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This is a dangerous book. For anyone who has suffered from that unrequited love that burns like a fever will be able to relate uncannily well with this book. Unfortunately the ending is such that it inspired many people to use it like a template for their own lives when faced with a similar situation. While finishing up this book I wondered whether Goethe was ever aware or thought about the painful actions his book inspired.

This is a fictionalized autobiography of Goethe's own experience of being in love with a woman he could never have. The experience was obviously very painful for him. His writing style has powerful clarity that can easily pull you into the story causing you to ache with the main character and laugh at the same time. To me this was an example of the dark-side of romanticism. The main character, Werther, was so obsessed and fixated on Charlotta (the woman he loves) that it was as if he wasn't even seeing her anymore. What he was in love with was an idea, not actually her, he was in love with his own ideal of her. This is the grand delusion that romantics feed themselves and they do it to such excess that their behavior seems pitiable. I would only recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand what obsession with another human being looks like. This mindset is as unhealthy as attaining the object, and I say object because that is what the idealized Charlotta became, would likely only reveal his delusion.

Romanticism is an example of looking for a personal messiah in love. Someone who we can pin all of our hopes and dreams on to pull us out of the human condition we find ourselves stuck in. A quest for transcendence through the love of another. But placing that responsibility on the shoulders of someone else will always disappoint and rightly so. We can not give to another what only we can do for ourselves.

I would only cautiously recommend this book. Realists could handle it, but dreamers beware.