Hesse’s Demian fails to hit the same introspective note of deep and intelligent self-reflection that his other works, such as Narcissus and Goldmund, Siddhartha, and Steppenwolf achieve.
Rather than fleshing out a world or multifaceted characters, Demian paints a picture that sees only from Hesse’s philosophical and psychological perspective: that of individualism as the ultimate right. Whereas in other books his mixture of far Eastern spirituality is beautiful in its simplicity of thought, here it strikes as cloying as Hesse repeatedly forces it down the reader’s throat with no sugar pill of plot or character development to sweeten things. I felt like I was part of a foie gras mass production line for Hesse’s outdated views.
This forms a large part of the issue. While Hesse’s thinking was no doubt beneficial to many people around the time of publication, it seems cloying now. The book is replete with Jungian philosophy (the same philosophy that led to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) and while some of this is interesting, other parts are hopelessly antediluvian. Take for example the use of woman solely as devices for character development, being viewed as either mothers or sexual objects (or disturbingly, both simultaneously), or being treated with a very healthy distance, yet being exalted as pure and wonderful.
So, overall disappointing. As a fan of Hesse’s works I feel like I should be apologetic, but there’s no way getting around it that Demian strikes a languid and stuttering note in Hesse’s works.