himself: his suffering of the love to Lotte was out of his control. And the explanation above seemed rational and convincing, so it made Werther’s death reasonable.

My own view on Werther’s suicide

Well, Werther’s experience that he met a right person at a wrong time is worth our sympathy. However, I don’t think that suicide is the only way to solve his problem. In my view, one of the reasons that human beings are different from animals is that our humans have the ability to control our emotion and adjust our mood. When we come across something unfortunate, we should not allow ourselves to indulge in it. Our hearts should always open to enjoy the good and try our best to get rid of the bad. Also, we do not live alone in the world. So when we have the tendency to do some stupid things, we must consider over our families, our relatives, our friends and all other people around us. We should take their feelings into consideration. We do not have the right to hurt others in order to gain our own comfort and relief. Then according to my opinion, though Werther’s suicide can be understood, but should not be forgiven.