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The Sorrows of Young Werther tracks the title character's gradual journey from mild contentment to suicidal depression to suicide. Goethe employs a parallel narrative structure to impart Werther’s romantic missteps that lead to madness while simultaneously making observations about contemporary society. While the protagonist meets the inevitable end that the book’s sorrowful title foretells, along the way he makes keen observations about the injustice of the rigid social structures of the time. Goethe begins Werther’s tale with a plea from an unnamed narrator to sympathize with this admirable young man, a literary device that immediately casts the titular character and primary narrator as worthy of love and worth listening to. Goethe immediately adds nuance to Werther’s character when he details his station in life as educated and artistic but not noble, a position similar to that of Goethe himself. By painting Werther in a semi-biographical light, Goethe can use Werther’s words to question contemporary social mores without making them directly, much in the way that a ventriloquist uses a dummy to convey scathing remarks. Once Goethe has set the stage that this love-struck young man will meet a tragic end, he can make Werther speak truth to power in the meantime, all under the guise of romantic fiction.

Goethe places the exposition in a tranquil setting in order to demonstrate Werther’s ability to calm himself and to observe himself and others without harsh judgment, abilities that Werther will lose when he begins to waver between mania and depression. Werther’s unrequited love for Charlotte drives the overarching narrative of the book. Her actions dictate his mental health, and his mood rises with the action as soon as he disregards his date’s aunt’s admonition not to fall in love with her. The ball is the book’s inciting incident, and it is a frenzy of activity in comparison to Werther’s previous solitary pursuits in nature during the exposition. The thunderstorm at the evening’s end provides an initial climax that both symbolizes the euphoria that Werther feels in Charlotte’s presence and illustrates that, like lightning, these heightened feelings are both electrifying and dangerous.

Albert’s arrival at Walheim ultimately prompts another climax, the tearful evening of Werther’s departure, but in the meantime their friendship establishes both men as people who evaluate others based on merit, unlike the people whom Werther will encounter at court. Meritocracy was not a widely valued ideal in Goethe’s time, but he paints it in a favorable light by introducing the concept via two characters who are on unequal romantic and professional footing yet nonetheless find qualities to admire in one another. Werther’s attempt to implement this ideal at court is at first ironic, because Werther is every bit as judgmental of the others as they are as him, and later disastrous, because the fictitious characters in court were as mired in the social structure as Goethe’s contemporaries were.

Just as Albert’s arrival forced Werther to decide to depart Walheim, the scandal at court forces Werther to revise his plans, and both instances highlight how difficult it is for Werther to take decisive action unless his emotional state has driven him to desperation. His trips down memory lane allows for reflection before returning to Walheim and to Charlotte, and the uncomfortable realizations that he comes to on the journey lend themselves to his desperation that will culminate in the final, decisive action at the book’s climax. Werther has contemplated suicide several times up to this point, but the fact that he literally cannot pull the trigger until Charlotte has locked herself away from him illustrates that he would not have done so as long as there was a glimmer of hope that he might see her again. Her decisive action shows him that she will not allow herself to succumb to him again, and his final act of desperation ensures that she will be spared the wretchedness of his pleading.

The action falls quickly after Werther’s final, climactic shooting, and while it was love that drove him to desperation, his allowance that religious people may not want to be buried near him indicate that he is conscious of societal mores even in death. Suicide was both a sin and a crime in much of the world during the 18th century, and attitudes in Europe had only just begun to shift from one of condemnation to one of sympathy for its victims. Goethe’s use of the literary device of an unnamed narrator in both the Preface, which begs for sympathy for Werther, and The Editor to the Reader, which details the extent of Werther’s despair, suggests that Goethe had a more progressive attitude towards this taboo topic. Werther’s solitude in nature during the exposition makes him calm, and once he is laid to rest under the lime trees during the resolution, he is alone and tranquil once more.

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