Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth
In the Prolog to Demian, Herman Hesse states that "each man's life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path." (p. 2) Does reality exist outside of our "constructed self"? Is every man on the road instead? Hesse attempts to tell the tale of one young man's journey toward self-discovery thru Emil Sinclair and his relationship with Max Demian.
Demian gives a first-person narrative of Sinclair's life that was written shortly after World War I and focuses on significant moments from his early years, between the ages of ten and twenty. His friendship with Max Demian, an older boy who saves him from a bully and pushes him to think for himself in order to break free from his parents' pietistic lifestyle, dominates his childhood memories. Emil adopts Pistorius, a renegade theologian, as his new mentor after leaving for boarding school. He also develops platonic feelings for a young girl he sees in a park. He meets Demian again at the university where he enrolls and continues to grow spiritually until Demian departs for battle. Emil's realization that he doesn't require outside guardians like Demian leads to his eventual spiritual independence.
Hesse draws upon Nietzsche, Jung, and others for his ideas, but the story is almost an archetypal example of the search for both meaning and identity. The forming of an identity involves discovering values, forming beliefs, and learning how to deal with reality. It involves reconciling the two worlds of his life, the world of light represented by a home filled with order and Christian goodness, and the world of dark that exists in the streets of the town with the temptations of sex, violence, and lust. It is only through his relationship with Demian that Emil is able to escape from the temptations of this life, at least for a time.
Emil is not satisfied with a life of quiet piety. Life for Emil includes his dream life. He tells a friend, "I live in my dreams—that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference." (p. 118) The experiences of Emil are dramatic and result in a rejection of the conventional life for one of a seeker. In his search Emil confronts his beliefs, dreams, and more. An epiphany occurs on one spring day when he is attracted by a young woman in the park. He names her Beatrice and is soon transformed "into a worshiper in a temple." (p. 81) He says,
"I had an ideal again; life was rich with intimations of mystery and a feeling of dawn that made me immune to all taunts. I had come home again to myself, even if only as the slave and servant of a cherished image." (p. 81)
Thus the narrator describes what in Jungian terms is his "anima." This inspires him to create and to read as his journey takes him in a new direction. For Hesse and for the reader, it is always a path on "a road toward himself."
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