December 21

December 21 marks the morning Werther writes to Charlotte that he has resolved to die, making the date the threshold between his private decision and its posthumous disclosure. The letter looks forward to their final meeting while imagining the grave and remembrance that will follow; its dated, intimate form preserves the decision as it is being made, even as the reader knows it will reach Charlotte too late to alter it.

The Date and the Letter

The narrative identifies the day as Monday morning, December 21. Werther writes to Charlotte that morning, describing it as the day on which he is to see her for the last time. The date therefore joins a specific impending encounter to a decision already presented as settled: the letter is not a later recollection of his resolve, but a message written at the point when he expects to act on it.

The letter is found sealed on Werther’s bureau after his death and is given to Charlotte. The Editor inserts it in fragments, observing that several circumstances suggest it was written in that manner. This framing gives December 21 a double position in the narrative: it is the letter’s composition date within Werther’s experience and part of the evidence through which his intentions become known afterward.

Resolve and Recollection

Werther describes the preceding night as dreadful but also as having fixed his purpose. He recalls leaving Charlotte the day before in a state of tumult, struggling to reach his room, and falling to his knees, where he says that he found consolation in weeping. He then says that many thoughts and schemes gave way to one final determination, which remained with him upon waking. The dated letter thus records a movement from agitation toward a resolve he insists is deliberate and cool, while its account of tears and distress complicates that claim of composure.

He frames his decision as the end of suffering and as a sacrifice for Charlotte. The letter also discloses that, in moments of rage and fury, he has imagined killing Charlotte’s husband, Charlotte herself, and himself; he now declares that he will be the one to die. The choice is presented as the conclusion of a dangerous triangle, not as evidence that the other two are in danger at the moment of writing.

Anticipated Remembrance

Although written on a winter morning, the letter turns toward a future summer evening. Werther asks Charlotte to remember him when she walks toward the mountains, recalling their meetings as he came up from the valley, and to look toward the churchyard and the grass above his grave in the setting sun. The imagined landscape makes the letter’s consequence concrete: Werther pictures himself as absent, while Charlotte remains to remember him.

That future image sharpens the letter’s central contrast. Werther addresses Charlotte as if she were reading while he is still speaking to her, yet the sealed page is delivered only after his death. December 21 therefore fixes both the immediacy of his written farewell and the separation built into its eventual reading.