Steppenwolf: A Novel (Picador Modern Classics)

Harry is an older introverted loner who is unhealthy in mind and body. Inwardly, he struggles with the duality of his nature, his public civilized awkward self and his private wolfish impulses, which he feels he must contain. He dwells about war and the superficial nature of society and vows to commit suicide to put an end to his misery but is frustrated at his own cowardice. He soon meets Hermine, whom he feels truly understands him, and they make a bargain. She will teach him to live and he will help her die. The story gets more bizarre when Harry enters the Magic Theatre – For Madmen Only, where he will have experiences that open his mind. Like dreams, these experiences are symbolic and profound and revelatory. This is a book to ponder.

To anyone who is awake in this sleeping world, to anyone ready to pull himself out of the matrix and look honestly at the duelistically craziness of our lives.. this book it for you. You must be ready to understand that we humans are in fleeting moments strangers in a strange Land and in this world but not of it.

Hess presents his Steppenwolf idea - which, being a male in my 50's I really related to. I think anyone could sympathize with some aspects of Haller, the battle within us between the wolf and the human for instance. I think the main point was that we should actually LIVE life versus understanding and intellectualizing life (finding meaning). While showing the agony that Haller went through to learn/live was important, I admit to getting lost in the imagery/dreams of the last portion of the book. I feel that he was trying to communicate the idea of compassion and emotion in living life; that he was trying to teach a lesson. But, I got to the end and now seriously wonder if I truly missed the point he was trying to make.

It has been long time since I've read this book for the first time and it left very strong impression. It's a bit hard to start but when you get into it you enjoy it immensely. It is original in all respects. It doesn't belong to any know literary style. It has no plot, story or message in traditional sense. There has been nothing like this neither before nor after. Even Herman Hesse himself never managed to write anything like this again. It combines philosophical depth with the twist of a thriller.

Not sure about this book. I liked some of it, but VERY different.

A good but long 200 pages. I think there was one chapter. Good illustration of the frustrating allure of the bougie.

As good at age 58 as it was at age 18

A masterpiece. No other words for it. Up there with all the classics.

I just finished this book after having had a copy in my library for perhaps 15 years. The cover is gone and the binding almost didn't make it through the ordeal of my use.

The book starts slow, and Harry Haller seemed to me pretentious and unbearable with his wretchedness and superiority. But I love Hesse, and was determined to press on.

I'm so glad I did. The writing and the meaning become absolutely gorgeous in the second half of the book, as Harry learns that he is so much more than a man divided in two. The prose is at turns lyrical, lonely, and lovely-- sometimes all at once. The events are confusing, and really only make sense if interpreted as part of a poetic and philosophical metaphor. Jungian psychology is at play, or so I've been told.

I found the book mysterious in many ways, and still have much to contemplate and understand, but I wanted to add my review because I saw at least two reviews that criticized the book for "dropping" the divided self point that is made earlier in the book until the very end. Now, I would argue that this critique is wrong. When the point is originally made about the divided self it is an intellectual one. And at the end of the book Harry is able to really experience all his selves. But that period in between is about the process by which he prepares for this final encounter. This is made quite explicit in the text. What is not explicit, but I think is clear, is that Hermine is an external person (or figment of his imagination) that represents all of the selves that Harry rejects in himself. That's the Anima idea, from what I understand.

Hermine is the icon of this idea. She is him, all his potentialities and ignored sensibilites. That's why she looks sometimes like a boy, sometimes like a girl. That's why she can go from happy to sad in an instant. That's why her name is actually the name of the author, who is also the protagonist (Herman/Harry). Only once he appreciates these selves outside himself, and comes to love them, only then can he integrate them and see them in himself as he does at the magic theater where he plays the soldier, the lover, and so on.

So you see, the book is, quite centrally, about these selves and the process of coming to terms with them. The idea is not dropped.

A story about much more than one man's struggles with his dichotomous personality.

SPOILERS abound:

The story follows Harry Haller as he wanders amongst his town late one night. He sees a sign `Magic Theatre' and `For madmen only'. Harry becomes inspired and thinks this must be something for him, for he is the Steppenwolf, the lone wolf of the steppes, a man apart.

Upon receiving and reading the 'Treatise of the Steppenwolf', Haller at once commits to ending his wretched life with the razor.

Distraught and knowing he can't proceed home, he wanders to a bar where he meets Hermine. She pointedly tells him that she will make him fall in love with her and he will repay her by ending her life.

Haller is gifted, essentially, Maria from Hermine. Maria is to teach Haller to love, to attune himself to the sensual side of life and to shed his rigid, antiquarian, idealistic positions. Maria is shared by many men (she's pointedly a call girl) but none-the-less, Haller is to learn the lesson.

The story culminates in Haller learning to dance and meeting Hermine at an all night masked-ball. As the night ends Haller, Hermine and Pablo enter the magic theater (a coke trip). Haller sees his life flash by, relives the missed opportunities and sets them right and comes to the realization that all of life's game pieces are in his possession, it's just a matter of how he chooses to organize them.

Hermine's soothsaying comes to fruition in the magic theater. And Hesse displays his philosophical adherence to `Absurdism' as he states that Haller must learn to laugh if he is to enter the magic theater.

Enclosed and built upon within the literature are:
- Hesse's thoughts on suicide: people who do nothing with their lives can be counted amongst the suicides (87).
- The multitude of the psyche, soul fracturing, rebuilding and the impossibility that any person could have only two sides of his personality (man v. wolf)-(60).
- Entering manhood, becoming one with the immortals and learning to laugh (62, 91).

And what is the Steppenwolf?
A solitary, sad creature. Who is of both man and wolf, with each side persistently trying to undermine the other. When the man wishes to be social, the wolf attempts to spoil it. And this is where Haller's troubles began. The wolf is an ideal, it lives according to its instincts, it pays no heed to the inanities and absurdities that people find important - it's not civil. To shed the ideal, absorb the sensual and laugh - the only way to silence the wolf.