Unrequited Love and Gestures of Consecration
            
            
             Young Werther searched for meaning in everything around him, yearning in his relentless love for Lotte. It was not a mistake that a copy of Emilia Galotti was found by Werther's deathbed, this text's content mirrors much of Werther's "sorrows." Werther idolized and pined over Lotte as Prince Hettore Gonzaga did Emilia Galotti. Both male characters sought to relinquish his hopeless passion by attempting to win over the woman that they loved in a desperate manner, and whom lost their loves in one form or another. Both Lotte and Emilia represent the Romantic ideal for women, who were both concerned with keeping their womanly virtues in tact due to an influence from a male figure in their lives. In both stories, death played an important role where it acted as an ultimate gesture of consecration for the beloved.
             Young Werther originally set out on his travels to seek solitude in nature. However, after meeting Charlotte Lotte, it seemed as though Werther's agenda totally changed. Werther fell in love with Lotte at first sight. Werther vocalized his passion in the letters that he sent to his dear friend Wilhelm, where his adoration for Lotte would grow as time passed. "An angel! -Rot! - Every man says this about his beloved, does he not? And yet I am unable to tell you how, and why, she is perfection itself; suffice to say that she has captivated me utterly." (Goethe, pg.36) Werther immediately placed Lotte on a pedestal, claiming she exemplified ultimate perfection, and described Lotte with the same vigor and emotion that he did nature. Before Werther became acquainted with Lotte, his goal was to simply live in the happy solitariness of nature, but this undying love for Lotte overtook Werther's intentions and consumed him.
             From the moment that Werther met Lotte, he was entranced by her every move, and immediately could not gi...