Steppenwolf Essay Example

Steppenwolf Essay That modern audiences still often find Hermann Hesse’s experimental novel â€Å"The Steppenwolf† groundbreaking and unique illuminates the intense individuality with which Hesse pursued the novel’s composition and themes, as well as the apparent longevity of his technical advances in narrative, many of which are as rarely employed today as they were when Hesse originally published Der Steppenwolf in 1927.The novel accomplished an expression of themes hitherto unknown (and thus unsought) in fiction. Hesse’s primary refinements (or modulations) of narrative technique in Steppenwolf are found in his implementation of a unique symbolism, a deeply sophisticated character development, and in novel variations of traditional aspects of narrative techniques, such as foreshadowing, which is transformed in Steppenwolf from a simple plot device to a harbinger of the novel’s deepest and most complex themes.Traditional aspects of narrative play a crucial role in Steppenwolf; however, many of these aspects, even if appearing, prima facie, very much in expected roles, are often quickly stood on their heads during the novel’s development. Hence, the traditional concept of the â€Å"outsider† figures heavily in the rising character development of Harry Haller (the Steppenwolf), which would seemingly signal Hesse’s intention to portray a disaffected individual, pitted against societies injustices: â€Å"it is in the postwar novel that we find distinctive underground protagonists as suchJake Barnes in Hemingway The Sun Also Rises, Harry Haller in HesseDer Steppenwolf , and Bardamu in Journey to the End of the Night. Loveless and rootless, alienated from God, country, and society, they are certainly underground; but their skewed perspective has been colored by the war.†Ã‚   (1335)However, such an assertion is quickly weakened by the developing action of the novel, where a definite, if unspecified, symbolism encroaches u pon the expected notions of the typical novel of alienation. The psychoanalytical writings and theories of Carl Jung provide the most readily available and convincing corresponding material to Steppenwolf; in fact, persuasive and extensive critical inquiry demonstrates quite clearly that Jung’s psychoanalytical theories provided a crucial scaffolding for Steppenwolf. â€Å"Herman Hesse was also influenced by Jungs concepts, particularly in Der Steppenwolf (1927) where he explores the notion of the outsider. (Heaney)For Jung, the â€Å"outsider† indicated not only an objective state: the relation of the individual to society, but also an inner-state of deep seated psychological development where, due to the persistent   complexities and conflicts of the â€Å"divided self,† one experiences oneself as â€Å"outsider.† These divisions within the Self illustrate social repression â€Å"we find a portrait of the human soul or psyche in which the emotions p lay at best an inferior (at worst a devilish) role. It is a portrait that is well summarized in the image of a Steppenwolf, poeticized early in this century by [] Hesse as half human, half beast. The human half gets characterized in terms of rationality, the bestial as irrational, emotional, uncivilized[] The two halves are at war† (Solomon 610)This latter form of alienation: that is, alienation from within stands as the target for Hesse’s narrative arc, which moves from a objective perception of the â€Å"outsider† toward inner, psychological confrontation and illumination. â€Å"The war and its aftermath have turned Harry Haller into an anti-social steppenwolf. Older than either Barnes or Bardamu, he has his roots in the late nineteenth century, particularly German romanticism. Hence, while the war has shattered the Germany of his youth, it has not succeeded in obliterating a latent mysticism in Haller† (1336)Haller’s â€Å"mysticism† prov ides Hesse with an opportunity to invest the traditional role of narrative foreshadowing with an entirely new significance. As Haller moves from embodying and believing himself to be the Steppenwolf toward an integration of his psyche, he experience various moments of epiphany or illumination, each of which foreshadows the novel’s climactic and nearly psychedelic denouement. In fact, it is the thread of epiphanies and luminous experiences which holds the novel’s increasingly fragmented plot together; which brings it into thematic harmony.Against the backdrop if periodic illumination, Hesse posits a complex symbolism   drawn from the psychoanalytical theories and terminologies of Carl Jung. â€Å"Jung proposed that the dreams, fairy stories and religions of different cultures and individuals had common themes. These emerge from archetypes in the collective unconscious. Archetypes are thus seen as universal, symbolic representations of a particular person, object or e xperience.†(Heany). For Hesse this meant investing each of the settings, people and events of Haller’s experience with profound psychological symbolism.All of the dynamics recounted thus far integrate seamlessly into the primary character of Haller   (who is also the Steppenwolf), thus allowing Hesse to construct a character who is also a part of each of the other encountered characters, and vice-versa. As such, the entirety of the novel is in service to character development; outer conflict is subsumed by inner exploration. However, the aim of this inner-exploration is demonstrated to be projected back into the objective world.   Already a repeated metaphor or image is established: that of a mirror or mirrors, where each character in the novel reflects an incomplete (archetypal) reflection f the other; where the Self is posited as the absolute mirror and where literal, magical mirrors bear resolution and deepening of the foreshadowed illumination and the individuat ion of the psyche: â€Å"Hesses use of the motif of a suprahuman phenomenon reflects the concern of many of [his] contemporaries to find some kind of timeless essence to set against the unanchored subjectivity of individual experience[]) Hesses interweaving of these psychological configurations follows the pattern of mirroring, which is the main feature of the symbolism in the novels climactic episode.† (Fickert)During Haller’s journey from the â€Å"divided self† to the â€Å"individuated self† he must first realize that, behind his self-laudatory (if maudlin) appraisal of himself, there hides a dangerous being that â€Å"wants to range solitarily across steppes, to occasionally drink blood or stalk a she-wolf.† This being, in Jungian terms, is called the Shadow and this archetype stands for the repressed, unknown side of any person. Similarly, Hermine, (the feminine form of Hesse’s own first name) represents Jung’s Anima archetype. In Steppenwolf, the anima indicates personal development and integration: leading   Haller from brink of suicide, to life and love. The saxophonist Pablo and the â€Å"immortals† Goethe and Mozart are signals and harbingers of Haller’s individuation process.Equally representative of Jungian psychology is the Treatise On The Steppenwolf, which informs Haller that he himself is made of not merely two dispositions or personalities, but of an infinite number of possible dispositions and orientations. Thus, from the beginning portrayal of an â€Å"outsider† whose conflict lay conveniently outside of his control, Haller must confront the inner bounty and turmoil of his self development and individuation. This, in turn, brings him inside a new reality where he will become again an outsider, but Hesse point, like Jung’s, seems to be that inner alienation invests objective reality with tension and conflict. This phenomenon, as the novel’s foreshadowing vi a ever-increasing epiphanies demonstrates, is carried through by another Jungian concept: synchronicity which defines â€Å"meaningful coincidences,† which in Steppenwolf function as foreshadowing and harbingers of Haller’s ultimate self-integration.Haller’s conflict throughout the novel is to overcome the schism between his culturally reinforced ego and his shadow in the form of the Steppenwolf, to embrace the help of his anima personified by Hermin as well as by Mozart and Pablo, and embrace his true self, which means embracing a multitude of possibilities. These manifold realities and potentials are symbolized with appropriate fanfare in the Magic Theatre at the end of the novel, where Harry finally begins to embrace the inward harmony of his integrated Self.Steppenwolf transformed the traditional elements of storytelling much like Jung’s psychoanalytical theories transformed the nature of psychology and the study and interpretation of myth. It seems e vident that in writing Steppenwolf, Hesse sought a personal catharsis similar to that of Haller. Hesse’s allegiance to Jung’s theories deepens, rather than weakens, as the novel’s complexities are explored. Some critics view the Jungian influence as almost didactic: â€Å"On rereading Steppenwolf I find that this is hardly a novel but rather a psychoanalytical tract (Fickert). In conclusion, it must be remembered that Hesse’s accomplishments in Steppenwolf not only embodied originality oft4echnique and theme, but engendered a rare sense of affirmation and heroicism in the literature of his age: Hesse, in all his endings, says{} that man can be a hundred different things at the same time; that there is no dichotomy between Steppenwolf and the Establishment, or youth and age or good and evil, (Pachter 200) This assertion, like the novel’s myriad technical and thematic originalities, seems as breathtakingly original today as it must have seemed to He sse’s contemporaries.