Some background: Sorrows was written fifty years after Persian Letters, just before the American Revolution, and it's set in the world of small German states, each centering on a principal city. These states shared language, culture, and many social ties, but Germany would only become a unified nation in the nineteenth century. Werther and his friends are well-off and well-educated but not noble; most of them work for these small governments, moving among the courtiers and advisers who surround the princes. Except for the unhappy ending, the story loosely corresponds to Goethe's own; unlike Werther, he would go on to become one of the most famous intellectuals of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe. Sorrows itself was an enormous hit when it first appeared; the hero's experiences apparently resonated for many young Europeans.
In thinking about the novel, start with its format. Like Persian Letters, Sorrows is an epistolary novel, so think about the similarities and differences in their organization and impact. Persian Letters gives us multiple voices and divergent truths; how many voices do we hear in Sorrows, and what are they like? Then think about the plot. What does Werther do, and what gets done to him? The story ends with Werther in complete despair: why? What's his problem?
Those questions point to the problem of emotions in the novel's development-- how important are they? What kinds of emotions, and how intense? Do we hear of anything comparable in Persian Letters? Both novels talk about love—but do they describe it in the same terms? We also hear a lot about friendship in Sorrows; how is it described, and how important is it? More broadly, what assumptions does the author seem to make about human psychology? How does Goethe see emotions, drives, reason, and will fitting together?
We also hear a lot in Sorrows about nature. How important is it in the letters, and what effects does it have on the characters? What ideas about nature come up in the novel? What makes it such a big deal? How does talk about nature fit with what the novel shows us of social and political interactions in Werther's social circles? What's the relationship between social organization and nature, as the novel presents it?
In class we've discussed the radical implications of Persian Letters and other Enlightenment texts. Are there radical implications in Sorrows? Namely? Is it a more or less radical book than Persian Letters? Think about "radicalism" in broad terms: that is, think both about what the novel has to say about politics and what it says about personal relations. To what extent does Werther seem like a modern man, with an emotional make-up that we might recognize?
