Harry Haller’s story contradicts the end of the pursuit of Truth by leading to a pit of despair rather than happiness and freedom from uncertainty. The tragedy of the Steppenwolf brings to question whether the chase for Truth holds any value. But
In Steppenwolf, Harry Haller’s struggle with the pursuit of Truth defines the reasons for the individual’s desperation for a purpose. Harry Haller is no different from the average man in the way he desires to enjoy parties with delightful company, to lead a life of virtue and to, essentially, belong in the universe. However, he harbors a strong repugnance for the mean way of life. He considers the bourgeois way of life to be a subjugation confining man from the extremes he can ambition to be: “The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule” (Hesse 52). His disgust for common society is so radical, that he identifies himself as a soul divided between the man who longs to belong among his friends of the bourgeois and the wolf who detests every social pleasure man partakes in; thus he names himself the steppenwolf: “A wolf of the Steppes that had lost its way and strayed into the towns and the life of the herd” (Hesse 17). The feud between the parts of his soul entangles him in a life characterized by discontent, ambition, and isolation. He grows desperate for the discovery of Truth because he believes it to be his only salvation from the perversion of the human reality.
Gravity pulls every object towards the core of the earth, granting each significant mass its deserved weight; the objects that possess an insignificant mass experience negligible force. The earth, therefore, disposes of these weightless objects, allowing them to drift away into space. Life is similar to this force of gravity. It obliges all beings to exist. Despite the trials and adversities that penetrate throughout life, all beings, whether man or beast, feel an obligation to live;
The path to the knowledge of Truth offers no resolution to man. He who believes that knowledge of Truth provides the only fulfillment to life will find nothing but despair. He will find despair in its endless chase just as he knew despair before its chase. And his fault exists in his own ignorance of the value of the chase. “It doesn’t make any difference whether it is or will be somewhere,” the whole being of man thrives on the chase (Plato 592b). Chaos comprises man and for as long as it does, man cannot harness Truth’s whole because first he will taint and secondy he simply is not prepared for that knowledge. His being is everchanging and inconstant, any constancy will feel like a prison to him. Mankind needs progress, he needs a chase; the chase is his salvation from despair: “It satisfies him, because he believes in the value of it all…he believes in the value of mere knowledge and its acquisition, because he believes in progress and evollution” (Hesse 78). The powerful being seeks a purpose to life. Nature grants man with the capacity to learn and to ambition, and the only true fulfillment he can realize is through the chase: “Your life will not be flat and dull even though you know that your war will never be victorious. It is far flatter, Harry, to fight for something good and ideal and to know all the time that you are bound to attain it” (Hesse 118). The chase towards Truth never ends so long as man exists, but it is Nature’s way of garaunteeing man with some sort of purpose. Once the chase ends, man’s loses his potential, he loses his capacity, he loses his being. But that is death. Death is the cease to all change, all chaos, all potential, and all uncertainty. Only then can man cease his chase.
“The reason of living is getting ready to stay dead” (Faulkner 175)
“Just for death’s sake it is that our spark of life glows for an hour now and then so brightly” (Hesse 118).
The individual who stands outside of the machinery of the human reality is able to dream of a reality beyond the physical world and mortal life. In Plato’s words this man is able to look upward towards Truth (Plato 586a). When the soul looks away from the chaos of the world towards truth it raises itself above the rest of society: “When it fixes itself on that which is illumined by truth and that which is, it intellects, knows, and appears to possess intelligence” (Plato 508d).Whether he actually stares at Truth directly is beyond his own conscious knowledge since as stated earlier he is too inferior to harness the doubt-free wholesomeness of Truth; but he believes himself to be exalted above the rest of society.
Chaos penetrates throughout the reality of man. This is because man himself, the creator of language, of laws, and of cities comprises of chaos. Though man possesses one physical body, it would be fallacious to argue that his soul is free from division: “Every ego, so far from being a unity is in the highest degree a manifold world, a constellated heaven, a chaos of forms, of states and stages” (Hesse 59). Philosophers as ancient as Socrates have argued that the soul comprises of a struggle between natures rational and irrational.
Socrates discusses that there is no greater evil to a city than that which splits it and no greater good than that which brings it together and makes it whole (Plato 462b). And the main factor that determines the division or unification of a whole is sharing in the same pains and pleasure. Socrates’s analogy of the city to a man’s soul is a perfect explanation to the inner struggles between the parts of the Steppenwolf. Harry Haller divides his whole being between two natures, that of the wolf who detests society and that of the man who desires to belong in society. Every pleasure that his human nature partakes in, his wolf rebukes, while everything that pleases the wolf’s nature disgusts Harry’s human nature. His fault is simplifying his soul into two parts, when man actually possesses an infinite number of personalities according to every encounter that calls for a reaction. Harry Haller assigns “whole provinces of his soul to the “man” which are a long way from being human, and parts of his being to the world that long ago have left the wolf behind” (Hesse 61); by denying the independence of his other personalities he grows oblivious to numerous parts of his whole being. Man is chaos. In order to unify the parts of his soul he must tame his personalities which can only be done by knowing them. Only after knowing his parts and embracing his whole can he embrace all that is Truth.
“When [the soul] fixes itself on that which is mixed with darkness, on coming in into being and passing away, it opines and is dimmed, changing opinions up and down” (Plato 508d)
However, as stated earlier, there are two causes of man’s frustration with his existence, the first being uncertainty and the latter: limits. Man’s limited capacity denies himself the wisdom of Truth. The reason for this originates in the boundaries set by the definition of man versus the definition of Truth. Man himself is a tarnation of Nature: “They would look away frequently in both directions, toward the just, fair, and moderate by nature and everything of the sort, and, again, toward what is in human beings; and thus, mixing and blending the practices as ingredients, they would produce the image of man” (Plato 501b). Meanwhile, Truth embodies all that is innocent of doubt into a boundless, everlasting, unified and indefinable concept. This concept exists above man’s grasp. Truth possesses a purity so fragile that any attempt to warp it into the human reality, a world so penetrated with doubt, corrupts its whole being. Therefore any attempt to conceptualize Truth through human means leads to failure. Philosophers spend their whole lives following in the footsteps of Socrates believing that discourse on the subject of Truth will lead to the revelation of its being. However their thinking is flawed because words themselves are of human creation. Speaking and thinking the nature of Truth is the same as contaminating it with a vat of imperfection. Language is the very bastardization of Truth. It is the very key that opens the doors to doubt. All that exists in the world is the imperfect human manipulation of Truth.
Truth itself is that which comes before words; in fact it is the very foundation upon which mankind reasons. The moment before man ponders and formulates his ideas, he makes contact with Truth, untouched knowledge at its rawest nature. For example out of the corner of his eye an individual notices the shadow of an object. Since man’s thinking reacts so quickly, he will already be contemplating the form and origin of the shadow by the time he turns his head. The moment he begins reasoning the presence of the shadow he abandons the raw knowledge of its existence perverting the true essence of its knowledge with his human conceptualizations. In order to return to Truth man must abandon his method of comprehension: he must forget the words, forget the thoughts and avoid manipulating the essence of Truth to fit according to his custom of understanding: “Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words” (Faulkner 174).
All that exist in the universe are symptoms of its presence.
“All births mean seperation from the All, the confinement within limitation” (Hesse 64)
“Nothing looks as though it were one more than the opposite of one…in this case a soul would be compelled to be at a loss and to make an investigation…to ask what the one itself is” (Plato 524e)
“Deceit was such that, in a world where it was, nothing else could be very bad or very important” (Faulkner 130)
“Many men would choose to do, possess, and enjoy the reputation for things that are opined to be just and fair, even if they aren’t, while when it comes to good things, no one is satisfied with what is opined to be so but each seeks the things that are, and from here on out everyone despises the opinion” (Plato 505d)
“The image of every true act, the strength of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no one knows of it or sees it or records it or hands it down to posterity” (Hesse 153)
