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3.96 AVERAGE
3.96 AVERAGE
Took me a while to get through this. Herman Hesse has a tendency to write in long, meandering sentences that I sometimes needed to read two or three times before I fully grasped what I was reading. Maybe the English translation alleviates this issue a bit.
I really loved some of the philosophical aspects of this book and many of its themes apply pretty well to my own life. Harry’s despair with the world, his negative outlook towards all things he considers unsophisticated and bourgeois, his wish for cultivation and at the same time wild madness make him an interesting character many people will be able to identify with. The book makes a great case for changing the things in one’s life that you are unhappy with.
Unfortunately I didn’t particularly like the third act, I felt it was pretty anticlimactic and didn’t really give me the catharsis that I was looking for.
I really loved some of the philosophical aspects of this book and many of its themes apply pretty well to my own life. Harry’s despair with the world, his negative outlook towards all things he considers unsophisticated and bourgeois, his wish for cultivation and at the same time wild madness make him an interesting character many people will be able to identify with. The book makes a great case for changing the things in one’s life that you are unhappy with.
Unfortunately I didn’t particularly like the third act, I felt it was pretty anticlimactic and didn’t really give me the catharsis that I was looking for.
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
inspiring
sad
tense
slow-paced
''Talvez possa voltar a viver, talvez possa voltar a ser gente. Minha alma, que havia tombado adormecida no frio e quase se enregela, respira de novo e volta a bater sonolenta as pequenas asas débeis''
''O apego desesperado ao próprio eu, a desesperada ânsia de viver, são o caminho mais seguro
para a morte eterna; ao passo que o saber morrer, rasgar o véu do mistério, ir procurando eternamente mutações em si mesmo conduz à imortalidade''.
banger absoluta... a quantidade de poesia e existencialismo contida nesse romance é de cair o queixo. o mais brutal é se identificar com o lobo da estepe — ao menos em determinadas fases a vida (quem nunca né). com certeza lerei mais do Hesse.
''O apego desesperado ao próprio eu, a desesperada ânsia de viver, são o caminho mais seguro
para a morte eterna; ao passo que o saber morrer, rasgar o véu do mistério, ir procurando eternamente mutações em si mesmo conduz à imortalidade''.
banger absoluta... a quantidade de poesia e existencialismo contida nesse romance é de cair o queixo. o mais brutal é se identificar com o lobo da estepe — ao menos em determinadas fases a vida (quem nunca né). com certeza lerei mais do Hesse.
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
As you'll know if you follow me on Instagram, this was my second time reading this book. I read it in my early twenties and quite liked it (especially the bit where he is briefly fighting a war against cars) but it's a cult book and the author said that he thought the young guys reading it wouldn't really understand the feelings of the fifty year old protagonist. So now, a few weeks from my fiftieth, I had a second pass at it. I think, strangely, I found it harder work than last time, so maybe I am just generally less patient now.
The central character has formed a sense of himself having two natures - a man, outwardly confirming to social norms, and a wolf who serves as a repository for all his repressed but untamed urges. These two natures are constantly struggling against one another. Through a chance encounter with a woman, he starts to see new possibilities are on offer and, as he is drawn further into her world he has a kind of drug-induced hallucinatory experience akin to those described by hippy writers in the 60s that opens his mind even further to the myriad roles he can play in the world, not just the two he thinks are his.
It's often hard to really get a sense of how the book would have struck its original audience since the philosophy and the social conventions he struggles with are from another age and culture (its written after the First World War and already looking ahead to the second), but although I am not beset by rigid bourgeois expectations, an obsession with my own digestion and the life of Goethe, I can feel an affinity with Harry Haller and his belated reawakening. I think I understood it even in my twenties, but I feel it more viscerally now that I've had years more to develop a hardened worldview.
I'm not such a miserable git as him though.
The central character has formed a sense of himself having two natures - a man, outwardly confirming to social norms, and a wolf who serves as a repository for all his repressed but untamed urges. These two natures are constantly struggling against one another. Through a chance encounter with a woman, he starts to see new possibilities are on offer and, as he is drawn further into her world he has a kind of drug-induced hallucinatory experience akin to those described by hippy writers in the 60s that opens his mind even further to the myriad roles he can play in the world, not just the two he thinks are his.
It's often hard to really get a sense of how the book would have struck its original audience since the philosophy and the social conventions he struggles with are from another age and culture (its written after the First World War and already looking ahead to the second), but although I am not beset by rigid bourgeois expectations, an obsession with my own digestion and the life of Goethe, I can feel an affinity with Harry Haller and his belated reawakening. I think I understood it even in my twenties, but I feel it more viscerally now that I've had years more to develop a hardened worldview.
I'm not such a miserable git as him though.
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes