Steppenwolf: A Novel

Hesse, noted for so many wonderful books on introspection, has more of himself in Steppenwolf then any other, I believe. I like the book mainly for the atmosphere, however. He conjures up some wonderful simple scenes that are quite vivid. Not much really happens to Harry, his wanderings and encounters, not really for madmen, but every, thinking man instead.

If you are not acquainted with this masters works, this is a great place to start. Many consider this to be his greatest work. I love all of his books but have a soft spot in my heart for Demion which was the first of his books that I read.

Enjoy!!!

Good book overall, Hermann Hesse seems to overlook the fact that the mystic concepts were created in Africa, he gives a lot of credit to the Asian, the root is in Africa. Also his writing is borderline homosexual. For those who are tired of basic organized religion, Hermann Hesse books are ones to make you think out of the box.

One star is based on the printing, not the novel. This is a larger sized book (8.25" x 5.5"), but there is a huge margin around the text as though it was formatted for a mass market paperback then printed on larger paper.

I ordered Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse but was looking specifically for a original german version. This product advertising led me to believe it would be that version, and when you click on the 'look inside' tab it shows a preview of a german book. Instead I have been sent a translated version, which I could have obtained as a much better edition and in paperback for a lot less.

Ageing intellectual Harry Haller checks out of his attic rooms in a post-WWI German city leaving behind his "records" which constitute the bulk of this novel. They begin as the musings of a divided man: Harry struggles to reconcile the wild primeval "wolf" inside him and the rational, well-mannered, civilized self he presents to the world. He despises the banality of bourgeois life and yet nonetheless longs for its numbing comforts. Each side of his divided nature loathes the other, leaving him hovering between them in spiritual and social paralysis. He can do little more than wander the streets at night, too afraid to go home because he might take the razor to his throat. But everything changes when he meets the mysterious Hermine who wants to teach him to dance... As Hesse points out in a note to this Picador edition, his best loved work is also his most commonly misunderstood one. It isn't so much the book of a man despairing, as of a man believing. Through his relationships with Hermine, Maria and the handsome musician Pablo - and a climactic visitation to the Magic Theatre which has all the depraved beauty, nightmare logic and existential resonance of a David Lynch film - Harry comes to understand and accept the multiplicity of the personality as being ultimately inconsequential. There is a second, higher, indestructible world beyond the Steppenwolf and his problematic life. Ultimately, this novel is a call to connect with the positive, serene, super-personal and timeless reality behind the ridiculous play of life's daily round. It's there all the time, just as we can still hear the genius of Mozart though his music be channelled through a phonograph. Genius survives the transmission, and so it is with the human spirit.

For all intents and purposes, this book functions as a social critique in its finest form. Profoundly troubling, it will lead us all, especially those of us dreaming of future (recognized) "genius" to consider both our own motivations as well as alternatives. The main character in "beneath the wheel" is Hans Giebenrath, a charmingly innocent individual, whose trajectory we follow from his humble beginnings, out of them, and then back.

We're left, at the end, wondering whether or not Giebenrath would have been better off had he never tried to break free of the chains of his ancestors. Has he done something so-called "unnatural" and must now suffer the consequences? Or, as Hesse seems to be trying to suggest, has he been plugged into a system which simply has no use for him?

I think that he (Giebenrath) stands for a part of us which dies as we are painfully initiated into "the ways of the world". It's an innocent desire which wants "something", it doesn't quite know what. Perhaps it only wants to be heard. It is this strange desire which Giebenrath himself found intolerable, creating a kind of infinite regress of his own sorrow, which becomes more unbearable with each passing. I was left wondering at the end of the story if Giebenrath himself would have pondered alternatives. Was there ever a dream, or are our dreams just "spokes on the wheel"?

Herman Hesse's most popular novel was recognized for its creativity and imagination about a man named Harry Haller who becomes a boarder at the narrator's aunt's home for the remainder of his days. The book is a difficult read at times but there are several moments in the novel where you become drawn to Harry's life and inner turmoil.

In reading Herman Hesse's book, the story is more complicated than Harry Haller's final days. Harry Haller was a complicated man. He was lonely man. In reading about the Steppenwolf, Harry Haller has developed a world for himself to cope with his lonely existence. If you enjoy reading a novel about an experimentation in mixing symbolism, realism and fantasy. Harry Haller was about 50 years old when he enters the boarding house. The author himself has written an interesting introduction in his novel's success and influence among generations of readers.

I first read Herman Hesse's novel "Steppenwolf" in the late 1960s, as did many baby boomers. Although I loved the novel at the time, I gradually became embarrassed by the book as an error of my youth My growing disenchantment, probably was due to my increased discomfort with the counterculture, which never appealed to me, and to "Steppenwolf's" adoption by the movement. I have always been generally conservative about most things. My unwillingness to revisit the book persisted even when I became seriously interest in Buddhism, more than fifteen years ago. I decided to revisit "Steppenwolf" upon reading a recent book about philosophy. The author mentioned Hesse's novel several times and obviously thought a great deal of it. The references in a book I liked prompted me to reread "Steppenwolf" at last.

After rereading the book, I thought that I was right to love it upon the first reading, right to leave it alone for more that 40 years, and right to revisit it. As with so many books, "Steppenwolf" loses something when read by the young. In a 1961 author's note, Hesse claimed that "Steppenwolf" often was "violently misunderstood". He attributed the misunderstanding in part to the book's popularity with young readers. Hesse also pointed out that the book tended to attract loners and intellectuals who identified with the loneliness and apparent alienation of Harry Haller, the novel's main character. This certainly would have been true in my case. Hesse wrote:

"[T]his book knows of and speaks about other things besides Harry Haller and his difficulties, about a second,higher, indestructible world beyond the Steppenwolf and his problematic life. The 'Treatise' and all those spots in the book dealing with matters of the spirit, of the arts, and the 'immortal' men oppose the Steppenwolf's world of suffering with a positive, serene, superpersonal and timeless world of faith. This book, no doubt, tells of griefs and needs; still, it is not a book of a man despairing but of a man believing."

The book tells of Harry Haller's, the "Steppenwolf's" redemption from a life of loneliness and despair through his efforts at writing and self-understanding and through largely hallucinatory meetings with a range of characters, including his alter-ego Hermione, a lover, Marie, a strange saxophonist and band leader, Pablo, and the historical figures Goethe and Mozart. Much of the story is set in bars and in Harry's lonely rooms, as he revisits his impoverished love life, divorce, loneliness, and wanderings. A long final scene is set a strange "Magic Theater" where Harry undergoes a series of transformative, if sometimes shocking experiences.

The "Magic Theater" and a small number of ambiguously meant references to drug use in the course of the novel understandably contributed to its appeal to the counterculture. The book has also been read as a strong critique of "bourgeois" society and its
conformity, an interpretation I find misdirected. Harry comes to terms with his life and with the different aspects of himself during the novel. He learns to accept the "bourgeois" world of respectability and business just as he learns to accept and be happy with his own sexuality, learning, independence, and his past. Harry learns to love his life as it is.

The strongest parts of the book are the long descriptions of spiritual Buddhist-derived teachings which discuss the nature of selfhood and the need for letting go and acceptance. The book relies heavily on Buddhist teachings on the lack of a fixed, substantial self. The book integrates Buddhist teachings with Harry's tortured experiences to offer a convincing, if extreme, novelistic portrayal of non-self. I learned much more from rereading this book after I had acquired both "life experiences" and a rudimentary knowledge of Buddhism than I learned when I was young and more foolish and when I knew comparatively little about Buddhism.

Hesse (1877 -- 1962) was born in Germany but became a Swiss citizen in 1923. He wrote the strongly autobiographical "Steppenwolf" in 1927, and it was first translated into English in 1929. The popularity of the book soared in the 1960s and has remained high. Those readers who read "Steppenwolf" when they were young, as I did, might well enjoy revisiting and rethinking the book as they have gone forward in life.

Robin Friedman.

Re-reading Hermann Hesse’s 1927 book Steppenwolf, which I last read I surmise in my twenties, has been an interesting experience. It has been impossible, on this re-read, to separate it both from the time and place of its writing and its popular reprintings. It was originally published in Germany, between the wars, when an aggrieved sense of injustice and a looking for someone to blame was beginning to become fuel for a later conflict. It was republished, hitting the zeitgeist of a later generation of anti-establishmentarians, who found it chimed with their own criticisms of the establishment, early in the 1960s. The book, with revisions, quickly became a classic of the counter-culture, reprinted every couple of years during the 60s and 70s

It was/is certainly a book to speak strongly to anyone who questions/rages against the status quo, to the person who burns to understand the ‘why are we here’ existential questions. So, clearly, it is a book which will appeal on that level to the thoughtful, probably introspective late teens and twenties reader. The central character, Harry Haller, styled the Steppenwolf, wolf of the steppes, a man in his 50s, is almost an archetype of the tortured romantic loner artist, forever both railing against the common man and woman who settle for conformity and materialistic bourgeois values, whilst at the same time having a kind of envy at their ability to be satisfied with so spiritually little. The Steppenwolf lives torn between the extremes of two seemingly oppositional desires – one a kind of surrender to moments of deep spiritual joy where a sense of connectivity and meaning arises – often through music, art, poetry, philosophical thinking, the other, a surrender to ‘wolfishness’ something instinctual, authentic, savage and bitter. The ‘higher man’ and the free, wild animal nature are constantly at war with each other.

Steppenwolf was initially described by the New York Times as ‘a savage indictment of bourgeois society’ , but this did not accord with Hesse’s own reasons for writing, or what he had intended. In a foreword/author’s note to the 1960s and subsequent printings, Hesse is writing the account of a spiritual journey, the need for a balancing and accepting of oppositions. Less a savage indictment, more a sense that one of the challenges of being creatures who are not only conscious, but self-conscious, means we are all holding oppositions, our natures divided against themselves in many ways – far more than just the instinctive animal and the spirit which yearns for the ineffable, but many other oppositions. The ‘search for meaning’ is part of humanity’s challenge, wound, and healing

The book is, for sure, as rich (in fact probably more so) a source for reflection and thoughtfulness as I thought it was in my youth. But I’m no longer sure it is a wonderful novel. In some ways, it is a book about philosophy and metaphysics and Hesse has wrapped this in the coat of fiction, and the fit between fiction and ‘what is this book about’ do not really marry very well, at least in the earlier sections of the book. Most of the book consists of lots of thinking about thinking and thinking about feeling, and describing the thoughts.

Various layering devices – a book (or at least a tract) within the book ‘Treatise on the Steppenwolf’ and the framing device of having an outside narrator, the nephew of Harry Haller’s landlady, discovering Steppenwolf’s journal. Haller, he tells us early, has disappeared. Haller has a bitter, despairing, depressive, highly intellectual and over-analytical nature. Suicide was much in his thoughts. The landlady’s nephew introduces his own impressions of Haller, and presents the journal (which includes the treatise) to support his belief and hope that whatever the reason for Haller’s disappearance, suicide is not the reason.

It is the opening frame, and particularly the ‘Treatise’ that seem particularly heavy on philosophical, metaphysical debate, laying out ideas that our nature is not just a simple, single opposition, but that there are the potential of dozens and hundreds of other unexplored possibilities to each of us, our nature splits and splits again, with a limitless potential, a kind of wholeness in the possibilities.

For me, on this re-read, the literary aspects only really began to take hold (the fiction becoming more than the ideas Hesse was wishing to explore) after Haller meets a young woman who is captivating and curiously familiar. Hermine represents other curious possibilities. She is woman, but also somewhat androgyne, and Haller realises she is a feminised version of a boy who was his closest friend, Herman. Hermine/Herman introduces Haller to a different world, not one yearning for refinement and spiritual union through high art and philosophy – Goethe, Mozart, but a world of frantic pleasure seekers, dancers, drinkers, jazz club denizens and intense sexual encounters, unconfined by the strictures of which gender should encounter which. Hermine is a kind of other side of the coin soul mate to the serious Haller. In some ways, she shares his sense of despair. Her lessons are that the search for spirit takes many forms. There is a common thread to this endeavour

The book explores, without condemnation, a fluidity about sexuality and sexual desire, allows women to express their sensuality and seek to satisfy this, and in fact celebrates this intense seeking of pleasure. There are also scenes of hallucinogenic drug taking.

Though Haller is filled with despair – particularly about what he sees as the inevitability of another war, and constantly debates suicide with himself, the overall search of the book is an attempt to find connection and meaning, an acknowledgement that human nature is not dualistic but has an unlimited potential

It also seems to be a working out, a working through, perhaps, of personal ideas, personal healing. Hesse at the time of writing was his central character’s age; like Haller, he was deeply pessimistic about what he could see coming – another world war. Like Haller, he published articles which were critical about the growing aggression and desire to find someone to blame. Like Haller Hesse was called a traitor.

This re reading has been interesting. Reading it in my youth I suspect I inhabited it more viscerally and was closer to feeling its angry despair. This reading left me with a cooler response; I felt it – or I had fallen between the stools of a treatise on metaphysics, psychology and philosophy, and a novel.

Hesse called his 1927 portrait of a middle-aged man who sees himself as half-human and half-wolf "more often and more violently misunderstood than any other [of his works]." But the novel is ambiguous: on the one hand, an optimistic tale of the humanization of an angst-ridden, bourgeois-hating misanthrope; on the other, an indictment of the intellectual hypocrisy of Weimar Germany. Furthermore, I found much of it (the long philosophical discussions) to be tedious and much of it (the treatment of eastern religions) to be superficial.

"Steppenwolf" is in part an autobiographical novel exploring the mid-life crisis of Hermann Hesse. Readers should be aware that German nationalists up to this point had criticised Hesse for his pacifist writings and activities during WWI. He like so many of his generation had helplessly watched the socio-economic turmoil and transition of Germany during the Weimar Republic, although he had long ago immigrated to Switzerland. He witnessed the deterioration of his first wife's mental health, which subsequently lead to their divorce. And he was afflicted with gout and other physical ailments, some of which are mentioned in the novel. With these tragic events weighing heavily on Hesse, he suffered a nervous break down, whereupon he underwent Jungian psychoanalysis and was inspired by it to put his accounts to paper.

The result was "Steppenwolf", a poetic tale about a middle-aged man who is spiritually, emotionally and physically sick. Any doubt to its subject matter can be easily dispelled in the book of poetry entitled "Crisis" or Crisis Pages From a Diary (Noonday), which Hesse published in 1927 at the same time as "Steppenwolf". It contains two poems found in "Steppenwolf" and a number of confessional poems describing his despair and personal loss.

Despite the abundance of reviews and narratives written on "Steppenwolf" and Hesse's philosophical position it was, he confided in the preface of editions printed after 1961, his most "violently misunderstood" work. Hippies in the late sixties embraced the book's references to drug use, anti-war activity, provocative music and sexual promiscuity. Even counter-culture guru and psychiatrist Dr. Timothy Leary speculated in his book The Politics of Ecstasy (Leary, Timothy) what types of medication Hesse had been prescribed, based on his dream and surrealistic images in the novel.

In truth, Hesse's intention was to paint the picture of Steppenwolf's (or Harry Haller's) state of mind. To portray this personality, Hesse resorted to Jungian psychology, particularly the principals of `ego', `animus/anima' and `self'. Harry Haller is his `ego'. Hermine is his `anima' (animus in women). Pablo and Maria are his `self'. Harry Haller (whose initials H.H. are the same as Hermann Hesse's), however, is unable to integrate the opposite and multiple pieces in his psychological make up. Unity of the personality is attainable by emulating the immortals' (Mozart, Goethe, Nietzsche, Novalis) sense of humour or adaptability whenever confronted with rigid conformity and resistance to change.

When Hesse introduces the reader to Hermine, he is referring to the `anima' in himself; Hermine is the feminine name for Hermann. In Jungian psychology, this is the feminine principal present in the male consciousness or the inner personality in communication with the subconscious. Hermine is in effect the inner voice of Harry Haller (Hermann Hesse) helping him to unify his `ego' and `self'. She encourages the intellectual and serious side of Harry - the `ego' - to recognise and accept the sensual and animal (Steppenwolf) side of his personality - the `self' - which jazz musician Pablo and escort Maria are only too willing to nurture. Hermine is the unifying force of the `ego' and `self', leading to the realm of the immortals in The Magic Theatre where multiple aspects of his personality are synthesised and made whole.

In this respect, The Magic Theatre becomes a metaphorical extension of Harry Haller's mind. All that Harry loathes about the mediocrity of the bourgeois, all that he loves about Mozart, Goethe, Novalis and Nietzsche, all the passion he feels for past loves and Hermine -- in essence, all that comprises Harry -- is distilled and fused as one. For instance, the music of his revered Mozart is played through the radio he so despises; the ugliness of war he dislikes, he embraces with a theologian friend in a war against the automobile (or machine); and when he figuratively kills Hermine, expecting the jury of immortals to sentence him to the gallows, he is heartily laughed down by them.

As for the structure of the novel, one literary critic has compared it to a sonata. "Steppenwolf" is comprised of three movements. In the first movement the narrator introduces us to Harry Haller and his peculiarities; the second movement elaborates on the "Treatise Of The Steppenwolf" to explain his personality and behaviour; and the third movement resolves the psychological conflict in The Magic Theatre. It is a plausible premise, considering Hesse's knowledge of classical music and his allusions to classical musicians in this novel.

Despite the complexities of "Steppenwolf", it is a fascinating novel to read. Every word and passage is heartfelt and meaningful. Hesse pours out his soul, probing his psyche, confessing his insecurities and beliefs, his sorrows and joys, his sensuality and intellect, analysing his (the individual's) role in society and offering some form of spiritual solace. He speaks to us all, regardless of age, sex, race or culture. For we have all at some point in life experienced the bittersweet condition of the Steppenwolf.

As a companion piece to the novel, I would recommend the 1974 movie, Steppenwolf. Max von Sydow (Harry Haller), Dominique Sanda (Hermine), Pierre Clementi (Pablo) and Carla Romanelli (Maria) deliver credible performances, faithful to their respective characters. Storyline is true to the book as well. The editing is hurried and choppy in the first half of the film, making it difficult to connect emotionally with the Steppenwolf's plight, whereas the surrealistic scenes in The Magic Theatre are superbly executed (pardon the pun). Nevertheless, it's a movie not to be overlooked if you love this amazing book by one of the 20th century's great writers.

To American readers, Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse is best known for the novels he published in the latter half of his career, avant garde works which dealt with Jungian psychoanalysis and Eastern religions. Beneath the Wheel, one of his earliest works, is a book of a different sort. Originally published in 1906 under the German title of Unterm Rad, it is more in keeping stylistically with the naturalism of the late 19th century. The more traditional mode of expression, however, does not stifle Hesse’s creative voice. On the contrary, he rather excels at it. His prose is poetically descriptive and a true pleasure to read. The plot of the book, on the other hand, is less than satisfying, and the overall message of the work is not remarkably moving to a 21st-century audience.

Hans Giebenrath is an intellectual big fish in a small pond. Born and raised in a small town in rural Swabia, he has far surpassed all of his classmates in brains and determination. His scholarly achievements earn him the right to compete for a government-sponsored scholarship to a seminary school at a monastery in Maulbronn. Success doesn’t bring all sunshine and roses, however, as Hans soon realizes that taking his studies to the next level only means more hard work, and he questions whether he is up to the challenge. Hesse intended Beneath the Wheel as a severe criticism of the German educational system, which he felt robs boys of their youth and stifles their creativity in favor of rote learning and intellectual conformism.

I must confess I liked this book for all the wrong reasons. I loved Hesse’s naturalistic description of Giebenrath’s world. The small town and the monastery are both exquisitely rendered—not just the picturesque scenes of a fishing trip, an apple cider festival, or a pub crawl, but also the darker details, like his depiction of a neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks. The reader gets sucked into this vivid setting and finds himself longing to inhabit this fascinating world. This makes it even harder to determine the exact root of Hans’ profound discontent. One day he really loves conjugating Greek and Hebrew verbs; the next day he doesn’t. From there it’s all just a downward spiral of depression. The school masters are not sympathetic, but they’re hardly ogres either. Are they not supposed to drive their students to excel? There is more to life than texts and examinations, but after all, there are worse places for a boy to be than with his nose buried in books. The only alternative Hesse offers to scholarly pursuits is the working class life, which he paints with mixed colors. The craftsman’s life, as Hesse depicts it, is one of wholesome, honest work interspersed with the brutish gratification of animalistic desires. It doesn’t help that Hesse waters down his message by introducing other negative influences that contribute to Hans’ decline. As a protagonist, Hans is almost a nonentity in the sense that everything that occurs in the book happens to him, not by him. Though this may have been seen as a stirring coming-of-age novel 100 years ago, today’s readers will find it hard to identify with its hero or his plight.

Hesse is a great writer, and this is not a bad book by any means, but it’s certainly not one of his best. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the rather unmodernist tone of the prose, in terms of resonance and meaning this work doesn’t hold a candle to later classics like Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, or The Glass Bead Game.

Magic is usually not the subject of literary novels, even less so when magic involves hallucinogens, visions, dreams, and phantasmagoria. Many literary novels are page-turners, filled with a compelling, straightforward storyline and lots of action; think of Our Mutual Friend and Crime and Punishment, think of Heart of Darkness and No Country for Old Men, or novels like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Hermann Hesse's novel Steppenwolf is a work of a completely different cast; a reader might find the story gripping, even riveting, but for much different reasons, for the action takes place not in a major city or obscure outpost but primarily in the mind.

Our first introduction to main character Harry Haller is through the eyes of the thirty-something middle-class nephew of Haller's landlady. The nephew observes how Haller lives a lonely, unsocial life and refers to himself as an old Steppenwolf. The nephew's curiosity prompts him to enter Harry's room, where he discovers stacks of books by authors such as Goethe, Jean Paul, and Dostoevsky; a statue of the Buddha; a photo of Gandhi; empty brandy bottles; and half-smoked cigars. In a word, living quarters bespeaking a chaotic, artistic lifestyle.

The nephew explains how Harry suddenly vanishes from the apartment, leaving a manuscript entitled "HARRY HALLER'S RECORDS" that warns potential readers that what follows is "FOR MADMEN ONLY." It is this record that comprises the remainder of the novel. Harry records how he has two natures in conflict: one as a reflective, refined, cultivated gentleman, and the other a wild wolf of the steppes. As such, he is a Steppenwolf, a despiser and destroyer of the middle class who is at the same time supported and comforted by the middle class. Harry's conflict causes him to become so depressed that he sets his 50th birthday as the date for taking his own life.

But life has other plans for Harry the Steppenwolf. We read how Harry encounters a dreamlike inscription over a door in the old section of town. Then the fun begins. Harry's identity and view of reality are challenged by a series of happenings, most notably meeting the beautiful young Hermine, who can be considered in a number of ways: as Harry's double, his doppelgänger; as a reflection of Harry's inner, spiritual self; or as a Jungian archetypal, female part of his psyche--his `anima.'

Hesse wrote Steppenwolf fresh from his own Jungian psychoanalytic experience. Indeed, Hesse plays with the idea of doubles, mirrors, and archetypes throughout this novel. Harry's world is further jazzed up with the entrée of jazz saxophonist/shape-shifter/sensualist Pablo and the beautiful and voluptuous Maria. Jazz, dancing, drugs, and sex all contribute to the death of the formerly old and depressed Harry, transforming him into a revitalized man poised for a full range of experiences at the much-anticipated masked ball.

The masked ball is the final section of the novel. In one of the inner rooms Harry encounters the Magic Theater, which enlarges any previous notions he might have held of both magic and theater. Harry is informed that ere is a definite admission price to this theater: "PRICE OF ADMISSION YOUR MIND." Pablo explains to Harry how the theater has as many doors and boxes as one pleases, ten or a hundred or a thousand, and how "behind each door exactly what you seek awaits you."

Wild! And as we enter and move through the Magic Theater, things become progressively wilder. Recall how Timothy Leary encouraged users of LSD to consult this part of Hesse's novel as a manual to negotiate their hallucinogen-induced trips. Hesse would probably have objected to Leary's statement: He wrote in 1961, "... it seems to me that of all of my books Steppenwolf is the one that was more often and more violently misunderstood than any other, and frequently it is actually the affirmative and enthusiastic readers, rather than those who rejected the book, who have reacted to it oddly."

On this point I agree with Hesse--you need not take LSD to enter The Magic Theater; what you really need is openness and imagination, along with the willingness to courageously peer into the subconscious and unconscious areas of your own psyche. If you have a few decades of adult experience, as Hesse evidently hopes, so much the better.

Hermann Hesse's 1927 semi-autobiographical novel appears to this reader to be a mirror of the 1960's. Hesse's alter-ego, Harry Haller, laments his old age and fears death. Hesse weaves into the tale the newly published theories of Freud on personality. Through the use of drugs, sex and alcohol, the protagonist examines the dualities of personality: beast vs. man, scholar vs. Philistine, male vs. female, creator vs destroyer. Harry opines that one might escape the eternity of death by the immortality of fame and perhaps Hesse has done that through his writing. This work, though a trailblazer of its time, appears to be a bit past its prime today.

Herman Hesse vividly portrays the self-absorbed man who looks within himself and finds himself tortured. He is a solitary contemplative person who contemplates his own destruction, but is torn by another predominant personality which wants to enjoy the party scene, and the childish and immature things of life. He is torn primarily between these two personalities but also discovers other tertiary personalities that surface from time to time. What should he be true to and how should he carry on? Does one personality need to die in order to give way for another, or can he live on as a unity of diversity? We all encounter these struggles of personality because of our essential personhood. Hesse's novel confronts us all with this unique aspect of what it means to be a person. Perhaps our humanity with all of its unity and diversity is just like the radio at the end of the novel that plays Mozart. Although it doesn't sound much like Mozart because it is distorted, it really is Mozart. Maybe this is because our humanity is a distorted radio-like image of a divine being who is also multiple persons in one essence? The novel's interaction with such nuanced issues of philosophy, psychology, and daily life allows the reader to confront a number of questions about humanity and personality. Because of this, the book is a worthy read. Readers should also be aware that there are multiple portrayals of drug use, sexuality, suicide, and violence which may make it less suitable.

Steppenwolf is ostensibly the story of a middle-aged, intellectual, world-weary lodger whose papers are left in an ordinary middle-class home. Its real purpose, however, appears to be to expound Hesse's philosophy of life as the "Wolf of the Steppes" recounts his encounters with carefree lovely maidens, jazz-playing drug-dealers, and a mystical carnival where Mozart and the rest of the Immortals come to life. The Steppenwolf feels himself split into two pieces: the beastly wolf who laughs at the pretensions of the human being, and the human who recoils in horror at the savage excesses of the beast. He is often tempted by suicide and despair, feeling himself cut off from ordinary life and from contact with other human beings - though he longs for both. The lessons of the women and Immortals who lecture him and love him teach him that not only is a human being two pieces, we are all multiple selves constantly at war with each other and incapable of being integrated. The secret is to embrace each self when appropriate and to live life in such a way that we can contribute to the ongoing legacy of culture, spirituality, and art that lives in the immortal realm. I feel like a Steppenwolf myself much of the time, and the book reminds me the value and also the cost of living in that despair - and what to do about it.

Hans Giebenrath is an adolescent who lives in a small, industrial town in the province of Wurtemberg, in Germany. For many youths of Hans' age schooling is coming to an end, and each one must choose a profession form the various trades offered in the near vicinity. But Hans is no ordinary youth. He has proved to be an excellent student, and indeed is the best scholar in his school. Hans is the only student in town who this year is to be entered into the Landexamen. Those who pass this exam gain free entry into the state run Protestant Theological College at Turingen. This training qualifies the student for a career at "the pulpit or the lecturing desk." To be a vicar is a most esteemed career and Hans' father is very proud of his son, and strictly enforces a regime of learning, rather than allowing the boy to gad about wasting his time on fishing and the like. Hans receives hours of extra tuition lessons, in Greek from the Headmaster, in Latin from the Vicar, and in mathematics from that subject's head teacher. Like Hans' father all these important men are most proud of the boy and look forward to his great success. Not surprisingly Hans feels superior to most of the boys in town, who after all will soon be merely apprentices. Hans is too good-natured to be overly a 'snob', though he is socially cut off from his piers. The school year is coming to an end and soon the boy's 'great adventure' of learning will begin. But where in Hans' life is there room for the development of what might be called his essence, his core self?

This book has also been published in English under the title _The Prodigy_.

_Beneath the Wheel_ (1906) is Hermann Hesse's second novel. His first, _Peter Camenzind_ (1904), examined the themes of personal happiness and the development of the 'true self'. This second novel also looks at those themes, but concentrates on the particular issue of education. Many would hold that education is essential for the full development of the personality, but looking realistically at the school system one must ask does it really assist, or in fact perhaps even hinder, the growth of the individual? What are those things that are essential to our selves? And if the personality is damaged what things can heal our 'core self'?

Also like _Peter Camenzind_ this novel is written in a beautifully lyric style. There is a particularly delightful passage where Hans goes fishing during his holidays. Hesse describes this event so magnificently that the reader cannot help but become nostalgic for his own childhood. What is more this and other scenes truly 'live' for us. Where the first novel was truly of the Romantic School, this story, for all its beauty, is less hopeful, more harsh, and perhaps more realistic.

The character of Hans develops well throughout the story and we have a definite sense that the book is taking us somewhere. Hans' friend, Hermann Heilner, is representative of the 'Romantic Poet' and here too we see an arch of trajectory in the character. The other characters, however, remain quite static. Flaig is the only character who shows any insight into Hans' predicament, but he does not really actively engage with the youth or take any other role in the development of the tale. That is to say he too is static. To be fair to Hesse, though, I should note that this static element in characterization is representative of the many useless, unhelpful elements of life, that lead nowhere in development.

This novel represents a development in Hesse's thought. The author maintains his fascination for the vital elements of life, yet also thinks deeper into this philosophical question. At the same time Hesse leads his audience to think deeper into their own lives. Have we gone astray? Do we know exactly where things went wrong? These are deep questions yet the book is light and easy to read. At around 150 pages it is indeed a short read. This novel is certainly well worth reading and you may even find Hesse becoming one of your favorite authors.

Luis Mejia - Hesse's Beneath The Wheel can be classified onto his classic "youth" tales. Actually, out of this context I am not too experienced with the rest of his works, although there is something about the nature of the human spirit; which can only be described with certainty and growing beauty on it's formation, on adolescence, that Hesse's captures in a way you can feel so close as to your own father. This first novel - which wasn't his cup of tea as a writer - tells the story, almost in a philosophic perspective, of how an educated formation of a young kid, who by the times the story is set and it's cultural contexture (the Germany of early 20th century) is taught to be a sort of "spokeman" for his very own town, to the cumulative expectatives of others, by the honor of him being the only one to assist to a famous exam and even more famous institute. but through the experience this boy passes through crude and serious adult experiences, turning around numb headeaches, frustating insecurity, the lack of a clear goal, his thoughts of going through a wrong path only to go different from what the boy calls "the rest", and soon in this spiral he goes all the way back to dissapointment, finally falling without any type of emotional support; or rather unravelling it.

On this institute (which was somewhat accurate due to Hesse once being expelled from this academy) the group of classmates is well explained, the death of one of the children; but specially his acknowledgement of friend Herman Heilner; a flamboyant poet boy who has such a strong spirit the proper academy has encounters with him. The story is dramatic by Hans going out due to his physical pains; and by this archaic failure, he soons discovers (progressively and secretively) the whole town and relatives had worn him out, and his treatment was just like a living death. The results: to fall into the dark side and end in tragedy. Apart from the severe education critic Hesse exposes with such delicate spirit, he describes most greatly the nature of the adolescent condition with such a warm and factual nature...I can't explain it very well, all I can say is that you must read it specially when you're a teen and specially to understand it; it will open spiritual doors. At the end of almost each of his stories, there's always that sense of essay and the message drowning the story, although this is something very peculiar about Hesse. It is short, to the point and sincere; a very important read.

Sometimes distinguishing well-crafted philosophical fiction with deeply introspective characters from the feverish scribblings of honest but boring and aimless kvetching is difficult. "Steppenwolf" however, unquestionably falls into the former category. Hesse demonstrates the breadth of a good liberal arts education in his magnum opus. His candid commentaries on influential world-views and human events, as told through Harry Haller's diary, flirt with a grand synthesis of truth and being on a Nietzschean scale. Hesse however, carefully avoids taking that plunge into the impersonal and absolute (or the ascent into the ivory tower, if you will,) and refuses to commit to a system. "Steppenwolf" is throughly intellectual, but ultimately about people.
The novel's interbellum German backdrop forms a sketchy but unsettling national parallel to the inner turmoil and despair of a man caught in his own approaching meltdown. Anyone able to understand and discuss the book even superficially must identify with _some_ of Haller's miseries or hopes. Haller's self-castigating introspection runs such a comprehensive gamut that sometimes I wonder whether Hesse had sat down with a checklist of every great thinker from Socrates to Sartre to ensure fair time for every primal and contrived source of mental anguish in Western thought. An ordered map of Haller's thoughts would surely reveal numerous inconsistencies, and maybe that's okay - even genius. On an obvious level, there is something for everyone in the protagonist. But more poignantly, the contradiction of his neuroses and sorrows in toto may be precisely what transcend the pages and become the reader's own - to whatever extent. Like Haller, real people often harbor simultaneous grievances and anxieties, surfacing in different circumstances, trapping us in vicious circles. Hesse makes a point early in the novel that Haller's belief in lycanthropic duality is folly, because it oversimplifies the real man: a countless multiplicity of personalities in several shades. If there is one major disappointment in the book, it is that Hesse lets this notion quickly fade, to be evoked again only in the final act.

And therefore, I sometimes harbor an ambiguous and borderline philistine suspicion that Hesse's simpler "Siddhartha" not only stands as his supreme achievement, but also subsumed everything important in "Steppenwolf," and related it more directly. If one cannot become absorbed by Haller's thoughts or moved by his lamentations, reading "Steppenwolf" can be trying at times. In less than half the pages, Siddhartha's search for identity and truth takes him through many similar circumstances, which Hesse gives no shallow treatment as pieces within a greater struggle. Hesse's fascination with Oriental philosophy was never a secret, but its ultimate value in his optimistic hope for man and humanity (see Hesse's foreword in the newer editions,) is a more important question remaining to be answered.

_Here I am, like the Steppenwolf, approaching the age of 50. I understand him now for I have lived his life. His deepest thoughts are mine- indeed, they read exactly like my own journals. No wonder I am told that Hesse is my soul mate. It is true.

_I lived Steppenwolf's solitary life. I knew his crisis. I share his rejection of bourgeois society because it grates the fundamental essence of my soul. And I know what he means by the strength derived from knowing that you can leave this world any time. I know the conviction to never sell yourself into wage slavery for mere money. I know his night wanderings, his books, his music, his rooms, his cigars, and his wine. I know.

_But I also know his central crisis. For when we are ready then a door really does open to a higher perspective. I literally walked through that door in the wall for "madmen only." Like the wulf I had always sensed the golden moments that form the golden path to that door. I was eventually shown it. I had always suspected that man was more than a half rational animal, that he was a child of the Gods and destined to immortality. When you are ready, when you are sick enough of the petty ego, you will be shown the kingdom on the other side of time and appearances. It is just necessary to stumble through your share of dirt and humbug before you reach Home.

_Time and the world, money and power belong to the small and shallow people. To the rest, the real men, belongs nothing. Nothing but death- and eternity- and the kingdom.

"Ignorance is bliss," goes the old proverb coined by Thomas Gray, and I'd wager Hermann Hesse would agree. When you are as intelligent and sensitive a man as Hesse, the quotidian crap that assails you and the rest of humanity must be almost unbearable. But if felo-de-se is out of the question, how exactly do you bear up?

That seems to be the point of Steppenwolf, a clear-cut masterpiece whose omission from the MLA 100 is nothing if not a scandal. This is a deep book, a profound book, a book that is wearying to read, and which seems longer than its 208 pages. It is by no means a page-turner, nor is it as accessible as Siddhartha.

Steppenwolf raises many questions, and answers none satisfactorily--understandable given that human beings are essentially cosmic orphans, alone and adrift on a small planet, making everything up as they go along. Hesse does not like this. He seeks order and rationale, a raison d'etre...but all he finds is stupidity, primitiveness, and ennui.

This is ventriloquized through the perspective of the narrator, and there are pages and pages of angst-ridden, existential thrashing about. Sometimes these passages drag...but always--always--the sheer quality of the writing is evident. The talent on display is rare indeed, and appreciable even when you want to grab Hesse by the shoulders, give him a shake, and tell him to come to grips with life's meaninglessness and quit being such a pussy.

I recommend Steppenwolf to those who are interested moreso in philosophy than literature. If you are looking for a simple, straight-forward yarn, this ain't the book.

This is a well-written book, very personal as all of Hesse's works are, but suffers from a rather underdeveloped writing style -- understandable since it was written so early in Hesse's career -- but still quite noticeable. The book is based upon the character of Hans Giebenrath, a boy who is "beneath the wheel" -- he is attending school to become a member of the clergy, which was one of the few options available to intelligent people in Hesse's day. he had to study Latin, Greek, history, theology, and so on -- none of which to hans seems to have the slightest relation to reality -- it's all just dry, dead scholasticism that stuffy professors have to know that does nothing but remove one from the centre and essence of life rather than contributing to it. Hans tries and tries, and succeeds until he meets Heilner, a misfit whom hans secretly admires but does not have the courage to emulate totally. Keeping Hesse's later works in mind, one would get the idea that heilner is actually a projection of the true, inner self of Hans -- the person he needs to be, but does not have the courage to become. Nevertheless, Heilner is a poet -- he sees the silly scholastic activities for what they are -- as if conjugating aroists and memorising the date of Charlemagne's death had any real significance! And he manages to get himself disgraced; it is then that Hans begins to realise that all that he is doing is nothing but hypocrisy. He is doing it simply because he is expected to do it, not because he has any real passion for his studies. he loses interest, and to all mundane valuations, becomes a failure. He gets a job in manual labour which offers even less in the way of mental stimulation that the challenging, but useless scribblings of the clergy and professors do. (...) The book highlights a central theme in the life of the "artist" types: how one is forced to accept values that one knows are false, but to which there seems no other alternative. the creative person is caught between a rock and a hard place, having to choose between a common, bourgeois existence or dead scholasticism and vital life -- one needs to choose vital life, but how? No answer is given. A very autobiographical novel, Hesse's own struggles are not really the result of any inherent mental instability, but simply underlines the problems of the traditional Wilsonian "Outsider": how is one is to live the most intense life with integrity and not bow out to the values of the masses? Like so many outsiders, Hesse and Hans knew that something was wrong, knew that they needed a way out, but Hans was not successful in finding out exactly where that path lay. An excellent book, well-worth anyone's time.

_Here I am, like the Steppenwolf, approaching the age of 50. I understand him now for I have lived his life. His deepest thoughts are mine- indeed, they read exactly like my own journals. No wonder I am told that Hesse is my soul mate. It is true.

_I lived Steppenwolf's solitary life. I knew his crisis. I share his rejection of bourgeois society because it grates the fundamental essence of my soul. And I know what he means by the strength derived from knowing that you can leave this world any time. I know the conviction to never sell yourself into wage slavery for mere money. I know his night wanderings, his books, his music, his rooms, his cigars, and his wine. I know.

_But I also know his central crisis. For when we are ready then a door really does open to a higher perspective. I literally walked through that door in the wall for "madmen only." Like the wulf I had always sensed the golden moments that form the golden path to that door. I was eventually shown it. I had always suspected that man was more than a half rational animal, that he was a child of the Gods and destined to immortality. When you are ready, when you are sick enough of the petty ego, you will be shown the kingdom on the other side of time and appearances. It is just necessary to stumble through your share of dirt and humbug before you reach Home.

_Time and the world, money and power belong to the small and shallow people. To the rest, the real men, belongs nothing. Nothing but death- and eternity- and the kingdom.

_Here I am, like the Steppenwolf, approaching the age of 50. I understand him now for I have lived his life. His deepest thoughts are mine- indeed, they read exactly like my own journals. No wonder I am told that Hesse is my soul mate. It is true.

_I lived Steppenwolf's solitary life. I knew his crisis. I share his rejection of bourgeois society because it grates the fundamental essence of my soul. And I know what he means by the strength derived from knowing that you can leave this world any time. I know the conviction to never sell yourself into wage slavery for mere money. I know his night wanderings, his books, his music, his rooms, his cigars, and his wine. I know.

_But I also know his central crisis. For when we are ready then a door really does open to a higher perspective. I literally walked through that door in the wall for "madmen only." Like the wulf I had always sensed the golden moments that form the golden path to that door. I was eventually shown it. I had always suspected that man was more than a half rational animal, that he was a child of the Gods and destined to immortality. When you are ready, when you are sick enough of the petty ego, you will be shown the kingdom on the other side of time and appearances. It is just necessary to stumble through your share of dirt and humbug before you reach Home.

_Time and the world, money and power belong to the small and shallow people. To the rest, the real men, belongs nothing. Nothing but death- and eternity- and the kingdom.

Harry Haller is a medium for Hesse to address some of the rather extremely intense issues. This is a story of a middle aged man who over the years becomes disillusioned with life. He cannot relate with the norm (bourgeois) yet continues to live within their system. Buried in his books and writings he confines himself to his own personal hell. Unable to find a way out he decides upon taking the "emergency exit" if life continues to disagree with him. On the decided night he comes across Hermine, a complete opposite of Harry who does not allow her intellect to limit her. She teaches Harry to look at life from different perspectives besides his own among many other life's lessons.
The ending of the book is like an answer key to all the questions that inflict Haller throughout. He makes some wrong choices only to end up with the right lessons in life.
Hesse maintains the level of intensity throughout as he continues to bring forth his opinions on war (keeping with the times it was first written), commentary on suicide ("it must be said that to call suicides only those who actually destroy themselves is false."), his attitude towards the bourgeois, music, poetry, etc.
Hesse stated in his note written in 1961 (many years after this book's first publication in 1927) that he found readers either completely misunderstanding it or partially understanding it. One must go beyond the main character's personal problems and study it in totality to understand what the author really intended to do with this story.

In “Beneath the Wheel”, Hermann Hesse tells the story of Hans Giebenrath, a child who is the shining star of his small village, at least academically speaking. After he succeeds brilliantly in his exams, Giebenrath goes to study in college. There, he meets another brilliant child, who makes him question the education he is obtaining. Through these two children, Hesse critiques the education system (at least in those days). Hesse’s writing is absorbing and the plot is well constructed. Yet, I felt that Hesse failed to develop his critique in depth and a lot of characters were introduced into to the story, only to be forgotten a few pages later without adding anything to the story or to the main premise. After I finished reading it, I couldn’t avoid thinking that Hesse only scratched the surface with this novel. He managed to pique my curiosity, but eventually, he left me unsatisfied.
 

In my early adult life I refused to read fiction, thinking it a waste of valuable time when I could instead be learning something--accumulating facts, figures and knowledge.

Its been said that in our youth we know through "knowledge"--in old age we know through "wisdom". Books are kind of like that in that, although a work of fiction may not give us facts and knowledge, they have the potential to give us great wisdom or understanding re lifes' vagaries.

A good friend whom I admired was a great advocate of Hesse--told me about Steppenwolf--that it would change my life. And so I took time out of my life--a life of science, facts and knowledge--and read the book. He was right. I had never read anything so powerful, so enlightening, so provocative. I quickly, in succession, read every Hesse book I could get my hands on.

It would take an experienced psychoanalyst--the mind of a genius--to unravel and explain the complex nature of Steppenwolf--a man--a lonely isolated man--struggling to understand his inner-self wherein an epic battle is taking place between his introverted intellectual nature and his opposing hedonistic desires--the dual nature of man--a battle we all fight--until our dying day. In the story, the protagonist, Harry Haller, a man who immediately reminded me of myself, meets two people who help guide him through his struggle--one, a captivating hedonistic woman who draws the same out of Harry against the better judgement of his intellectual self--teaches him that there is more to life than science, facts and solitary thought--laughter, dance, love and emotion.

The story is magical and as you are drawn in to Harrys' conflict the lines between reality and fantasy are soon blurred as if you, the reader, had just smoked a pipe of opium. As you read, you float between the opposing worlds of fantasy and pleasure seeking instincts and the rational and the intellect.

Your first great book is like your first great love--you can never forget it. Mine was Steppenwolf.

DH Koester--"And There I Was" And There I Was Volume VIII: A Backpacking Adventure in Ethiopia

Herman Hesse wrote this novel in 1906, long before he became known as one of the greatest writers in the 20th century. Obviously autobiographical, it tells the story of a Hans, young boy from a small village in the Black Forest region of Germany, who was pushed to study for exams so that he could gain admittance into a famous school that prepared boys for the ministry. Under the tutelage of the schoolmaster and the minister, he is pushed almost beyond endurance to master Greek, Latin, Hebrew, mathematics and other subjects. His childhood is spent in unrelenting study and he even has to give up his love of fishing. And then when he passes his exams and is admitted to the school, the pressure gets even worse. No wonder he gets splitting headaches!
Immediately, the reader is drawn into the story and we become the young Hans, and see the world through his eyes. We are there with him during the long hours of study and we meet his schoolmates, one young man in particular, a poet, who rebels against the system that is forcing the students to keep pushing themselves from getting crushed "beneath the wheel." Young Hans starts to have episodes of forgetfulness and fainting and eventually has a nervous breakdown and is sent back to his village in disgrace. The inevitable conclusion is tragic.
I can easily see the making of the great writer in Hesse's youthful novel. He's a master of simply stating the contradictions around him without making the connections obvious. And his descriptions of the beauty of nature are wonderful. He captures the essence of the heavy price we pay in doing what is expected of us without question. There's historical significance here too because, as we read, we have the hindsight to know what later happened in Germany. And yet, we also see that there's a strong element in our own American culture that pushes young people to bend to the yoke of prescribed achievement too. There is food for thought throughout and this book is as fresh today as when it was written almost a century ago. Recommended.

This may be a challenging novel for some people because of the narration shifts, no chapters, the boring beginning, and most of all the driving theme, but it's smooth sailing after you've gotten past about the first third of the book. The narration starts out from the pov of an unnamed young man from whose aunt Harry is renting out a room, and one day he begins looking over Harry's books and eventually finds a mystifying "Treatise on the Steppenwolf." This sets the background for who exactly Harry is and what kinds of ideas are going through his head.

The early part of the book is boring because Harry himself is a bore. Harry needs to learn to lighten up, stop taking everything so seriously, enjoy life, not pick fights so easily, and most of all just learn how to smile, laugh, dance. He keeps to himself and drives away the few friends he finds in the town he is staying in the very night he's invited over to their house for dinner. An old friend of Harry's, who is a professor, begins ranting about a recent anti-war article in the newspaper. The man who wrote this article also has the surname Haller, and as Harry is getting angrier and angrier with the professor's tirade (since Harry was also anti-war), he finally lies that he wrote the article, just as an excuse to get out of their house. He was also set off earlier in the evening by a picture of Goethe in their house, since Harry's hero is depicted in a lightweight and romantic way, not as some stiff and humourless intellectual. That bridge burned, he heads off to a local tavern called the Black Eagle, where he meets a mysterious woman named Hermine, who takes him under her wing, along the way introducing him to her equally mysterious friends Pablo and Maria. Thus begins Harry's journey towards getting a life and learning how to have fun, with the culmination being his amazing experience in the Magic Theatre.

This book was deeply influenced by Hesse's psychotherapy sessions with Carl Jung, and came out in 1927, when Freudianism was all the rage. The very theme of the book, of a man trying to harness his humanlike and wolflike attributes into one coherent and sane whole, is very similar to Freud's theories about the conflict raging between the id, ego, and superego, as well as the theory about the reptilian part of the human brain. A lot of the scenes, esp. in the Magic Theatre, read like something that came out of a drug experience or LSD hallucination, but in this case it seems to have come from the strange but true world of the little-explored reaches of the human brain and the human mind. There's a Steppenwolf in all of us.

In short, "Beneath the Wheel" is 29 year old Hermann Hesse's attack on the educational system of his day. Unfortunately, too many youths (and adults) in our own contemporary society continue to be crushed by parents & teachers with personal agendas at odds with individuality. This is most harmful in youths because they haven't been given an opportunity to explore or pursue themselves, and who often wind up emotionally stunted throughout their adult lives. Now as far as Hesse goes, he is one of my favorite authors, and I'd love to give this book more than three measly stars. However I don't think "Unterm Rad" ("Beneath the Wheel", aka: "The Prodigy") is nearly as interesting as his later works. I even think his earlier novel "Peter Camenzind", though less developed, is more enjoyable. Still, there are some good reasons to read this book. Though it was written after "Peter Camenzind" it details an earlier period of Hesse's life. Like Hans Giebenrath, Hesse was miserably unsatisfied with the pressures and direction of his early schooling. Hans' father (like Hesse, his mother was deceased early in his life) and the local village community push Hans to excel in the state examinations. His required studies include Latin, German, Greek & mathematics. Hans is a very sensitive and emotional boy who prefers poetry, art, and the simple pleasures of fishing to the rigid manner in which he taught the classics he otherwise enjoys immensely. Although Hesse doesn't go into great character depth with Hans, it's plain for all to see that he's stressed out and unhappy. He is even denied a summer vacation in between schools in favor of preparatory study. When he does manage to advance into the Maulbronn Seminary we experience "college" (boarding school) student life with Hans. He befriends a rebellious boy named Heilner who is a stock-type in many of Hesse's novels, and who represents the person Hesse actually wanted to be, or strove to be, as opposed to the protagonist who is always the person he believed himself to be. Hermann Heilner (note the similarity in name with Hermann Hesse) is eventually kicked out of school for his obstinance and basically disappears from the scene, but remains largely in the consience of Hans. Heilner is similar to Richard from "Peter Camenzind", except that he does not "die" here. Richard represented an intellectual & bohemian aspect of Hesse's life after college that he felt required to "shed" in order to grow into the "respectable" & "responsible" married man he became in and around 1905. If you read enough of Hesse's works you'll find that all of his novels pick up where the previous one left off in terms of inner-development. So for example, Hesse separates Heilner from Hans because he needs to take Hans to his natural conclusion right here and now, before returning to the Heilner in him in "Gertrude", "Rosshalde", and then "Demian", and so forth. Hans and Richard never completely leave Hesse or his future protagonists, but play smaller and less significant parts of their lives in the same way we grow older and (hopefully!) develop into wiser, more complex individuals.

Literary analysis aside, "Beneath the Wheel" is Hesse's second full-length novel and you'll find him here building strength as a writer and artist; especially through his vivid descriptions of German Black Forest village life, the refreshing natural scenery always comforting and reflecting individual psychology, and a little bit in the colorful depictions of local characters and dialogue. Although I find "Peter Camenzind" more interesting as a novel, "Unterm Rad" is more well written and developed than "Peter Camenzind" which comes across as fragmented and incomplete. Both novels deal with the real, inner-life of youth and are morose, and depressing at times. No one reads Hesse for humor though. He has been aptly described as a "biographer of the soul", and I think this is why he appeals to so many individuals throughout time and country. "Beneath the Wheel" presents two important characters in the Hesse universe, all the more important for representing the early stages of individual human development amidst an indifferent and sometimes damaging social-system. Young Hans, like so many of us at one time or another struggles with the pressures of callous parents, neighbors, teachers, and society in general. He has to confront peer pressure, awkwardness in balancing his desires with what's desired of him, and the strangeness and power of first-love and sexuality. He excels in spite of himself, is on the "track", and a part of the system. He then falls off, and now suddenly must handle disappointment for the first time in his life. How will he deal with these unforseen (but predicatble) obstacles? This is the dark, mysterious realm where true character strength, courage, resillence, individuality, and beauty are forged in man & woman alike. Sadly, it is also the unknown realm which comfortable, status-quo, pigeon-holing, stereotypical, automaton producing society opposes, fears, and needs to repress, crush, and see defeated in order to vindicate itself.

Thankfully, this will not happen as long as there are friends & soul-mates of writers like Hesse who continue to stand up for the demands and freedoms of individuality amidst the larger, impersonal society Hesse eventually comes to have great hope for in "The Journey to the East" and "The Glass Bead Game".

This is a brilliantly written critique - of the Prussian Education System - in the form of a novel. Herman Hesse intended to show how a natural genius(or any child) is stiffled under an educational system that does not care for the needs and desires of the children. A system that is designed for the benefit of the status quo social structure, but ignores the freedom of the children to grow up in accordance with their own dreams.

The central character in this book is Hans Giebernath, a brilliant student in school, but a miserable failure in college after a short while. He is burned out - studying, studying, studying - matters irrelevant to him. He is not able to enjoy and cherish the joys of life. This is the story of his tragedy. His attempts to find a different path for himself in life, his desire to break out of the cage of the academy.

Many will be able to relate to the story; I especially felt a strong similarity between Hans' lifestory and my own. I was a brilliant student in high school, went to an elite college carrying high hopes placed upon me by everybody that knew me, but burned out by the sheer boredom and irrelevance of the 'ivory towers'. However, unlike Hans Giebernath, I managed to put myself through four years, but not without much frustration similar to that felt by him. That is why I loved this story, finally a book that understands and sympathizes with young men like me.

Hans' story continues after the college, has a few surprise twists and an ending that many can see coming. But that is not a shortcoming of the book, the author has built it up so that many a readers will not feel surprised by how the book ends.

What can be said about the writing itself? It's brilliant and choke full of great imagery. Even without a florid prose, Herman Hess has created a work that is great pleasure to read for it's quality of writing and deep thoughts contained therein.

(4.5 stars, actually)

'Beneath the Wheel,' or, as it was originally titled in German, 'Unterm Rad,' is a stunningly good early Hesse novel, one of his best and more memorable early books (although my personal favorite of his early work is 'Rosshalde'). I wouldn't say it's as memorable as a book like N&G or 'Steppenwolf,' but it's more memorable than, say, 'Knulp' or 'Peter Camenzind.' It concerns a promising young schoolboy, Hans Giebernath, one of the brightest minds in his local school, who is so intelligent and accomplished a scholar he is chosen to take an important test that, if he passes, will grant him entry into a higher institution of learning and knowledge, so much more advanced and well-equipped than the village school he's currently enrolled in. If accepted, he will be able to make a better life for himself and make his father, a widower, proud of him. However, as much as Hans is longing for this opportunity to break away from stagnant home village, he also isn't too keen on the idea of having to study 'round the clock instead of being able to spend more time in one of his very favorite pastimes, fishing.

Hans is incredibly worried he won't pass, even after all he's given up and how much he's studied, convinced he has completely blown the Latin or Greek portion of the test. But, since he's so brilliant, he passes with flying colors and is able to go away to the big school. However, before he leaves, the local priest counsels him that they may teach him Greek in a "heretical" fashion; i.e., in a way that may expose some centuries-old mistranslations and misinterpretations of the Bible, and therefore cast into doubt the entirety of religion and the authority of priests such as he is. Hans doesn't agree with the priest's narrow-minded view, and determines he'll study Greek however he wants to, whether or not it conflicts with traditionalist translations of the Bible.

Upon arriving at the school, Hans very soon finds himself crushed further and further "beneath the wheel." Instead of encountering enlightened nurturing teachers, he finds teachers who are little more than machines, not instilling any love of or joy in learning. He starts falling behind in his studies and suffering from ill health as a result of all of this, and in addition has become friends with Hermann, another nonconformist the school is trying to crack down on. This friendship gets him into trouble with the other boys as well, not just their teachers. What follows exposes the dangers lurking in ivory towers, how bright innocent young people who come to post-secondary institutions full of joy, hope, and promise, on a quest for knowledge, enlightenment, and people who feel the same way they do are often turned into mindless automatons or risk paying the price for how they don't fall into line. Hans himself is eventually expelled the same way Hermann is, finding his way back to his native village, looked on with shame and stigma, with little choice but to follow in his father's footsteps and become a mechanic. The final result of all of this was really a surprise to me; I did not see the end coming, though some people might have predicted it.

Each of Hermann Hesse's writings is a unique tale of the numinous life. In STEPPENWOLF, his most autobiographical work, first published in German in 1927, Hesse introduces us to the trials and tribulations of his nominal alter ego, Harry Haller.

Haller is an intellectual of independent but modest means who believes himself to be a 'Steppenwolf,' a lone wolf of the plains, forever an outcast from life's feast. STEPPENWOLF is Haller's half-mystical half-mad memoir of his descent from intellectual self-absorption into the bohemian subculture of interwar Germany.

STEPPENWOLF is also a repository of some of the best poetical prose ever written. Much nuance is inevitably lost in translation from the original German to English, but STEPPENWOLF still shines as a work of the spirit.

In one aspect, STEPPENWOLF is a book of its time, the reflective writings of a thinking man faced with the decay of the Weimar Republic, and suffering with prescience of the cataclysm to follow.

In another aspect, STEPPENWOLF recounts the existential crisis of a man who upon reaching middle age has discovered that all his idols, idylls and fancies are just so much dust in the wind. At age fifty, Haller is a tragic and discontented figure who yearns for the simple touch of a hand on his own. Nevertheless, he despises most of human behavior and makes no secret of it. Still, he hates himself most of all, and seeks isolation and aloneness as his lot, choosing to expend his days in windy speculations on poetry, music and philosophy. Harry is a man lost in his own misery. As Hesse shows us, Harry's only escape from unhappiness lies not Poetics but in Carnival.

In still another aspect, STEPPENWOLF is a tale of youthful alienation and rebellion. Harry meets the mysterious courtesan Hermine, who becomes his best friend and confidant. She makes Harry conversant with popular culture, dance, and the art of love, as well as the simple social conventions which lie beyond his narrow view of life.

STEPPENWOLF has long been one of the bibles of the counterculture, based largely on its lengthy coda, wherein Harry visits the "Magic Theatre" courtesy of Hermine and her friend the jazz saxophonist Pablo, who act both as initiators and guides in Harry's experimentation with various altered states of consciousness. The mechanics of Harry's experiences are all but invisible against the rich tapestry of image and fantasy woven by Hesse in these pages.

The sensitive and thoughtful reader will no doubt discover still other aspects to this complex and multifacted novel.

With the publication of Steppenwolf in1927 Hermann Hesse was standing on the top of the literary world. Other great contemporaries like Knut Hamsun and Thomas Mann, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, were also established and writing great books, but with this book Hesse finished that decade as a leading author, thinker and philosopher. Steppenwolf is not an easy book, it demands commitment from the reader, but what you put into it, you get back many times. I have read most of Hesse's works and
Steppenwolf and Knulp with the greatest influence on me. If anything, Hermann Hesse's writing is engaging and influential, for those who likes to see all questions in life put down on paper, where you can reflect on them together with the author. Music, poetry, painting, philosophy, nature and life experience was what influenced Hesse, and he shared it with us in his writing, joys and sufferings, he gave of himself. About Steppenwolf Hesse said himself; "Of all my books Steppenwolf is the one that was more often and more violently misunderstood than any other. Of course, I neither can nor intend to tell my readers how they ought to understand my tale. May everyone find in it what strikes a chord in him and is of some use to him!"

What Herman Hesse presents us as his literary books, are actually his gifts to the humankind. His depictions reflect a mirror to us. Be it his 'Siddartha', be it Josef Knecht in 'The Glass Bead Game', or be it 'Steppenwolf'... It is absolutely essential, that we look at ourselves in these 'mirrors'.
Steppenwolf represents 'the search for a balance' in life. 'It is the striving after a mean between the countless extremes and opposites that arise in human conduct'. 'Life and resoluton, action and reaction, impulse and impetus' make up the total gathering he and we are seeking. Joy of life encapsulates one strangely, just at the time one's thinking of the eternal after-life. It is the conflict, it is the war between love and hatred, in and beyond things. It is the 'balance' we're seeking, indeed. Steppenwolf 'will never surrender himself either to lust or to asceticism.' Instead, he will be a 'Steppenwolf'.
World is a 'magic theater'; and the entrance is, indeed, not for everybody. One must be a wolf; and a man at times. Acting is a personal pleasure. Reading this book is a further pleasure. 'Steppenwolf' is an enchantment that awaits you...

Here I am, like the Steppenwolf, approaching the age of 50. I understand him now for I have lived his life. His deepest thoughts are mine- indeed, they read exactly like my own journals. No wonder I am told that Hesse is my soul mate. It is true.

I lived Steppenwolf's solitary life. I knew his crisis. I share his rejection of bourgeois society because it grates the fundamental essence of my soul. And I know what he means by the strength derived from knowing that you can leave this world any time. I know the conviction to never sell yourself into wage slavery for mere money. I know his night wanderings, his books, his music, his rooms, his cigars, and his wine. I know.

But I also know his central crisis. For when we are ready then a door really does open to a higher perspective. I literally walked through that door in the wall for "madmen only." Like the wulf I had always sensed the golden moments that form the golden path to that door. I was eventually shown it. I had always suspected that man was more than a half rational animal, that he was a child of the Gods and destined to immortality. When you are ready, when you are sick enough of the petty ego, you will be shown the kingdom on the other side of time and appearances. It is just necessary to stumble through your share of dirt and humbug before you reach Home.

Time and the world, money and power belong to the small and shallow people. To the rest, the real men, belongs nothing. Nothing but death- and eternity- and the kingdom.

Steppenwolf is one of the numerous novels in the world that makes no sense to some people and tremedous sense to others, and can only be fully understood under the scrutiny of a expert critic or english teacher. I read it when I was 14, I'm now 15 and much happier. The book deals with the alienation of one Harry Heller and his struggle with his alternate persona. Or, more accurately, it deals with him trying to find what is really right. In a world filled with conflicting morals, Harry finds himself lost. The book explores his adventures when he comes to meet a young woman who tries to make him see that there is more to life outside his narrow stoic ideals. Harry once considered himself smarter than every one else for seeing things the way he did and scorned those who bathed in pleasure and convience. However, the woman (Hermine) turns him on his head and shows him how close-minded he really is. I had this similar experience in my life, and I found the similiarities between me and Harry at that point in my life to be almost frightening. My own morals have been tampered with by a wonderful girl who is now my girlfriend (applause), and I have found a way to look at things in a much different way. I've grow smarter and more mature, in part because of this book (the other half I own to my lovely gal, Hi Melly). Anyway.... For those people out there that are content and happy with life, you probably won't enjoy this book much. However, if you're struggling to understand the world around you and the line between right and wrong seems to blur for you, try picking up this book. I can't guarantee anything, but you never know.