Rating: 
Summary: Not Hesse's greatest, but a very good novel.
Review: This is a story about the faults of education and how they push gifted kids too hard. In an effort to maximize their intellectual talents they leave out expression of soul and of the spirit. In the process of trying to cram their brains they may destroy their desire to learn and maybe even their lives....In this story Hesse presents a completely opposite personality to the main character. Hans (the main character) meets Hermann, who is more concerned with poetry and the soul than academics like Hans. These opposite characteristics seem to attract each other and they become best friends. Overall this is a very good book and I would reccomend it to all Hesse fans. However, don't start with this book if you've never read Hesse before.
Rating:
Summary: Not Hesse's greatest, but a very good novel.
Review: This is a story about the faults of education and how they push gifted kids too hard. In an effort to maximize their intellectual talents they leave out expression of soul and of the spirit. In the process of trying to cram their brains they may destroy their desire to learn and maybe even their lives.... In this story Hesse presents a completely opposite personality to the main character. Hans (the main character) meets Hermann, who is more concerned with poetry and the soul than academics like Hans. These opposite characteristics seem to attract each other and they become best friends. Overall this is a very good book and I would reccomend it to all Hesse fans. However, don't start with this book if you've never read Hesse before.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Analysis of the Artist
Review: This is a well-written book, very personal as all of Hesse's works are, but suffers from a rather underdeveloped writing style -- understandable since it was written so early in Hesse's career -- but still quite noticeable. The book is based upon the character of Hans Giebenrath, a boy who is "beneath the wheel" -- he is attending school to become a member of the clergy, which was one of the few options available to intelligent people in Hesse's day. he had to study Latin, Greek, history, theology, and so on -- none of which to hans seems to have the slightest relation to reality -- it's all just dry, dead scholasticism that stuffy professors have to know that does nothing but remove one from the centre and essence of life rather than contributing to it. Hans tries and tries, and succeeds until he meets Heilner, a misfit whom hans secretly admires but does not have the courage to emulate totally. Keeping Hesse's later works in mind, one would get the idea that heilner is actually a projection of the true, inner self of Hans -- the person he needs to be, but does not have the courage to become. Nevertheless, Heilner is a poet -- he sees the silly scholastic activities for what they are -- as if conjugating aroists and memorising the date of Charlemagne's death had any real significance! And he manages to get himself disgraced; it is then that Hans begins to realise that all that he is doing is nothing but hypocrisy. He is doing it simply because he is expected to do it, not because he has any real passion for his studies. he loses interest, and to all mundane valuations, becomes a failure. He gets a job in manual labour which offers even less in the way of mental stimulation that the challenging, but useless scribblings of the clergy and professors do. (...) The book highlights a central theme in the life of the "artist" types: how one is forced to accept values that one knows are false, but to which there seems no other alternative. the creative person is caught between a rock and a hard place, having to choose between a common, bourgeois existence or dead scholasticism and vital life -- one needs to choose vital life, but how? No answer is given. A very autobiographical novel, Hesse's own struggles are not really the result of any inherent mental instability, but simply underlines the problems of the traditional Wilsonian "Outsider": how is one is to live the most intense life with integrity and not bow out to the values of the masses? Like so many outsiders, Hesse and Hans knew that something was wrong, knew that they needed a way out, but Hans was not successful in finding out exactly where that path lay. An excellent book, well-worth anyone's time.
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