Customer Reviews
Adolescent torment on the eve of the Great War - By: Trevor Coote, 10 Dec 2008 
Herman Hesse was one of the leading figures of twentieth century literature & this one of his most important works. Cosseted by a prosperous, pious family Emil Sinclair becomes aware of the duality of good & evil through the actions of a school bully. He is freed from persecution by an enigmatic older pupil Max Demian who, along with organ player Pistorius, becomes his master & mentor during a turbulent adolescence. Tormented by vexatious existentialist problems, Emil's sensitivity sees him vacillate between a yearning for a deep, spiritual love & the temptations of self-destruction. Poetically writtenin the tradition of German Romanticism & influenced, among others, by Nietzsche & Jung, Hesse projects through Emil & Max a vision of the future for a Europe which he believed had lost its soulin the aggressive rush for technical progress.
If you enjoy Demian then read Steppenwolf, where the protagonist is likewise torn between bourgeois respectability & crude, biological instincts.
A gripping treatise on life... - By: , 18 Nov 2004 
As usual, Hesse -in 'Demian' - has produced a rich & thought-provoking comment on life & the individual's place within it. It's very similar to his other workin that it shares certain themes & views...but this makes it no less enjoyable as a text that is still fresh & relevantin the 21st Century.
I agree that the novel (novella?) loses focus towards to end. Indeed, perhaps the main narrative never finds a true focus at all. I felt that several charactersin the tale were superfluous & brought little to the book's central 'message'.
I was, however, extremely impressed with the sense of impending war that Hesse manages to paint towards the end. In a very small amount of pages, the full sense of a world about to collapsein on itself is exceptionally sharp. It really comes close to portraying how the youth of entire nations must have feltin the face of imminent conflictin Europe.
Very compelling - perhaps a little muddled, but rightly judged as a classic.
Very good but not what it seems.... - By: , 21 Nov 2002 
This a very readable & enjoyable book for the most part, as the above reviewer points out.
It definetly seems to be a coming of age story where huge ideas loom below the surface - free will, relegion, homosexuality etc
However, the latter half does indeed begin to make less & less sense.
These previously hidden ideas emergein a stream of tedious discussions, & it begins to feel like an very odd fable of 'spiritual growth' (as a comment from The Listener calls it on the jacket.)
The ending,in particular, is very cryptic & unsatisfying.
Desperate to find some meaning to what had been a mostly engrossing novel, I found an on-line analysis of the book by Stephen K. Rooney of The University of Calafornia.
This overturns the traditional interpretatin of the novel, & shows it to be a christian morality play.
It is a fascinating article, & it renews your faithin the book (even if you disagree with it's message)
Not really Hesse at his best. - By: , 07 Jul 2002 This is basically a story of a boy from a middle class family growing up. He falls under the guiding influence of several older & wiser characters & by his late teens comes to some sort of a spiritual & intellectual enlightenment.
Hesse sets offin a matter-of-factly way with a lot of insightful observations about boys from middle class families growing up. Slightly sluggish & self-indulgent perhaps, but altogether quite agreeable.
Two things begin to spoil the book towards the half-way mark. Firstly, at about that point the main charachter hits "the awkward age". My impression was that I was getting a very heavily retouched portrait of the author as a young man. Secondly, about the same time the whole thing veers sharply into the sur-real & alegorical. Unusually, Hesse fails to pull it off with grace & gets lostin rather corny gnostic musings. On top of that, he rehashes some of Nietzche's least reputable ideas (inate superiority of the chozen few, cataclysmic rebirth of a morally bankrupt humanity etc.).
Perhaps I'm being a bit too harsh. This is a decent book. It reads pretty well & has some interesting things to say. However, for something that has come out of Hermann Hesse, "Demian" is at best mediocre. In terms of flair, depth, lucidity & intensity, it don't hold a candle to "Steppenwolf" or "Siddhartha".
Buy it!! - By: azalehm@yahoo.com, 14 Jun 2001 A beautifully written book. Entering the world of children & their fears & how it can manifest itself into adulthood. From the moment I picked this book up I could not leave it alone until I had reached the last word. A wonderful & understanding author.
