| The Sorrows of Young Werther (Dover Thrift Editions) von , | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A Social Interpretation • • • • • (bewertet mit 5 von 5 Punkten) It may be difficult for contemporary readers to understand why, after reading "The Sufferings of Young Werther", so many young German men of Goethe's time killed themselves. Not only did they kill themselves but also they dressed in the same clothing that Werther wears when he takes his own life. Clearly they identified with Werther and it is incumbent upon us to understand why. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, Werther is a youthful German gentleman at the dawn of his civil service career. Unlike his contemporaries, Werther is awkward, socially clumsy, and extremely sensitive. He is also desperately in love with a woman named Charlotte (Lotte) whose feelings toward Werther are not mutual. After Lotte rejects him, Werther goes to a party where he is publicly humiliated. This being more than Werther can bear, he returns home and kills himself with a pistol. Werther's suicide is more than a response to Lotte's rejection. In a sense it is a disavowal of the society he lives in. Werther's emotions and sensitivity make him something of an oddball among his peers who ultimately scorn and reject him. At the end of the story, Werther is not only heart-broken but also isolated. Some reviewers have drawn interesting comparisons between Werther and other romantic heroes such as Heathcliffe. The comparison that interests me the most is the one between Werther and Pechorin, the notorious protagonist of Lermantov's "A Hero of Our Times". Unlike Werther, Pechorin is a man of action who isn't rejected by women or society but who ultimately rejects them. Pechorin does not kill himself directly, but he leads a life-style, replete with adventures and duels that ultimately results in his destruction. Both characters essentially feel that they have no place in the world they live in and each orchestrates his own destruction. In a sense, Werther and company are predecessors of existentialist anti-heroes such as Merseault, the taciturn narrator in "The Stranger". They may also be the precursors of more contemporary figures such as Jim Morrison, Janice Joplyn and Kurt Kobein. If literature reveals a trend of alienation and self-annihilation in the western world during the past two hundred years, then we ought to ask ourselves why it occurs. Perhaps as the world grows more organized, technical, and full of protocol it requires an increasingly larger degree of conformity. Cooperation and team-work demand the removal of individual impulses. If one can't love or can't act outside of public requirements then one has few alternatives left. When critics complained to Goethe about the copycat Werther suicides, he responded that if the commercial system killed so many young men, then couldn't Werther have a few. Suicide, like so many other extreme acts of destruction, isn't the solution to rejection, loss, and alienation, but it is certainly a symptom that is difficult to ignore. Eine Rezension von C. Colt "It Just Doesn't Matter" > San Francisco, CA United States vom 25. Mai 2000 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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