Lunchtime read: The Sorrows of Young Werther

Werther does leave Lotte and Albert and takes a position working in an office that offers an eventual career in the diplomatic service. The problem is that the hypersensitive youth manages to get on the wrong side of one of his superiors and then ends up making a social gaffe when he fails to withdraw from an event for the society elite.

That festers away with him and he starts to write bleaker letters to his friends and to Albert and Lotte about plans to resign.

In the meantime he receives the blow with the news that Lotte and Albert have got married. He then resigns and decides to head back in the direction of Lotte to be close to her but the more he comes into contact with her the harder it becomes. On one level she is quite naïve almost taunting him but then on another she is clearly hostile to his continued advances.

At one point Werther muses on the idea that Albert might die and you get an insight into the dark thoughts he is having about everything and anyone other than Lotte.

More tomorrow…