Spring Awakening: A Children’s Tragedy

“Sometimes I think they’d feel something was missing if they didn’t have a nasty little brat like me.”

Martha expresses a feeling that many of the adolescents in Spring Awakening experience with their parents or other adults blaming them for their own problems. This is one way in which each generation perpetuates its sexual repression to the next generation. Though Martha’s home is the most extreme example in the play, all the adults treat the teenagers as “brats” to be controlled and reformed.

“When I have children, I’m going to let them grow up like the weeds in our flower garden. Nobody pays any attention to them, and they’re so tall, so thick—and meanwhile the roses on their stakes, in their planting boxes, get scrawnier every summer.”

Martha’s analogy captures the self-defeating nature of the controlling style of parenting that predominates in the play. Like Martha’s mother with her over-tended roses, the adults treat children as things to be grown in a controlled way toward a desired end. This domineering method of parenting squeezes the life out of children by depriving them of a voice in the trajectory of their lives.

“But surely it must be a thousand times more uplifting to be loved by a man than by a girl!”

Wendla believes that in being loved by a man, a woman becomes more blissful than she ever could be by herself. Ingrained in this belief is the sexist idea that a woman needs a man to complete her and that women are less valuable than men because they have less to give.

“There’s no such thing as sacrifice! There’s no such thing as selflessness!—I watch the good people enjoying the warmth of their hearts, I watch the bad people trembling and groaning—I watch you, Wendla Bergmann, shaking your curls and laughing, and it makes me feel as stone sober as an outcast.”

Melchior feels deeply alone and alienated from his surroundings. He sees hypocrisy in the Christian morality that everyone around him subscribes to but knows no one who shares these feelings. Melchior is also angry that the good world of selflessness he saw as a child turned out to be just a story.

“But now that I’m on the ladder I’ll keep on climbing. My guarantee is the logical certainty that I can’t fall without breaking my neck.”

The metaphor of the ladder perfectly illustrates Moritz’s black-and-white way of thinking: He believes there are only two directions he can go. Not only that, Moritz thinks the consequences of going one way are catastrophic. Without parental guidance, Moritz remains trapped in this way of thinking, with tragic results.

“You shouldn’t do things like that, Mr. Stiefel. You should take care of yourself. Don’t neglect your health. School is no substitute for good health.—Take brisk walks in the fresh air! That’s worth more at your age than memorizing Virgil.”

Mrs. Gabor’s slightly admonishing and formal tone undermines what she sees as helpful advice. Mrs. Gabor still speaks in terms of things Moritz should and should not do, missing the fact that Moritz’s struggle is in feeling caught between these two rules.

“Believe me, Melchior, it’s sweeter to have to suffer a wrong than to commit one.”

Moritz’s view of sexual pleasure is based on the idea that sex is fundamentally wrong and shameful. He envies women, whom in his ignorance he imagines as completely passive during sex, because merely “suffering” sex is less shameful, and therefore more pleasurable, than instigating it.

“Heaven knows, Wendla, that I’m not to blame! Heaven is my witness!”

Mrs. Bergmann appeals to the Christian god—her version of whom is the origin of the prudish morality restricting her from teaching her daughter about sex—to justify her actions. Her concern with exculpating herself suggests doubts about the morality of her decision; however, she continues to avoid recognizing that ultimately she decides what she teaches Wendla.

“WENDLA:—People love each other—if they kiss— — —Don’t, don’t— —

“MELCHIOR: Oh, believe me, there’s no such thing as love!—There’s only selfishness, only ego!—I love you as little as you love me.—”

This dialogue, which directly precedes Melchior’s raping Wendla, illustrates the difference in maturity and sexual knowledge between the two characters. Wendla recites her mother’s lie that a baby is the product of marital love, not sex. She worries that if Melchior kisses her, they will fall in love and have a baby. In contrast, Melchior understands reproduction, but in his cynical view he sees sex as something to be taken, not a mutual and consensual act. Melchior exploits Wendla’s ignorance and rapes her, after which her total ignorance of sex prevents her from even understanding what happened.

“So chin up, Mr. Stiefel!—Similar crises of one kind or another befall each and every one of us and simply have to be survived.”

The blithe yet formal tone in Mrs. Bergmann’s reply to Moritz’s pleading letter betrays that she isn’t the helpful, compassionate person she thinks she is. The first sentence exemplifies the dissonance: The cheery exclamation point and the encouraging idiom distract from her formal address, which betrays her emotional distance and symbolizes her treatment of Moritz as an adult. Her dismissive response is the final straw for Moritz: He has no one else to turn to in hopes they will understand his predicament.

“I was a baby when I came into the world—otherwise I might have been smart enough to become a different person.—Why should I have to suffer for the fact that everyone else was already here!”

Moritz resents his parents for bringing him into the world without his permission. His complaint about suffering from the existence of other people is a complaint about having to conform to the way of life those people have established. Moritz also feels as if everyone else got a head start on life, dooming him to an endless game of catch-up.

“The monuments are for the living, not the dead.”

Even in life, Moritz feels that he is treated like the dead—that nothing is for him. Moritz’s literal belief is confirmed at his funeral, which is not about him at all. Instead of grieving and trying to understand what led him to take his own life, the adults condemn him for his crime and the pain he has caused; the funeral is for their sake, not his.

“ILSE: Come up to our house with me!

“MORITZ:—What for?—What for?—

“ILSE: To have some warm goat milk!—I’ve got a curling iron for your hair and I’ll hang a little bell around your neck.—We still have a rocking horse you can play with.”

Ilse teases Moritz for his obtuseness about her invitation to have sex, which is later revealed as being feigned. She teases him for being sexually immature by referring to things they used to do as children. His rejection of her offer belies his claim that sex would keep him from suicide. Moritz’s fatal flaw is his commitment to believing that the world is against him and he’s powerless to do anything about it.

“We find ourselves under the necessity of condemning the guilty lest we ourselves, the innocent, be condemned.”

In his rationalization of scapegoating Melchior for Moritz’s suicide, Hart-Payne neatly encapsulates the perverse logic the adults in the play use to justify their actions. For example, Melchior’s parents send him to the reformatory not in hopes that it will reform him but to avoid blame for his crime.

“Those too weak to march must fall by the wayside.”

Mr. Gabor’s harsh belief is an extreme example of the adults’ treatment of children in the play. The military metaphor connotes the violent, authoritarian style of parenting Mr. Gabor believes in, conjuring an image of a parent-child relationship devoid of love and guidance.

“If we wish to preserve one glimmer of hope and, most important, to preserve our spotless consciences as the parents of the individual, it is time for us to go to work with firmness and in all seriousness.—”

In Mr. Gabor, Wedekind satirizes the selfish, image-conscious parent who is too oblivious or uncaring to recognize the mistake of putting their own interests before those of their child. Mr. Gabor says it is “most important” to preserve his own “spotless conscience” rather than to actually repair the damage or personally educate his son. His primary concern is his image and ego.

“Sometimes I’ll feel so wonderful—everything sunshine and happiness. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible to feel so good! I’ll feel like going outside, out on the grass in the evening sun, and looking for primroses along the river, and sitting on the riverbank and dreaming…And then this toothache starts, and I think I’m going to die before the sun goes down tomorrow; I feel hot and cold, everything starts going dark, and then the monster comes fluttering in— — —Every time I wake up, I see Mother crying. Oh, that hurts me so much—I can’t tell you, Ina!”

Wendla expresses the confusing duality of her emotions following her meeting with Melchior in the hayloft. Because of her total ignorance of sex, she doesn’t understand that she was raped, but she does sense that something bad happened, symbolized by the monster. Her words also convey that her principal concern is whether she’s done something to hurt her mother; Wendla will echo this sentiment when processing her confusion over the pregnancy, saying “I never loved anybody in the world except you, you, Mother” (72).

“It won’t get better. I have dropsy. I’m going to die, Mother.—Oh, Mother, I’m going to die!”

Until her death from a botched abortion, Wendla remains ironically and tragically ignorant of how human reproduction works. She interprets her morning sickness and her mother’s tears as evidence that she has dropsy, an antiquated term for edema that resulted in heart failure.

“Baby, baby, let’s not make it any harder for each other! Pull yourself together! Don’t despair, my baby!”

Mrs. Bergmann’s refusal to teach Wendla about reproduction even after she becomes pregnant underscores the absurdity of not teaching teenagers about sex. Her use of the affectionate term “baby” clashes with the underlying meaning of what she is saying: that her propriety matters more than her daughter’s well-being.

“We’re no longer reachable for anything, neither good nor evil. We stand high, high above terrestrial concerns—each one of us for himself alone. We don’t fraternize with each other, because it’s too boring for us. None of us has anything left to lose. In our infinite sublimity, we are as far from sorrow as from rejoicing. We’re satisfied with ourselves, and that’s what counts!—”

Moritz explains the emotionally detached, solitary life he lives as a ghost. This ghostly existence is a metaphor for the danger of detached narcissism: By renouncing aspiration and avoiding others, a ghost can avoid the suffering of failure and the judgment of others, but only at the price of forsaking joy as well.

“We can do anything. Give me your hand! We can feel sorry for youth, the way it takes its timidness for idealism, and for old age, the way its heart breaks with stoic superiority. We see emperors trembling over popular songs, and street shysters shaking at the sound of the last trumpet. We ignore the comedian’s mask and see the poet putting his mask on in the dark. We behold the contented man in his impoverishment, and in the man who “labors and is heavy laden” we see the capitalist. We observe people in love and see them blush at each other, suspecting that they’re deceived deceivers. We see parents bringing children into the world in order to be able to say to them: how lucky you are to have parents like us!—and see the children going out and doing the same thing. We can eavesdrop on innocence in its lonely extremities of love, and on the two-bit whore reading Schiller…We see God and the Devil making fools of each other, and we nurture in ourselves the absolutely unshakable conviction that both of them are drunk…A peace of mind, a contentedness, Melchior—! You only have to give me your pinkie.”

Moritz elaborates the metaphor of ghostly existence. Underlying his scornful view that everything is garbage is the adolescent’s disappointment in discovering that the world falls short of their expectations. His retreat into the “infinite sublimity” of ghostly existence is a bid to erase the pain of that disappointment and to escape being ridiculed himself.

“The sublime humorist is the most woeful, pitiable creature in creation!”

This line, directed at Moritz by the Masked Man, is an indictment of the detached, scornful existence Moritz’s ghost symbolizes. It also suggests a metafictional reading: Wedekind appears to criticize other satirists on the grounds that humor without compassion is just scorn. The person who laughs at everyone but themself is the most “pitiable creature in creation.”

“Farewell, Moritz. I don’t know where this person is taking me. But he is a person…”

In going with the Masked Man, Melchior both literally chooses life—in that he doesn’t kill himself—and symbolically embraces it by deciding not to escape his pain and guilt by living the hollow existence of a ghost. Melchior chooses an uncertain future over the certain emotional deadness that Moritz describes.