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Emily FitzGerald
Dr. Miles Groth
PS 254-HO
April 17, 2018

Making Of A Mad Man

In Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse explores the diametrical dual nature of man’s soul. The

story progresses over a ten-month span, following the life of Harry Haller, the titled

Steppenwolf. Through records detailing a hazy puzzle of dreams dichotomizing reality, the

Steppenwolf comes to understand his split self. On his quest to find equilibrium within himself,

he finds that identity is an intricate amalgamation of upbringing, interests, and spiritual beliefs.

Unresolved issues with his strict bourgeois upbringing propagate Harry’s delusion of man and

wolf at war within himself. This idea plagues him, preventing him from reaching self-

actualization, leading Harry to question his sanity. Despite Harry’s inclination to label his

suffering as madness, he knows that the title is a simplification. He is not suffering from

madness, rather a state of depression emergent from unresolved issues in childhood that

culminated from a shadow archetype complex.

Harry’s upbringing took place in a small German town in a bourgeois household. He

describes his surroundings as the epitome of “cleanliness and respectable domesticity”(Hesse,

28). Despite living in relative comfort, the religious and societal dogma thrust upon him stifled

his freedom to explore aspects of his identity. This phenomenon can be seen as a fixation in stage

three of Erik Erikson’s stages of psycho development. In this stage, children practice their

education at home resulting in either success or guilt of having to ask for help in practice.

(Widick, Carole et al). Harry’s education causes his suffering. Exhibiting a desire to please,

Harry only interests himself in studies and music approved by superiors. The suppression of his
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free will by the church and home brings him to conclude “solitude is independence.”(Hesse 37).

Liberation from following the constructs of others only exists from isolation. Harry uses this

childish notion to justify his theory of being half man and a half wolf of the Steppes.

Unable to rid himself of this childhood fixation, he developed a hatred towards the part

of himself that longs to dwell in carnal and otherwise animal desires. His inability to embrace

both sides of his personal and collective unconscious caused him to feel split between all

contrasts in life, which disabled him from enjoying life. As a grown man Harry found himself

once again wedged in a stage of development. In the Erikson's seventh stage of development

adults in their 40’s and 50’s look to find meaning in their contribution, aiming to leave a legacy

(Widick, Carole et al). Harry finds that his research and musical connoisseurship had not left

anything substantial in comparison to his idol predecessors Mozart, Nietzsche, Goethe and other

individuals whose work he views as immortal.

For all his time on earth, his work cannot offer him a place among the immortals. Having

failed in his career and relationships, the only desire he had other than death was to be loved. His

nighttime pursuits to bars were an attempt to connect, exercising his unconscious desire to be

accepted in his entirety wolf side and all, “Harry wished, as every sentient being does, to be

loved as a whole” (Hesse 43). His lack of fulfillment in relationships lead him to want the world

to validate his worth through his work. If the masses celebrated his existence, he should learn to

as well. However, devoid of praise and fulfillment, Harry became a carapace of a man finding Commented [1]: I like this

comfort in alcohol and the living standards of his bourgeois childhood. Commented [2]: thank you I try sometimes

Within Harry exists a multitude of contrasts. According to the theories of Jung, the Commented [3]: hey what should I do for a transition
here?
principle of opposites asserts “every wish immediately suggests its opposite” (Boeree 9). The

derivation of good and evil, black and white, Heaven and Hell stem from this idea. Energy draws
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from a pool of opposites. When you suppress one side of energy and archetype arises. Harry, “ a

genius of suffering... created within himself with a positive genius of boundless and frightful

capacity for pain,” due to his unwillingness to embrace the shadow archetype that derives from

our primal animal past (Hesse 10). He developed a complex or a pattern of suppressed thought

and feelings that cluster around the theme provided by some archetype (Boeree 9). This can lead

to nightmares, and in certain cases multiple personality disorders where someone is not

cognizant of all aspects of their life. Harry experiences periods of hallucinations or dream-like

states that exist from this complex.

During his drunken stupors, he often found unexplained signs for “Theatre For Madmen.”

The signs all had varying subtitles but “not for everybody” remains. The signs were a

manifestation of his longing to be released from his prison of self and exist in blissful distraction

at the theater. He viewed the theatre as a type of afterlife because of his tendency to “ see death

and not life as the releasers” (Hesse 48). Ultimately he was ejected from the theater because the

“not for everybody” subtitles warned against entering to those who do not possess humor. The

absence of humor and other positive human emotions isolated him from humanity leaving him

trapped in mortal purgatory.

His insistence on finding relief from life, observed by all characters, demonstrates the

severity of Harry’s depression. His suicidal existence represents his dismissal of his collective

unconscious coexisting with his personal unconscious. The collision of the two unconsciousness

enabled him to feel a form of madness as he embraced death as a comrade and not a foe. When

Maria questions him on his rebuke of happiness he answered, “I long for sufferings that make me

ready and willing to die” (Hesse 149). His conviction that he must die in grace rather than live in
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sin, derived from his religious upbringing. Unable to shed himself of the dogma indoctrinated by

his parents he found comfort in the end of time rather than the present.

Harry Haller’s “Theatre for Madmen” is representative of his relationship with time. The

disjointed and nonlinear patterns of time within the theatre are reminiscent of time theories in the

second-century pagan religion Gnosticism. In Gnosticism, there is a time for humans (Creatura),

and an absence of time for the supreme being (Pleroma) (Willemsen 437). Harry’s Creatura

timeline becomes skewed through phases of dreamlike realities when he enters the theatre. Inside

is the world of the Pleroma where Gnostics believe Abraxas, the deity of time, “the liberator

from the cycle of necessity, thus freeing man from the cycle of time” resides (438). Time is a

mortal concept, therefore Harry cannot exist within the theatre for long because according to

Gnostic beliefs to reach Pleroma one must shed the distinctiveness that makes them human. The

distinctiveness being the conflict of personality.

Harry’s inability to find unity distances himself from the world of the immortals. If there

aren’t a pair of opposites warring in one entity they cannot exist in Creatura (438). The only way

to shed his humanity is to be perfectly wolf and man simultaneously. His inner plight can be

described as the pull between the superego and ID that Mozart analogizes to “when you listen to

the radio you are a witness of the everlasting war between idea and appearance, between time

and eternity, between the human and the divine” (Hesse 213). The Theatre thus becomes a

manifestation of the contrasts in his unconscious being brought to consciousness in an effort to

help him reach a greater understanding of his identity.

Harry searches for identity completion leading him to devise a theory of dual nature

between man and wolf. His desire for unity within division, manifests in the meeting of a double

or doppelganger. German for “double- goer,” doppelgangers are “imagined figures, a soul,
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shadow… Or mirror reflection that exists on dependent relation to the original”(Zivkovic 122).

The folklore behind dependent doubles of an original range, expressing the presence of such as

“an omen of death”, complementary to the original, or the Jung view “as a force of neither good

or evil” (124,126). The character Hermine represents an amalgamation of all the doppelganger

mythology. Kepler, author of The Literature Of The Second Self argues “the conscious mind tries

to deny its unconscious using a mechanism called “Projection” creating an external hallucination

in the image of the unconscious desire” (25). Thus her appearance in Harry’s life exhibits his

unconscious desire to explore the carfree more primal aspects of himself.

Following the Christian view of the doppelganger, Hermine, acknowledged as Harry’s

“comrade and sister- my double,” Brings forth his malevolent half encouraging him to live in sin

(Hesse 125). Her wild lifestyle laden with promiscuity and debauchery encourages Harry to

embrace his ID. She serves as a “reminder of mortality” bestowing him with the responsibility to

kill her, in essence, killing the part that would prevent him from reaching immortality (Zivkovic

122). However, if one were to reflect upon Hermine from a Jungian viewpoint her opposite

lifestyle rather is complementary “I am a kind of looking glass for you because there is

something in me that answers you and understands you” (Hesse 108). Harry’s relationship with

her is didactic in nature bestowing an importance in her commands, using her as a tool to find

unity within himself. Hermine’s gender fluidity and likeness to his childhood mate Herman,

further propagates the notion she is part of him, the childhood exuberance and freedom he

misses.

The presence of a doppelganger also suggests a desire for the imaginary (Zivkovic 127).

In Harry’s hallucinations in the theatre for Madmen and in the character Hermine indicates a

possibility for madness. His awareness of his own madness written in the Treatise of the
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Steppenwolf and questioned in the theatre for madmen by Pablo, “What we are doing is probably

mad, and probably it is good and necessary all at the same time” suggests Harry is self-aware

thus not fully removed from reality (187). He wishes his confusion with identity could be defined

as something even if it that is something is madness.

However, the ambiguity of the psychosis “madness,” may not be the root of Harry’s

despair. Harry’s depressive inclinations towards suicidal thought and excessive drinking, stem

from his suffocating bourgeois childhood. The suppression of his innate desires propagated a

shadow archetype which Harry identified as his wolf half. His fruitless longing for oneness

between his wolf and man halves, precipitated the fear that in the event of unity he would

“explode and separate forever, or else come to terms in the dawning light of humor” (Hesse 56).

If he cannot learn to laugh while facing himself, coming to terms with his true form would

destroy him. His quest for humor, else death, carries through with the assistance of the characters

he meets in cabarets and the immortal men of renown in his dreams. They all are representative

of his collective unconscious, assuring him that humor will be his liberator from his inner war.

The laughing immortals do not prove his madness, instead, their behaviors promote his

unreason to be “a higher sense... the beginning of all wisdom” (Hesse 193). Harry’s lust for

finding enjoyment in the boisterous elements in life, do not derive from a madness, but from a

longing to feel again. Learning to find humor in a world riddled with misery is closest he can

arrive at perfection in unity which Jung says only is achieved in death. When Harry embraces the

otherness of rebellious lifestyles, only then can he rearrange the chess pieces of himself and

recreate his life how he intends.

The search for identity in a later stage in life propels Harry to experience a late

bildungsroman. The characters he encountered enabled him to question his unfixable

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conventions of life, liberating him from the practices of his severe bourgeois youth. Through

finding happiness in earthly desires Harry begins to regain a connection to his humanity. The

entrance to the “Theatre For Madmen” contained the culmination of his diverging beliefs and

personalities. His experience there symbolized the unconscious becoming conscious. The

absence of feeling and intense periods of heightened jubilation or sadness connected with

misunderstanding his unconscious. remained after he left the theatre. However, this solidified

that his simplifications about his identity are incorrect. He is neither man nor wolf, he is both. He

suffers not from madness, but from sorrows born out of the maddening state of confusion that

comes from being human.

Commented [4]: this conclusion can be longer

Work Cited

Boeree, George C. Carl Jung Personality Theories. Shippensburg University, 1996.

Hesse, Hermann. Steppenwolf. Bantam Books, 1969.

Hinton, L. (2014). Time and Timelessness: Temporality in the theory of Carl Jung. Journal Of

Analytical Psychology, 59(3), 437-447. doi:10.1111/1468-5922.12090

Keppler, C.F., The Literature of the Second Self, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1972.
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Widick, Carole, et al. “Erik Erikson and Psychosocial Development.” New Directions for Student

Services, vol. 1978, no. 4, 1978, pp. 1–17., doi:10.1002/ss.37119780403.

Živković, Milica. “The Double as the Unseen of Culture -Toward a Definition of Doppelganger.”

University of Nis, University of Nis, 2000.