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    A Study Guide for Hermann Hesse's "Steppenwolf"
    A Study Guide for Hermann Hesse's "Steppenwolf"
    A Study Guide for Hermann Hesse's "Steppenwolf"
    Ebook43 pages47 minutes

    A Study Guide for Hermann Hesse's "Steppenwolf"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Hermann Hesse's "Steppenwolf," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535834131
    A Study Guide for Hermann Hesse's "Steppenwolf"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Hermann Hesse's "Steppenwolf" - Gale

      1

      Steppenwolf

      Hermann Hesse

      1927

      Introduction

      Hermann Hesse's novel Der Steppenwolf (English translation, Steppenwolf [1929]), was first published in 1927. It is one of the major novels by the renowned German writer and was extremely popular amongst young people in the United States in the 1960s. The counterculture of that decade took inspiration from the fact that the protagonist of the novel, Harry Haller, makes use of sex and hallucinatory drugs as a means of fulfillment and self-discovery. Haller is a self-hating, fifty-year-old intellectual who despises the bourgeois culture in which he lives. Through encounters with various people, including two prostitutes and a drug-dispensing saxophone player, he embarks on a search for psychic wholeness and spiritual understanding. The novel combines realistic and surrealistic techniques and is strongly autobiographical, since between 1924 and 1926, when he was writing the novel, Hesse went through a crisis similar to that faced by Haller. Like Haller, whose initials the author shares, Hesse felt depressed and tried to shake it off by sensual indulgence. The protagonist of the novel resembles Hesse in other ways, too, including his temperament and his tastes in music and literature. In writing Steppenwolf, Hesse used the stuff of personal experience to create a dense novel that promotes uninhibited psychological exploration and spiritual aspiration.

      Despite Faulkner's roots in the South, he readily condemns many aspects of its history and heritage in Absalom, Absalom!. He reveals the unsavory side of southern morals and ethics, including slavery. The novel explores the relationship between modern humanity and the past, examining how past events affect modern decisions and to what extent modern people are responsible for the past.

      Author Biography

      German poet and novelist Hermann Hesse was born on July 2, 1877, in the small town of Calw, in the German state of Württemberg. His father, Johannes, worked for a publishing house and had also, along with his wife Marie Gundert, been a missionary in India.

      In 1891, Hesse entered the Protestant Theological Seminary at Maulbronn, but he ran away from the seminary after six months, and his father removed him from the school in May 1892. Even at this young age, Hesse had already decided he wanted to be a poet. He worked in a clock factory and then as an apprentice in a bookshop in Tübingen, during which time he read widely, especially the work of Goethe and the German Romantic poets.

      Hesse's first volume of poetry was published in 1899, and his first novel, Peter Camenzind in 1904. The success of the novel ensured that Hesse was able to make a living as a freelance writer. He followed this with another novel, Unterm Rad in 1906 (The Prodigy [1957]; Beneath the Wheel [1969]), which was a fierce attack on the educational system.

      Hesse married Maria

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