Steppen Wolf Essay Research Paper Let

Steppen Wolf Essay, Research Paper

Let’s start with the plot: Harry Haller – that is the protagonist in the “Steppenwolf” – is disenchanted with himself, his age, and his contemporaries. His disillusionment has made him lonely and so he calls himself a “steppenwolf.” Then a new girlfriend, Hermine, converts him from a cynical scholar to a confessed hedonist by introducing him to her circle of friends. To the music played by her friend Pablo, he learns to dance and to love Hermine’s girlfriend Maria. In the ecstasy of opium – the so-called”Magical Theatre” – he finally begins to look at the mendacity of his life. The story is told, somewhat irritatingly, by different narrators. The nephew of the aunt who has let a room to the Steppenwolf reports his opinion of Haller in an “Editor’s Preface”; the hero describes in his “Notes” his state and that of the nation’s; and an unknown author discourses in a “Tractat” on the Steppenwolf. The alliteration of the names Hermann Hesse and Harry Haller may hint at an autobiographical connection, a “Seelenverwandschaft” – a”spiritual kinship” – between hero and author, but there needn’t be one.[1] Definitely Hesse is a producer and Haller a product of his age, and that makes them useful for our purpose: the attempt to classify Haller as a certain type of historical mentality. Haller complains about the uncertainty of a generation that is the victim of a paradym shift.. His old-fashioned ideals break away as it does with all steppenwolves He sees himself as “S ufer ber bankrotten Idealen,” as “drunk on bankrupt ideals,” and these ideals offer no comfortable security. He also considers this vast “Zeitkrankheit” or “disease of the times” to be the focus of his writings. In them are the customary allusions to the spirit of the times. There is a critique on capitalism with his reference to the “ausgesogene Erde”- “drained-dry earth” – and its implications of corporate entitlement. Cultural despair is displayed in his probable assimilation of a thesis of Arnold Gehlen’s that postulates that man potentially represents a mere industrial accident (of history), a “miscarriage” of nature. Cultural despair may also be shown in Hermine’s assessment that the devil is identical with the “mind.” Hermine has obviously read “Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele” – “The Mind as Antagonist of the Soul” – a principal work of the philosopher Ludwig Klages. Klages polarizes body and soul on the one hand and the mind, specifically the intellect, on the other. When born, body and soul are one, but an acosmic power,the intellect, begins to push itself between soul and body. Imaginative, unconscious thinking is replaced by analytically dissecting thinking, acting consciously replaces acting by instinct, andthe unity of body and soul is destroyed: Life dies. Haller ’s anti-bourgeois and anti-democratic notions are revealed in his scoffing at the middle-classes’ struggle for ataraxie, the “tempered middle.” He faults their alleged irresponsible behavior, their “babble.” He accuses them of pursuing the “majority position” in a cowardly democracy rather than the usual means of “power.” The actual behaviour of the middle-classes, which he is very much aware of, is ambivalent to these accusations and, in essence, contradictshis analysis. They engage in war-mongering and they maintain clear positions against “jews and communists”, against alleged and – concerning the communists – real enemies within and without. As is revealed in the dialogue with the professor, doubts about the middle-classes’ asserted aspirations for harmony and consensus appear justified to him. Insights about his own readiness for violence, gained later in the magic theatre, enlighten Haller on this point. Typically, there are resentful complaints about the real or alleged loss of influence of the educated citizenship, who were brought up in “loneliness and freedom” (Schelsky) through the newly humanistic and highly time-consuming study of Latin and ancient Greek, and who therefore were unable to fulfill the requirements of a modern age: “Money and power will always belong to the little and the shallow.” From Haller ’s point of view, education is no longer being accomplished. Therefore, the social picture is out of focus, has to be fixed, has to be “ennobled” again against the superficiality of the Bolsheviks and Americans. This hodgepodge of ideas isgarnished with a sauce consisting of sporadically interwoven traces of “wisdom from the east” and medieval mysticism. For instance, Haller’s speech about the divine trace of the divine spark recalls Master Eckhart ’s scintilla animae which, at the very heart of the human soul, reunifies the individuum with an ubiquious god at the moment of “unio mystica..” Like all characters who come close to Haller throughout the course of the story, Hermine, Maria and Pablo are projections of the powers struggling within him. Haller himself ruminates on the question: “Why was Pablo talking that much. Could it possibly be me who made him talk, who was talking through him. Does not my own soul look at me, from behind his black eyes – the lost, scared bird – just as it does from behind the blue eyes of Hermine.” Haller therefore projects his female aspect into Hermine, his male aspect into Pablo. Haller judges Maria as well: “Constantly [Hermine] was standing behind her, enclosing her, covering her as if by a mask!” Maria is not only Hermine ’s marionette, but she is also her extracted