Steppenwolf

The bulk of this chapter section is taken up by the treatise on the Steppenwolf, but Haller’s experiences prior to finding the treatise provide some insight into his internal struggle. As with many Modernist works, the novel focuses on Haller’s inner conflicts, exploring how he views himself and reality. The “golden thread” that Haller seeks in his day-to-day life—an elusive connection to the divine found most reliably through music and art—is contrasted against the consistent combat between the “man” and “wolf” sides of himself, and it is distinctly linked to music and inebriation. Recalling the performance of Bach, Haller remarks: “I sped through heaven and saw God at work” (34), but he also retrieves the golden thread after eating liver and drinking Elsasser. These different paths to contentedness likewise recall the man and wolf, as the man is satisfied by music, while the wolf desires physical satisfaction.

Prior to reading the treatise, Haller explains his anti-Modernist perspective, highlighting the difficulty of Overcoming Alienation. Haller says he can “scarcely read a paper, seldom a modern book,” nor can he “understand what pleasures and joys they are that drive people to the over-crowded railways and hotels, into the packed cafes with suffocating and oppressive music” (35). Both modern art and technology upset Haller, and he constantly yearns for earlier times, reminiscing about the lives of artists and musicians that came before him. To Haller, this nostalgia is the root cause of his wolf self, which cannot help but reject the modernity of the Interwar Period. These ills are not exclusively personal, though, as Haller remarks on jazz music as a sign of the decline of civilization, indicating a broader complaint about the direction of human progress.

The treatise introduces a spiritual and supernatural element to the text, as Haller sees a mysterious sign, interacts with a mysterious man, and comes home with the treatise that addresses his own life directly. The treatise explores Societal Norms and the Repression of the Unconscious, summarizing the ways in which Haller has become a “Steppenwolf,” a term the treatise uses with humor. The dominant trait that distinguishes the Steppenwolf from society is his resistance to society’s influence, and the treatise remarks: “[H]e preferred to go hungry and in torn clothes rather than endanger his narrow limit of independence. He never sold himself for money or an easy life or to women or to those in power” (52). This laudatory characterization belies the immense psychic distress that Haller’s imperfect independence causes him. This passage implies that “normal” people do sell themselves for comfort, money, or power at the expense of their independence. According to the treatise, these values are bourgeois, and the Steppenwolf both relies on and despises them. For Haller, this internal contradiction—despising the values he cannot help relying on—is the source of alienation and despair.

The treatise sets out to diagnose Haller’s psychology, combining elements of spirituality to temper the sharpness of its psychological determination. The treatise calls Haller’s Steppenwolf persona a form of “schizomania,” a diagnosis that would later become “schizophrenia,” and that is no longer a common diagnosis. In the treatise, as in Haller’s time, schizomania is simply a confusion of personality, which, for Haller, is his decision to see himself as split between two distinct personalities. At the same time, the treatise refers to Haller as a “suicide,” meaning a person with suicidal ideation. These psychological diagnoses are then explained spiritually, and the treatise notes: “His life oscillates, as everyone’s does, not merely between two poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint and the sinner, but between thousands and thousands” (66). This perspective, of thousands of “souls” or “selves,” preaches a kind of spiritual search for unity and contentedness, summarized in the treatise as a need for humor. Critically, though, the treatise only foreshadows that Haller will find the necessary mirror to see himself as a multiplicity, not whether he will learn to laugh at it.