Spring Awakening: A Children’s Tragedy

At dusk, a group of teenage schoolboys commiserate over their amount of homework. All but two, Melchior Gabor and Moritz Stiefel, leave to study. Moritz and Melchior go for a walk. Melchior questions their purpose in the world; Moritz worries he’ll be one of the seven students the teachers plan to fail in the coming exams to fit everyone into a new classroom.

When a black cat crosses their path, Melchior asks Moritz if he believes in omens; Moritz claims the cat has no meaning. Melchior responds that in escaping the Scylla of superstition, Moritz has fallen for the Charybdis of meaninglessness, referring to the sea monsters that appear as opposite dangers in The Odyssey.

Seated under a tree, Moritz and Melchior discuss shame. Moritz thinks parents instill a sense of shame in their children. Melchior thinks you can avoid shame by doing the same thing as those around you, such as fully undressing when your best friend does. Moritz says he’ll have his future sons and daughters undress together so that they won’t grow to be ashamed of their bodies. Melchior supports this plan but questions what Moritz will do when the daughters become pregnant as a result. Moritz is ignorant of reproduction.

This prompts a discussion about their newfound sexual desires. Moritz doesn’t understand his desires and is deeply ashamed of them, whereas Melchior is only slightly ashamed of his own because he researched sex and knew to expect them. They talk about each seeing a woman naked and feeling desire.

Moritz questions how they ended up in the “whirlpool” of puberty and laments his birth: “Why couldn’t they have let me sleep in peace until everything was quiet again? My dear parents could have had a hundred better children than me” (13). Melchior offers to explain reproduction after they finish their homework at his house; Moritz balks, asking him to instead write an explanation of “the most obvious question about life” (14) and hide it in his school papers so that he has no choice but to read it. Melchior teases him but agrees. Moritz leaves to do his homework.

A group of teenage schoolgirls including Wendla walk together toward the river, where they’ve heard the boys are floating on a raft. One of the girls, Martha, shares how her parents beat her constantly, as if they like doing it: “Sometimes I think they’d feel something was missing if they didn’t have a nasty little brat like me” (16). Martha says she will let her own children grow like the undisturbed weeds in her mother’s 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” (17).

While all three girls want children, none of them know how babies are made. They discuss marriage, which some of them think is the source of children. Wendla argues that being loved by a man gives a woman a sense of worth that’s otherwise unattainable, and she proclaims how happy she is to be a girl. The other girls envy Wendla for her confidence and her idyllic home life.

After they pass Melchior, the girls remark on his good looks and top position in their class. Martha prefers Moritz for his “soulful eyes” (19). Once, at a party, Melchior told Wendla that he didn’t believe in anything anymore.

In the park in front of their school, a group of schoolboys including Melchior babbles about Moritz sneaking into the teachers’ conference room to look at his grades.

An elated Moritz joins them—he’s passed his classes. He is tied with another boy, Ernst Röbel, for the final permanent spot in the next grade, but this doesn’t bother Moritz. He says he would have killed himself if he hadn’t passed. This provokes taunts from the other boys, except Melchior, who defends Moritz.

Two teachers, Starver and Brockenbohn, pass by, lamenting that their top pupil, Melchior, is friends with their worst pupil, Moritz.

Wendla and Melchior encounter each other in the woods. He is walking contemplatively, while she is gathering herbs for her mother. Melchior convinces her to accompany him to his favorite spot beneath an oak tree.

Under the tree, Melchior asks Wendla whether she chooses to help those in poverty or whether her mother requires her to. Although Mrs. Bergmann requires Wendla to help them, she enjoys the work. Melchior is convinced that she helps these people because she enjoys it, not out of inherent charity and goodness. He ridicules the Christian teaching that such selfish charity secures a spot in heaven, asking, “Can a miser help it if visiting sick, dirty children doesn’t make him happy?” (24). Wendla assures Melchior that he would like such charity and tries to discourage him from writing a treatise about the hypocrisy of self-sacrifice to the Reverend Bleekhead—the person Melchior identifies as the prime purveyor of this hypocrisy. Her discouragement enrages Melchior, who says,

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 (25).

Melchior asks what Wendla dreamed about when she lay by the creek earlier. She says she dreamed she was a destitute girl sent each day by her abusive father to beg for money from miserly people. Melchior tells Wendla that such cartoonish villains don’t exist outside of children’s books. She tells him about Martha’s abusive parents and her own pity for her friend. Melchior disapproves of beatings and believes Martha’s parents should be reported.

Wendla confides that she has tried beating herself to see what it feels like. She asks Melchior to hit her with a stick; he refuses, asking what is wrong with her. She persists until, enraged by her demand, he hits her. She doesn’t feel anything through her skirts and asks him to hit her legs; he does. When she complains that he’s hitting her too softly, he flies at her with his fists, beating her until she screams. Realizing what he’s done, Melchior flees in tears into the woods.