The mesmeric power that Hesse’s novels and short stories exercised over American youth at that time can be largely explained, after all, by the quiet disdain he bore toward establishment values. That American youth in the 1960’s saw in this novel its own rejection of middle-class values, hypocrisy and sham is natural and justified, for all of this is present, and Hesse meant to put it there. It is in virtually every respect a voice from within which whispers: “Become who you really are!”Įvery generation that confronts great literature is apt to see in it a projection of its own problems, needs, and desires. It is in many respects an invitation to renounce the customary manner of looking at life and to refashion one’s existence after one’s deepest desires. It is in some respects like a newborn child which looks upon the world for the first time with wondering eyes, intoxicated with the delirium of initial discovery. Steppenwolf is a book with few answers and fewer certainties. The degree to which someone can live without certainties or answers need not be a sign of immaturity or indecisiveness, but one of adulthood and inner strength. And a question must be loved before it will surrender its secret. If art could be said to engage in a love affair, it would be a love affair with questions. For to have an answer is to possess certainty, and to possess certainty is to cease growing, and to cease growing is to cease existing.

And perhaps the royal road to indifference is the possession of answers, answers cut-and-dried, prefabricated answers that spare someone the necessity of knowing even the questions. If a work of art could commit a sin, it would be that of leaving those who encounter it indifferent.

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