Customer Reviews

Beneath the Wheel.

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

As an educator, I just had two of my gifted students read this novel, and am pleased that I can now read it with multiple lenses. I re-read it recalling my own experiences of high pressure and one-up-manship from an affluent Catholic suburban high school. But now, as a teacher, I see all the dangers in creating gateways and irreversible standards for present day students where colorless logic and linguistics have sadly replaced the need for creativity, independence, and integrity.

Set in pre-World War Germany of the early 1900s, it's also a remarkable read when you compare it to the state of affairs of modern America. These timeless themes have surprisingly remained the same: social status over spiritual discovery, labels and test scores over substance and meaning, product over process. One must ask, are we headed in the same direction as early 20th century Germany?

How many Hans Giebenrath's will we neglect in our lifetime? How many times will we set up an education system where genius is stifled? It makes you wonder how many great minds are lost in the rat race of modernity.

This classic is a great way to generate discussion between teacher and student, especially the student who strives for excellence yet struggles to maintain sanity and identity in a world that has unfortunately favored high SAT's and social rank over family, honor, friendship, and art for art's sake.

It's a beautiful contrast of the real and the ideal; the simple life and the complexity of adolescence.

This is a story about the faults of education and how they push gifted kids too hard. In an effort to maximize their intellectual talents they leave out expression of soul and of the spirit. In the process of trying to cram their brains they may destroy their desire to learn and maybe even their lives....

In this story Hesse presents a completely opposite personality to the main character. Hans (the main character) meets Hermann, who is more concerned with poetry and the soul than academics like Hans. These opposite characteristics seem to attract each other and they become best friends.

Overall this is a very good book and I would reccomend it to all Hesse fans. However, don't start with this book if you've never read Hesse before.

For anyone being crushed and canned within the (mostly) incompetant and self-serving system of American Educational Faculty personnel, this book is a fair warning to any prospective college student (of any age) as to what they are really signing up for. I would suggest it as required reading prior to completing applications for any US institution of "higher learning". I completed a BA, MBA, and PhD...and found two professors in all that time who even vaguely gave an idle damn about the students they were supposedly educating. I have since found that comparative discussions with peers have proven my experience to be anything but unique...indeed, my observations have met commonplace agreement, and therefore are all the more disappointing as a result. Hesse called it fairly and true way in advance of current times.

(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.

First of all, let me explain that I give this book four stars instead of five only because I do not think that it measures up to certain others of Hesse's works--namely, Siddhartha and Steppenwolf. Nonetheless, it is excellent.

Beneath the Wheel (Imagine that italicized; I wish I could italicize it!) is the story of a gifted boy's schooling. The main character, who seems to represent the young Hermann Hesse, simply does not fit in with the people of his small German town. When the townspeople and his father discover that young Hans is unusually bright, they take control of his life and dictate what his ambitions should be. The town piles its hopes on Hans, and in so doing, forces all sense of balance out of his life.

Well, if I tell you any more than that, I might ruin the plot, although I do have a few more comments. Like many of Hesse's main characters, Hans seems to suffer from some form of depression. His experience is not very different from that of modern gifted students, who, as soon as it is discovered that they are "gifted," are often put into programs (such as Honors programs) that seem designed to overwork them and punish them for their natural gifts. So, Hans's story, though fictional, resonates with me: I feel that I went through a very similar kind of education. I was selected, through standardized testing, for gifted programs; once in those programs, I was not challenged with work that required more creative or expansive thinking, but rather with ridiculous quantities of work; I, too, ended up dangerously depressed.

Therefore, I recommend this book to all teachers involved in gifted or Honors programs. I recommend it even more strongly to the administrators really in charge of determining what those programs will be, who often leave the teachers powerless to help their own (sometimes suicidal) students to restore balance to their lives.

Read it if you were punished by the "Honors" system, and you want an author who can commiserate.

And anyway, it is, as the rest of Hesse's work is, beautifully written.

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.

Having been a long time Hermann Hesse fan, I was more than pleasantly surprised by Beaneth the Wheel - the story of early conflict between fitting into and earning respect in a bourgeois society and allowing for the discovery of the self and life's meaning. This conflict would be further enumerated in such books as Narcissus and Goldmund and Steppenwolf. The writing style is very straight-forward and not as developed as in later works, but overall this is a much better introduction to Hermann Hesse than most high school students get in the form of Siddartha or Damian. I would recommend it highly to any age group.