Steppenwolf (original 1927; edition 1978)

According to legend, there’s an old Cherokee tale where a grandfather tells his grandson that there’s always a fight going on inside him; a fight between two wolves. One wolf is all the bad things – envy, greed, hatred, violence etc, and the other wolf is all the good – kindness, generosity, love and so on. The boy says, “so which wolf wins the fight?” and the grandfather answers, “it’s the wolf you feed who wins, my boy”.

It’s tempting to say that Steppenwolf is a sophisticated version of that tale, but on reading it through I’ve realised that in fact it isn’t. It has fragments of it here and there, but this is not really a moral story. In fact, it’s very difficult to know what it is. Glancing over other reviews, I see (with respect) that many other readers don’t really ‘get’ it – and neither do I. But I'll do the best I can.

Partly it’s a book about the muddy filth of being human. The everlasting conflict between different selves. It says as much in the book, when Steppenwolf reads a tract about himself. That every human is a thousand different selves, all fragmented and disagreeing with each other. It’s also about being an outsider: a lone wolf and a lonely human being. It explores the life of the intellectual (especially that particularly German kind of intellectual; the cliché of the monocle and bowtie and uptight inability to smile) vs. the sensual animal-like life (as Hesse portrays it) of 1920s jazz and easy sex. Which is better? It asks us. And can they mix? The answer to the latter question seems to be ‘no’, and there isn’t any answer to the former at all. But worst of all are the tens of thousands who work, eat, drink and absorb the dangerous twaddle in the newspapers without question. They are the true enemy.

One bit that stood out for me is where Steppenwolf enters the home of a respectable middle class citizen, who has a portrait of Goethe on the mantelpiece. Steppenwolf (aka Harry) takes an instant dislike to it – Goethe has been smoothed down, dramatized, turned into what we would recognise today as the talkshow host type, but with Romantic flair. Eventually it makes him so angry that he hurls a spate of insults at his host and hostess and leaves the house in a rage. Later, talking it over with the girl who brings Harry a kind of healing and redemption (though not without a cost), she suddenly helps not only Harry, but the reader also, realise that Harry’s vision of Goethe is just as made-up, just as unreal, as the artists’ vision was. And that’s an illustration of one of the subtle things this book keeps revisiting – how valid are the things we respect and revere and believe in? Maybe, Hesse hints, it’s all surface junk on the face of some greater, more distant reality.

It’s in some ways an unhealthy book, I think - there are some very dark places in it. Yet it holds out a kind of redemption. In the strange, carnival-like bits of the book, Harry meets some of the so-called ‘Immortals’ – Goethe, Mozart and the like. And they have achieved a sort of distance, an amused detachment from the painful clutter of life. This, and learning to laugh and to love, seem to be the promised redemption for Steppenwolf. Which on the whole doesn’t really grab me, to tell you the truth.

In short, I’m more intimidated than impressed. I’m glad I read it – but I am not Hesse’s ideal audience, and I missed way too much.

I don't know if anyone else has this, but when I graduated with my English lit degree I thought, right. I've done it. I have in my hands the key to any text, anywhere, and damn it I will appreciate every text for something about it, whether it be the brilliance of the writing or the social context or just having fun ripping it apart. And then I got onto my MA and discovered I was wrong, of course, that I could still find any given book stultifyingly boring regardless of any merit I tried to find within its pages. I'm looking at you, Mists of Avalon.

Well, yeah. That's me and Steppenwolf, too. It's a good chunk of I-don't-get-it -- I mean, I understand Hermann Hesse's intentions and all that, but maybe he's right that I'm too young for it. The prose is just boring, which might be partly the translator's fault (my edition is ancient and does not name the translator). Well, actually, I found the content kind of boring, too. Yep, even the drugs and sex and so on.

So. Chalk that down to a one-star due to not-for-me. ( )

I've read a few of Hesse's novels and I keep coming back to Steppenwolf time and time again. It's not as if books like Demian and Beneath the Wheel aren't worthwhile, either. It's just that there is something so grabbing and memorable about Steppenwolf. I was truly changed after I read this and I can't really say that for the majority of the books I've read.

One thing I think Hesse was obsessed with a little is the duality of life-the light and the dark side. Steppenwolf takes you to some dark carnival like dreams and forces you to see that life is incredibly complex. Someone like Hesse cannot live a simple life. He sees both and so do his protagonists. They all go through similar issues, temptations, even vices. There's a theme running through them that goes beyond good and evil...this is much more at the heart of the Earth's revolving center. Though I haven't yet read everything that Hesse has written, I'm pretty sure that nowhere has he developed this theme better than in Steppenwolf. It isn't just the characters that he gains a handle on but also his ideas overall.


It affected my dreams and my waking life. It changed the way I saw life and the world. There is an undercurrent to this tide that some resist and ignore. Others fall in love with it instead. ( )

For mad people only. ( )

4.5/5
It's fitting that I read The Razor's Edge right before this one. Both books are concerned with the innate unhappiness many suffer, trapped between thoughts of life and simply living. Steppenwolf focuses on a single person rather than many, and blows up this one man's psyche to an enormous extent, in order to fully illustrate the battle taking place within him.
I have to say, I sympathized enormously with this character, although I think one has to if they hope to like the book. Otherwise you're not going to understand the immense depression that results from disgust with society mixed with hesitation to break off with it completely. One tries to somewhat break off, of course, as Harry Haller the Steppenwolf does; the resulting boring mediocre lifestyle interspersed with wild attempts at suicide is only to be expected from such a introverted and critical soul. This doesn't last forever, and the Steppenwolf is later taken on a wild ride by a mysterious woman involving weeks of dancing, sex, and 'The Magic Theater: For Madmen Only!'
Sounds fun, doesn't it. I assure you it is, and you will most likely get more out of it than appreciation for a trippy ride. What I liked best is that, while Hesse certainly had a message, he wasn't preachy about it. Granted there was on section that focused heavily on the virtues of Buddhism and whatnot, but the Steppenwolf, much to my amusement, reacted contemptuously with thoughts that were quite like my own. The end message was definitely influenced by Oriental beliefs, but it is more concerned with telling people to enjoy life and laugh at its stupidities, essentially. It's hard to see the faults in that. ( )