The Moral Shackle And Self-redemption

This paper is to probe into the ethical confusion and the ethical choices of Hofmiller, who is the hero of Zweig’s Ungeduld des Herzens. How does he choose when facing at the ethical confusion? What is resulted in after he making ethical choices in desperation? And therefore, what moral shackles does he bear? All these are the issues that this paper tries to probe into. Then, analyzing the hero’s individual emotional pain, criticizing his selfishness, cowardice and reluctance for caring about individual interest, advocating the spirit of self-sacrifice and real sympathy regardless of any return, as well as raising of his sympathy and anti-war attitude to a higher level of humanitarian spirit, all these are the goals of this paper expected to reach.This paper is divided into three parts. The first part mainly analyzes the ethical identity change and the resulted identity confusion of Hofmiller combining with the ethical environment and social background of this novel. The second part focuses on how does Hofmiller make choices when he facing at the confusing and anxiety what ethical identity change brings to him. The third part is from the perspective of ethical literary criticism to discuss Hofmiller’s self-redemption when he suffered so much moral shackles and self criticism after experiencing ethical confusion and making ethical choices.This paper is mainly using the method of ethical literary criticism, to analyze the hero’s ethical confusion, ethical choices and self-redemption on the base of careful reading of the text, and then to discuss the causes and influence of the weakness of common human emotion, as well as what is the real sympathy.