Reading and Writing in a Digital Age

Let’s get right to the point: Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening brings me to an emotional state of disparity at least three times a scene. The first time I read through the play, I was left with this unnerving sense of, well, I’m not sure exactly what it should be called. Every time I go back to a scene from this play, the same thing happens no matter how I read it, I just end up with this strange feeling that doesn’t exactly leave me downcast –  but not exactly optimistic either. I’m really starting to believe that it’s the way Wedekind uses dialogue that evokes this feeling, that the words are real, breathing, organisms having these feelings inflicted upon them, and that we, as the audience, are reacting to the way these words are harmed.

One of the many incredibly emotional heights of the play is Mortiz’s suicide, but it’s his words that seem to cause more of a reaction from the reader than the actual action. He’s become the victim of a school system that chooses to fail him because only a certain number of students can move on to the higher class, even though he went to great lengths to pass the final exam. Throughout the beginning of the play we see how important it is for Mortiz to pass this exam: to please his parents and have them finally see that he’s not worthless. When he finds out that he passed, he’s ecstatic, but when he’s told that he still won’t move on to the next grade, his mind immediately goes to escaping. Though suicide isn’t his first attempted solution, a failed request to the mother of his friend, Melchior Gabor, leaves him with no other viable option. He pulls out his gun, and burns the letter from Mrs. Gabor, leaving us with these last words:

“Before I started the fire you could still see the grass and a line of light on the horizon. — Now it’s gotten dark. Now I won’t be going home,” (52).

I’ll pause so you at home can sob for an extended period of time.

The line’s intent is clear: the letter was his last hope of saving himself, and now he’s hopeless and all that depressing jazz. But I’m not talking about intent, I’m talking about words  – and I’m talking about them like I have a clue what I’m trying to say, but I don’t because like I said before, I don’t know what this play does to me. He’s comparing a before and after of mere seconds, and yet in those few seconds his entire life has changed, or better worded: ended.

“Now,” he says, “I won’t be going home.” It’s such a simple, short line, and yet it’s one of the more powerful lines in the entire play – and this is a play that deals with everything from teenage abortion to domestic abuse to, well, go read it and find out. The line, no, the whole monologue is brimming with this pulsing knowledge of sadness and hopelessness. With every word the inevitable is coming closer, like the words are screaming out in fear. Or maybe I’m just crazy and getting way too attached to this play. One of those.