Perception Of The Bourgeoisie in Steppenwolf Essay -- Hesse Steppenwol

Perception Of The Bourgeoisie in Steppenwolf Hermann Hesses Steppenwolf presents a paradoxical picture of the cautiousie. The main character, Harry Haller, acknowledges his bourgeois upbringing and frequently has a bourgeois view about various aspects of society however, at the same time, he condemns the bourgeois lifestyle and all that it represents because of his perceive alienation from it. The bourgeoisie itself is represented in many different lights in Steppenwolf. The first representation is through the character of Hallers landladys nephew. The nephew is the most typical bourgeois in the novel, and thus the least explored representation because he easily fits into the readers own perceptions with no need for further elaboration. He is the petit bourgeois who goes to his business every day, takes the same short-circuit lunch break, returns to work, goes home, and repeats the same unadventurous pattern day after day without ever questioning his role in society or the reas on for his existence. The Treatise on the Steppenwolf presents another portrait of Hesses perception of the bourgeoisie and of Hallers relationship to it. Haller is secretly and persistently attracted to the little bourgeois world (50) in the same way he is to sleep together music which much as he detested it, had always had a secret charm for him.(37) Because he took up his abode always among the middle classes, he had self-aggrandizing accustomed to viewing society in a thoroughly bourgeois manner. (51) The treatise describes being bourgeois as seeking balance between two extremes at the cost of that intensity of life and feeling which an extreme life affords. (51) In this sense, Haller himself is bourgeois because he constant... ...nderstands it and resolves to be a better hand at the plucky (218) it seems that he will one day join Pablo and Mozart who are waiting for him in this magical realm free of bourgeois conventions. To teach him to laugh was the consentient aim (177 ) and it is the only true suicide of the Steppenwolf and the bourgeois self because its no good with a razor. (178) Only laughter can free the thousand facets of his soul. works Cited Boulby, Mark. Herman Hesse His Mind and Art. Ithaca Cornell UP, 1967 Hesse, Hermann. Steppenwolf. Trans. Basil Creighton. Ed. Joseph Mileck and Horst Frenz. New York Henry Holt and Company Ltd., 1990 Wegener, Franz. Herman Hesses theory of National Socialism in Der Steppenwolf. Trans. Laura Campbell, Werner Habel and Eva-Maria Stuckel. http//www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/8444/steppenwolfeng.html (visited 99/01/30)