The Sorrows of Young Dylan

We were talking about Romantism in school yesterday, and one of the books mentioned was "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . The book is told in a form of letters that Werthers sends to his friend Wilhelm, and there are some interesting similarities between Werther and Dylan, specifically about love and how they met their ends. I haven't read the book myself, but this is the plot from Wikipedia:

Most of The Sorrows of Young Werther is presented as a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist of a sensitive and passionate temperament, to his friend Wilhelm. These give an intimate account of his stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim (based on Garbenheim, near Wetzlar), whose peasants have enchanted him with their simple ways. 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 beforehand that she is engaged to a man named Albert eleven years her senior.

Despite the pain it causes him, Werther spends the next few months cultivating a close friendship with them both. His pain eventually becomes so great 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 and has to face the normal weekly gathering there 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. Every day becomes a torturing reminder that Charlotte will never be able to requite his love. She, out of pity for her friend and respect for her husband, decides that Werther must not visit her so frequently. He visits her one final time, and they are both overcome with emotion after he recites to her a passage of Ossian.

Even before that incident, Werther had realized that one member of the love triangle – Charlotte, Albert or Werther himself – had to die to resolve the situation. Unable to hurt anyone else or seriously consider murder, Werther sees no other choice but to take 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 and sends the pistols. Werther then shoots himself in the head, but does not die until twelve hours later. He is buried under a linden tree that he has mentioned frequently in his letters. The funeral is not attended by any clergy, or by Albert or Charlotte. The book ends with an intimation that Charlotte may die of a broken heart. "I shall say nothing of... Charlotte's grief.... Charlotte's life was despaired of," etc.


The parts about wanting to be with a girl, but knowing it can never be, feeling alienated from the people you shared so much with in the past, even down to the suicide that didn't kill him instantly.

What do you guys think, spooky or what?

I see what you are getting at. The only difference is Werther isn't a murdering piece of scum like Dylan.

I think it is quite interesting. I have never read this story either. Dylan's story is a common one. He and even Elliot Rodger are looking for love. (well Elliot is debatable but he "states" he is looking") and when they do not find it are overcome with despair.

Thanks for the post! It is an interesting thing to think about. I will probably be back later with more thoughts

I used to write like Dylan in high school. But I've always been a hopeless romantic, I get dramatic with my words, I wrote poetry and I took literature. Was/am I depressed like he was? Mildly? I don't know. I know when I was his age i had a hovering cloud over my head and I was depressed in a way I thought I couldn't recover from. What I'm saying is, Dylan might just be a little dramatic. He loved to romanticise his thoughts and sometimes he sees his life as supposed to imitate art. He wanted a Bonnie to his Clyde.
So, maybe he really felt that way, he was really broken hearted and feeling sorry for himself or the way he wrote depicts things as more dramatic than they really are.