Story so far
Coverage is limited to the scope described in this write-up. Recording changes, further installments or an unwritten ending may remain outside it.
This synopsis covers the underlying book linked to this recording: Sorrows of Young Werther. Recording-specific abridgements, added material or adaptation changes have not been verified.
The Sorrows of Young Werther, a story about a young man's unrequited love, is presented as a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist of a sensitive and passionate temperament. Most of the letters are written to his friend Wilhelm, but additional details are at times provided by an unidentified editor. The letters give an intimate account of his emotional life during his stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim (based on Garbenheim, near Wetzlar). There he meets Charlotte, a beautiful young girl who takes care of her siblings after the death of their mother. Werther falls in love with Charlotte despite knowing before meeting her that she is engaged to a man named Albert, eleven years her senior. Albert returns to Wahlheim shortly thereafter.
Despite the pain it causes him, Werther spends the next few months cultivating a close friendship with them both. His sorrow eventually becomes so unbearable that he is forced to leave Wahlheim for Weimar, where he makes the acquaintance of Fräulein von B. He suffers great embarrassment when he forgetfully visits a friend, the Count of O——, and unexpectedly has to face there the weekly gathering of the entire aristocratic set. He is not tolerated and asked to leave since he is not a nobleman.
He then returns to Wahlheim, where he suffers still more than before, partly because Charlotte and Albert are now married. The unrequited love brings Werther to a state of dejection. Albert becomes increasingly discontent with the persistence of the love triangle and behaves coldly towards Werther, though he remains characteristically secure. Charlotte decides that it is not tenable for her to remain so close to Werther. With difficulty, she tells Werther that he must not visit her so frequently, and encourages him to have greater self-control and move on from his fixation with her.
At their penultimate meeting, she suggests that "it is only the impossibility of possessing me that makes this desire so exciting to you", and adds that this observation could have been made by "anyone". He visits her one final time, and they are both overcome with emotion after he recites to her a passage of his own translation of Ossian that prefigures his death.
Werther has a tendency towards suicidal ideation, and he makes pessimistic remarks about life in letters prior to having met Charlotte. Werther himself recognises the situation as being untenable, and contemplates a double murder-suicide, but instead resolves to take only his own life. After composing a farewell letter to be found after his death, he writes to Albert asking for his two pistols, on the pretext that he is going "on a journey". Charlotte receives the request with great emotion, anticipating Werther's suicide, and hesitantly hands the pistols to Werther's servant, at Albert's command. Werther shoots himself in the head at his desk at midnight, is found at 6 the next morning, and is declared dead at noon. He is buried eleven hours later. Charlotte falls unconscious upon learning of his death and the others fear for her life.
Credits
Underlying book identified by the catalog’s explicit book_slug relation. Exact source annotation 971. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, The Sorrows of Young Werther. Section headings and formatting adjusted.