The Sorrows of Young Werther was written by the famous German author Goethe. The story was based on his own experiences of his adolescence. It is a dairy form so as to fully represent the changes of Werther’s inner world.
Werther was a good man, or rather say, a good boy. He showed his sympathy to the poor, though he himself was not that rich. He even drew pictures for poor boys. But the destiny of him was not a good one. His character and the old feudalism made his life a tragedy.
Werther happened to meet Lotte and then he fell in love with the engaged girl Lotte secretlyat the first sight. Lotte was a very beautiful, charming and kind-hearted girl. But she was engaged, and his fiance was a handsome, honest gentleman. Werther and Lotte became good friends, but Werther dared not to speak out his admiration to her because he didn’t want to separate the doomed couple (he regarded this as immoral) and he didn’t think he deserved her love for his not being good enough. But Werther loved Lotte so much that he went to attend the parties and activities that Lotte participated. Every time he had the impulse to tell his love to her, he saw her fiance, and he swallowed the words. Time after time, he became more and more upset. And the more upset he was, he thought even more of his upset and get more sorrows. He felt like a little hopeless and lonely mouse.
Then he went away from his hometown and Lotte to be a minister in somewhere else, he wanted to get away from the sorrows. Then he was in a legation. But the life was not what he had thought, he always be looked down on by the nobility and the gentry as he was not rich and he was not in high status. Apart from that, he found himself totally different from the count who is the employer of him. So he went back to the little village.
The things there were even worse than before, one of the two boys he drew pictures for was dead, Lotte was married .He thought that the whole world was filled with sorrows. He became desperate of life. Several days before Christmas, he went to Lotte’s and hugged and kissed her deeply after reading some poems he translated. But that was unforgivable immorality to Lotte. Two days later, after finishing his suicide note to Lotte, as midnight coming, he shot himself with his sorrows.
After reading this novel, I felt rather sorry for Werther. Did Werther have to die? Was Werther must be so upset? Couldn’t he justspeak out his love to Lotte?
Only when a man goes back to the beginning, will he unhappily turned to admit he was lost. Werther was lost in the world of love, he couldn’t go out, he couldn’t stop loving Lotte. He didn’t know to find another way. He indulged himself in his sorrows. Nobody could help him, nobody could save him. He should learn how to control himself, he should learn how to get out of the upset feelings and think more about the much better things in the world. But he didn’t, so we should learn the things and control ourselves. We admire his love, but we can’t admire his suicide. He killed himself, and also killed his love. After the death, his love came to be a history, it never can come true. Love should be much stronger, and so do our hearts. When we know our love can’t be accepted, we should say “congratulations and good luck” to the one we love, because to love is not to make her yours but to make her feel happy. Some says love makes people stupid, maybe Werther is the one they describe, but we shouldn’t be like that. We should keep cool and calm with love, then we can make the best choice, and then we’ll never leave regret to ourselves.
Werther had love, and we know love is the most amazing thing in the whole world, but why didn’t he dare to speak his love out? The cause is the feudal thought, people at the time couldn’t put up with his love to an engaged woman. Besides, why he was looked down on by the nobility and the gentry? The cause is also the feudal thought, so the feudal thought is the killer in some sense. We should fight against the feudal thought like Goethe.
Werther was so kind that he didn’t want to break up the relationship between Lotte and his fiance. He always thought about the others, like the boys he ever drew pictures for, like Lotte. But then he found there is barely anybody care about him, he felt this world was full of cruelty. No one could really heart and soul thought of him. His love to others was useless. It was a cruel and cold world. He felt alone and lonely, he couldn’t find someone he could depend on including Lotte―the one he loved most. Hopelessness and helplessness came to his mind, and then death, suicide.
The before, now, the future are the forever ever topics we are talking about. Which one should we focus on mostly? Werther concentrate on the former days, he always thought about the upset and unhappy things once and again. He found more sorrows from one. And then more and more sorrows came up, these sorrows made him kill himself. So we should think more about the nowadays time and the future, especially the future, for we can find more hope than hopelessness from the future. The former days have just gone by. We have no opportunity to go through again. Furthermore, we should learn to me optimistic. There are too many things in our life that can influence our emotion. When unlucky things come, we should look for something good to return to the positive and active condition. When many kinds of good things appear, we should warn ourselves to not to be too proud. We should often balance our emotion and feelings. That is the best condition we should be in.
At last, I think Werther is a kind-hearted, loving, treasonous man, he pursued individual liberation, he hoped to get love and happiness, he loved life, he loved adolescence. But because of his own character and the cold world he lived in, he couldn’t get what he thought he deserved to get, what he had got is just loneliness, hopelessness, helplessness, sorrows and at last death. So he is also a poor and pitiful one. I often feel sorry for him.
The novel is not a long one, nor a hardly understood one. Goethe use the least ,best ,and also simplest words to make the best and most famous novel, what he gave us is more than Werther’s sorrows, but also the thoughts the book conveys to us. We should be grateful to him and his book and we should also be grateful to the world we live in .Besides, we’d better think more about the future instead of the lost days. Always remember the experience of Werther, then we may be more sane to make the best choice in our own lives. And so we can avoid hurting ourselves or the people we love. We will make the world to be a better one.