Beneath the Wheel [Paperback]

Hermann Hesse (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Bantam Books; First Thus edition (1968)
• ASIN: B000GU3R1I
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,512,401 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) was born in Germany and later became a citizen of Switzerland. As a Western man profoundly affected by the mysticism of Eastern thought, he wrote many novels, stories, and essays that bear a vital spiritual force that has captured the imagination and loyalty of many generations of readers. In 1946, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Glass Bead Game.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A message of warning, May 19, 2000

By 

Andrew M. Schirmer "violist/student" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beneath the Wheel: A Novel (Paperback)

I couldn't have read this book at a better time. Like a lot of American high-schoolers in the "fast track" to college, I was feeling way overworked. I never had time anymore to enjoy nature, good books or anything else. It seemed that my life was school, and nothing else.

On a whim, I picked this up. "Beneath the Wheel," or "Unterm Rad" (auf Deutsch) is the story of a brilliant young man (in the prodigy sense) who is worked to death by those who unconsciously care nothing for him, but to see his advancement.

While I never experienced anything as extreme as Hans, this book really made me question why I was doing what I was doing. Why was I working myself to death in high school? Was I learning anything? Was I growing as a person?

This book is wonderful because Hesse tells the story is such a simple and poetic way; and it is translated marvelously. Simply a joy to read. I can read it over and over again. So, take heed, reader. Enjoy this book and spend many an afternoon questioning the merits of forced education; and different systems of learning. A good technical follow-up is "Teaching As A Subersive Activity." Check it out.

50 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fall from grace, June 15, 2002

By 

D. Roberts "Hadrian12" (Battle Creek, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beneath the Wheel: A Novel (Paperback)

BENEATH THE WHEEL is the tragic story of young Hans Giebenrath. Young Hans is a precocious, possibly genius young man from a small one-horse German village. It's a working class town that is known for its steadfast character of its denizens, but not for the scope & breadth of their erudition. Hans is the exception to the rule: he is far & away intellectually superior to his peers, and he knows it.

So bright is Hans that he is selected to attend a German monastery to continue his academic studies. So prestigious is this academy that it would be comparable to an American student being accepted to Princeton or Stanford. It is on this journey that we join young Hans; so full of promise as well as a wee bit of arrogance.

In some ways, this book could be described as the anti-CATCHER IN THE RYE. Instead of extolling education as something worthwhile as opposed to merely banal, Hesse has a far less flattering view of the educational system. The crux of the book is found in the following passage:

"A schoolmaster will prefer to have a couple of dumbheads in his class rather than a single genius, and if you regard it objectively, he is of course right. His task is not to produce extravagant intellects but good Latinists, arithmeticians and sober decent folk." (99-100)

Here it becomes evident that Hesse has little regard for a German pedagogic system which places pragmatism above nourishing persons of exceptional mental acumen. Most of the rest of the book revolves around the nucleus of this passage.

The whole tone and style of this book very much reminds me of Thomas Mann. The theme of transition from adolesence to adulthood is present in Mann's works as well. By coincidence, due to the fact that they're both German authors, Mann's & Hesse's books are alongside each other on my bookcase. After reading this novel, I found this arrangement to be all the more fitting. I do know that Mann & Hesse were friends; it appears that they held an influence over each others works as well.

This book is highly recommended, particularly to promising high school students who plan on attending college. It engages one of the most horrifying prospects that a serious student faces: flunking out and falling back into the milieu of the blue collar working environment. Of course, working any honest job is a noble endeavor. However, we at once remember the closing paragraph of Schopenhaur's essay ON GENIUS:

"A person of high, rare mental gifts, compelled to attend to a merely useful piece of business for which the most ordinary person would be fitted, is like a valuable vase decorated with the most beautiful painting, which is used as a kitchen-pot; and to compare useful men with men of genius is like comparing bricks with diamonds" (Arthur Schopenhaur, PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS, p. 97. Trans: E. F. J. Payne)

For those of us caught in the middle of Schopenhaur's dichotemy, it is with the greatest strain that we reach for the one, but end up plunging into the other. This is both a consoling and cathartic novel for all the people out there who (like me!) have strived for greatness, but fallen short. When it comes to profoundity, most of us tend to fall beneath the wheel.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lesson as fresh today as when it was written, January 26, 2002

By 

Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beneath the Wheel: A Novel (Paperback)

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.