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Steppenwolf

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Herman Hesse's novel Steppenwolf was a fantastic read, just the sort of symbolic, metaphorical and metaphysical fiction that I love to read. Reading it from a sociological perspective allowed me to gain even more insights than I would have otherwise. It allowed me to both participate in the reading and the enjoyment of the novel, but also to be able to analyze the broader meanings of what is going on in the book as it relates to sociology. C. Wright Mills thought that people often see their lives as having explanation solely in terms of personal success and failures, failing to see the many ways in which their own personal biographies link with the course of human history. This could be said to be the root of all of Harry Haller's problems.

Steppenwolf is the story of Harry Haller, a middle aged intellectual who is unable to find any joy in life. Having taken a course in Sociology, one can see that an individual's choices are never free but are always determined to some extent by a person's environment. This is a core idea in Sociology and may have saved Harry a lot of heartache. He moves into a boarding house, where despairing, lonely, and suicidal, he laments his life and his lack of any feeling of identity with the society around him. Durkheim called the way Harry was feeling, anomie, and felt that it was caused by a lack of integration of the individual into social groups and communities. This feeling of anomie causes people to feel lost or adrift and it is this feeling that causes Harry to feel suicidal.

Harry comes to view himself as a Steppenwolf, or a wolf of the steppes, in that he views himself as a man of a dual nature. He yearns to transcend the Normative order of the bourgeoise and into the world of the spiritual, but he also feels drawn to this world of sensual pleasures. Not being able to comprehend how society is able to find happiness in their lives of drab conformity, where people seem to coast along with productive diligence towards meaninglessness, yet unable to resist the charms of their easy sense of happiness, Harry begins to loathe the Steppenwolf he sees himself as. He is unable to come to terms with the concept of Socialization, the ways in which people learn to conform to their society's norms, values, and roles. Fom an interactionist perspective, it can be seen that Harry is having a difficult time with the devolopement of his social self through the interaction with others. Unable to take the role of the generalized other, unable to shape his participation in a social life according to the roles of others, identification becomes a problem for Harry in that he does not wholly identify with any social groups. Half man, half wolf, half desiring the easy and sensual pleasures of the common man, he also desires to transcend this life that, for him, has no value. In a Social Darwinistic manner of speaking, it could be said that Harry has been unable to adapt to the social environment in which he finds himself.

One night, while walking through the city, Harry sees a sign over a door thatreads "MAGIC THEATER--ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY." Looking closer he notices the words, "FOR MADMEN ONLY". Enthralled but unable to open the door, he is given a book by the sign holder entitled, "Treatise on the Steppenwolf." Upon reading it, Harry discovers that the book is describing himself, the half man, half wolf that he sees himself as, feeling drawn to more spiritual matters, but unable to altogether resist the sensual pleasures of this mundane world. At this point, Harry becomes even more convinced of his desire for suicide.

Before he is able to do so though, and after a disastrous meeting with one of his former colleagues, in which Harry insults him about a picture of Goethe, the German poet, in his house, he ultimately meets the woman that will lead him towards salvation, a young sensual woman named Hermine. She teaches Harry to dance and how to enjoy life's simple pleasures without having to analyze his every feeling. Becoming totally enthralled with her and agreeing to obey her every command, Hermine informs him of his ultimate duty, which will be, after falling in love with her, to kill her.

At this point, Harry jumps head first into a life of sensual hedonistic pleasures and he comes to appreciate such a life, based upon the pleasure principle, even though he still feels a sense of yearning for transcendence above such a life. After attending a masquerade dance and dancing with Hermine, Harry is invited by a man named Pablo into his Magic Theater and this is where the book gets even more symbolic and metaphorical. Harry is told that the goal of the theater is to lose his personality and that the only avenue for doing such is laughter. Harry laughs at himself in a mirror and travels down a corridor of doors, some of which he enters, into a sort of theater of the absurd, a kind of waking dream. Entering one room where he finds Hermine and Pablo naked and lying on the floor, he believes that this is the moment that Hermine had meant when she told him that he must ultimately kill her, so, finding a knive magically appear in this pocket he proceeds to stab and kill her. He is now greeted by the ghost of Mozart, the classical composer, who tells Harry that he is much too serious and that he has committed a grave error by misunderstanding the magic theater and that his goal was to learn laughter.

Erik Erikson said that throughout the life course, an individual must resolve a series of conflicts that shape that person's sense of self and ability to perform social roles successfully. It is this conflict that we see Harry having a difficult time with. Hermine and Pablo make an attempt at resocialization for Harry, but he ultimately takes everything too seriously and misses the point that laughter is the key to happiness. It can be seen that as society becomes more complex, it tends to become characterized more and more by secondary groups and organizations, making society more efficient but also causing confusion and unhappiness. This is the story of Harry Haller.

Using social imagination, I was able to analyze Harry Haller's feelings and actions from a sociological perspective. I was able to see how Harry was having a hard time coping with society, and how that it was this inner turmoil that he labeled the Steppenwolf. I can very much relate to Harry Haller, as I myself have found myself feeling exactly as he has over the years. I, too, have felt a sense of the Steppenwolf within me, a sense of not being able to recognize myself in others and the easy way some people seem able to proceed through life. It has always seemed to me that the vast majority of mankind seems easily able to just live life without having to think about much of anything. For people like myself and Harry Haller, there is a spiritual yearning for more, even as we reject much of what religion has to offer. The story of the Steppenwolf is to realize that there is a dual nature within all of us, even more than just two natures actually, according to Herman Hesse, and that the best remedy is to learn to be able to laugh at life and at ourselves.

It is interesting that laughter is also one of the main themes of another book I have just finished, Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. In the Steppenwolf, laughter is what Harry was to learn in order to find some sort of happiness, while in Bradbury's book, it was laughter that was used to thwart the evil carnival freaks. It seems that Harry Haller was visited in his life by Bradbury's carnival freaks and unable to learn laughter, succumbed to their evil.

I would definitely recommend this book, especially to those introspective types, such as myself, who may feel a tinge of the Steppenwolf within their own soul. It is my humble opinion that if one is paying attention to the world around them, and not just floating through life Paris Hilton like, then one can't help but to feel their own personal Steppenwolf.

There are people out there, reading this review now, who have gone thru life feeling as though no one has ever understood them. Some of those people will read this book, 'Steppenwolf', & it will hit them like a bolt(& some wont like it at all). Not only will a few of them feel as though they have finally been understood, but they might feel as though at last they can begin to understand themselves!

Yes, there is someone who understands. His name is Hesse. Unfortunately he has passed on, he was from an earlier generation. But you know, when he lived people from all over the world wrote him letters asking for his understanding. He answered them all, & he usually had good advise for them. & he was able to understand not only because he was intellgent, but also because he had also suffered the problems of his 'Steppenwolf' himself. Yes, it might seem that he were writing this best of all books about each of us individually, but it was, in fact, autobiography. Half autobiography, half poem, & 100% masterpiece. Please read it, & dont allow the 1st 80 pages throw you off- it is going to come alive for you, as it has for people since 1927. You might be in for a treat.

However, some dont feel this way, especially these days. It is a little odd, I feel, that Hesse (who was so popular with readers from my generation in the early 1970s) has had a decline in popularity from 1980 on. He doesnt seem to strike the same chord in todays young readers as he did 30 years ago. Maybe because his books spoke about the importance of spirt over that of technology, I dont know. I dont think Hesse would have seen the rise of the PC & the internet as a bad thing at all, & think it would have been right up his alley, & that he might have made the internet a better thing than it is. In fact, the theme of 'The Glass Bead Game' brings to mind todays internet, & there is a website devoted to just that. But, for me anyway, the fact that todays generation has sort of rejected Hesse is one of the more sad things about it, because I would have believed that they would have embraced him even more than mine did. I think the reason that they havnt might be because that while they are very much in favor of the enlightment that Siddhartha, Goldman, Harry Haller, Sinclair, etc ultimately reach, they have never experienced the PROBLEMS of the Steppenwolf that set those characters on that road in the 1st place. I think that those kinds of problems might have been unique to my generation, & that Hesse came along for Americans just at the right time. It seems that the times have changed

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.