A Literary Analysis of Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse Essay

Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse, is the story of a middle-aged man, who has divided himself into two beings a civilized man, and a wolf-man, as a way of explaining his wretchedness. As a man, Harry Haller "loves all the things of Emil Sinclair's first world, order and cleanliness, poetry and music" (Discovering Authors Hermann Hesse 2). Haller is continually moving, but always occupies suites in houses with "a smell of cleanliness and good order, of comfort and respectability" (Steppenwolf 6). Whereas the savage wolf-man loves Emil's second world, the world of darkness. He prefers open spaces and lawlessness. For him bourgeois civilization and all its foolishness are a great joke. Throughout the story we come to see that Haller allows his imagination full play, and "his journal is a sort of wish-dream diary. He is a man-on-his-own, living in rooms with his books and his gramophone" (Hesse 1). In his younger years he was considered to be a power a self-realizer, but now in his late forties, the moods of insight have stopped coming and there is only self-dissatisfaction. We discover this when Hesse writes, "he belonged with the suicides" (51). "Haller appointed his fiftieth birthday as the day on which he might allow himself to take his own life relying on his razor, he would take leave of all his pains" (52). One particular evening, Haller sees a mysterious Gothic arch in the middle of a old stone wall. Above this arch there was a sign that read, "Magic Theatre Entrance Not For Everybody For Madmen Only" (Steppenwolf 34). We do not see the significance of this sign until later in the novel. At first Harry thinks the sign is rather odd, but is nothing more than that. On his way home he sees a man with a sandwich board and a tray of Old Moore's Almanacs. Haller calls out to the man so he would be able to read the sign "Anarchist Evening...