Scene 1, at the bottom of the Rhine. The three Rhinemaidens, Woglinde, Wellgunde and Flosshilde, take turns letting Alberich court them and slipping away at the last moment, and they mock his toad-like figure as he slithers over the rocks. When the sun lights up the gold they guard, they tell him its secret without fear: only one who renounces love can forge from it a ring that gives mastery of the world, and nothing that lives would wish to renounce it. Alberich wonders aloud whether, since he cannot win love by force, he might at least wrest pleasure by cunning. He climbs the rock, cries to the waters that he curses love and tears the gold away. Everything goes dark. In Das Rheingold (Richard Wagner, premiered in 1869), the prologue to the tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung, that humiliation sets the rest in motion: in Nibelheim, his underground realm, Alberich forges the ring, enslaves the Nibelungs and forces his brother Mime to make him the magic helmet that renders him invisible. The god Wotan and the cunning Loge go down to find him, trick him into turning himself into a toad, capture him and force him to hand over the hoard, the helmet and the ring, which Wotan tears from his finger. Before leaving, Alberich curses the ring.
// The theoryWhen the way is closed to you
In “Social Structure and Anomie” (1938), Robert K. Merton argued that deviance arises from the mismatch between the cultural goals a society holds out to everyone and the legitimate means it distributes unequally. Faced with that strain, people adapt in five ways: conformity, innovation (reaching the goal by illegitimate means), ritualism, retreatism and rebellion, which rejects both goals and means and replaces them with new ones. Robert Agnew extended the theory in 1992 to include other sources of strain, such as humiliating treatment and the loss of what one values.
Alberich’s rebellion
Alberich is not a mere thief. What happens to him in the Rhine is a form of strain: he desires love, the goal everyone pursues, and is denied it in the most humiliating way. His response is not innovation but rebellion in Merton’s sense: he renounces the goal he has been denied and replaces it with another, power. If he cannot be loved, he will be feared. That turn, from frustrated desire to domination, is the engine of the whole tetralogy. And his curse on the ring is the last form of strain: the loss of what he had obtained in exchange for everything else.
// The subjectA tyrant who was once humiliated
Wagner makes Alberich a repugnant and yet understandable character. He is ugly, greedy and brutal to his own people, whom he turns into slaves in his mines. But his story begins with a cruel humiliation, and the gods who take everything from him are no better than he is: Wotan steals the ring from a thief, not to return it, but to keep it. The whole tetralogy is the story of how that theft and that curse destroy the world of the gods. Alberich is the first culprit, but not the only one.
Scene 3 shows where that strain leads. When Wotan and Loge reach Nibelheim, they find Alberich driving the gold-laden Nibelungs with a whip, and he lays out his plans without a shred of shame: just as he renounced love, everything that lives will have to renounce it; with the gold he will first subdue men, and the women who scorned his wooing will be forced by the dwarf, since love does not smile on him. The humiliation in the Rhine has changed scale: the rejection by three nymphs has become a program against the whole world. Robert Agnew described how negative emotions, above all anger, turn strain into crime, and Wagner gives Alberich that anger from the first scene. When Wotan tears the ring from him, he unloads it in a curse that will pursue every one of its owners.
Alberich
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// The crackThe gods steal too
Merton’s theory explains the deviance of those below, whom society denies the means. But in Das Rheingold the greatest crime is committed by the one above: Wotan, who has agreed to give the giants the goddess Freia in exchange for his castle, steals the ring from Alberich to pay his debt. Alberich himself throws it in his face in Scene 4: if he sinned, he sinned only against himself, whereas Wotan, by taking the ring, sins against all that was, is and shall be. The work suggests that power also offends, and that Merton’s strain is not enough to explain it.
Another reading cannot be avoided. Some critics, such as Theodor Adorno, have pointed out that Alberich and Mime reproduce traits of the antisemitic caricatures of the time, and Wagner was an avowed antisemite. Reading Alberich solely as a humiliated man who rebels requires not forgetting that dimension.
Humiliation as a trigger
Research on violence has repeatedly found the role of humiliation and social rejection. A study by Mark Leary and colleagues of fifteen school shootings in the United States (2003) found that in the great majority of cases the perpetrators had suffered rejection, teasing or bullying. Prevention means not letting humiliation be someone’s only experience: schools that intervene against bullying, spaces of belonging and adults who notice who is left out.
Three key ideas
- Merton’s strain theory (1938) explains deviance as a response to goals society imposes and means it denies; rebellion replaces the denied goals with others.
- Alberich, humiliated by the Rhinemaidens, renounces love to steal their gold, forges a ring of power and enslaves the Nibelungs; when Wotan takes it from him, he curses it.
- The crack: the greatest crime is committed by Wotan, the god who robs the thief, and the figure of Alberich carries traits of the antisemitic caricature of his time.
Sources · further reading
- Merton, R. K. (1938). “Social Structure and Anomie”. American Sociological Review, 3(5), 672-682.
- Agnew, R. (1992). “Foundation for a General Strain Theory of Crime and Delinquency”. Criminology, 30(1), 47-88.
- Leary, M. R., Kowalski, R. M., Smith, L. and Phillips, S. (2003). “Teasing, Rejection, and Violence: Case Studies of the School Shootings”. Aggressive Behavior, 29(3), 202-214.
- Adorno, T. W. (1952). Versuch über Wagner. Suhrkamp.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Alberich?
Alberich is a villain from Opera, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. The three Rhinemaidens laughed at him, one after another.
Why does Alberich become a villain?
Merton’s strain theory explains what people do when denied what everyone is taught to want. Alberich, in Das Rheingold, answers bluntly: if he cannot have love, he will have power.
Which criminological theory explains Alberich?
Alberich's case is analysed through Anomie / Strain. Robert Merton’s strain theory (1938) holds that when society imposes goals but denies some people the legitimate means to reach them, they may innovate with illegitimate means or rebel and replace those goals with others. Alberich, the Nibelung of Das Rheingold (Richard Wagner, first staged in 1869), tries to seduce the three Rhinemaidens, who toy with him and humiliate him. When they reveal that whoever renounces love can forge a ring of power from the gold they guard, Alberich curses love, steals the gold and enslaves the Nibelungs. Wotan, the chief of the gods, takes it from him by trickery. Alberich curses the ring: it will bring death to whoever owns it.
