The Werther Effect Essay

It is widely considered that media was forever changed with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1450. The printing press made it easier for people to convey their thoughts and ideas while simultaneously reaching the maximum amount of people possible. Within the last century, the evolution of media has been staggering. We can now read the news online from halfway around the world or watch stories on television as they happen. All of these innovations have not come without their problems. In 1774, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote the book The Sorrows of Young Werther, a book that by all accounts was The Catcher in the Rye of its generation. It was banned because it was said to have influenced thousands across Europe to commit a form of copy-cat suicide. Copy-cat suicide is when one person commits a form of suicide that they learned from either local knowledge or accounts of the suicide in the news and other forms of media. This paper will analyze Goethe's influence on what we now know as “The Werther Effect” and its prevalence in other forms of modern media. First I will look at The Sorrows of Young Werther and how it influenced numerous studies.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe began writing The Sorrows of Young Werther in the early part of 1774. It was written during the Sturm and Drang period in Germany. Sturm and Drang, or more conventionally known as Storm and Stress, was an attempt by people in this period to free themselves from the strict rationalism of the enlightenment period. It is about a young man, Werther, who finds himself in an impossible situation. He is in love with a young woman named Charlotte. Despite knowing that Charlotte is already engaged to another man, Werther continues to ...

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...be used for good just as much as it can be twisted for evil. The Sorrows of Young Werther is not the first example of copy-cat suicide nor is it the last but like The Catcher in the Rye it became a cultural phenomenon that influenced an entire generation of young people. It later influenced numerous psychological studies that opened up the discussion for the role media plays in sensationalizing suicide. What we have learned is in three separate cases is that the media prompted up an icon not only in life but after their death. Regardless of the background, books, television, movies, or music, these people touched peoples’ lives, but unfortunately it was done the wrong way. While we may not be able to fix what has happened we certainly can learn from it and change how we as well as the media handle suicides in the future and realize the power words really do have.