In his fiction, the German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse explores a surprising oriental vision of how people perceive themselves. While traditionally Westerners describe each person with such specific characteristics as their name, appearance, and key features, Hesse argues that this idea is both incorrect and even sometimes hurtful. The main character of his famous novel Steppenwolf, Harry Haller, discovers multiple contradictory personalities within himself. It is only after understanding and accepting these many facets of himself that Harry becomes free and happy. In his novel, Hesse encourages his readers to abandon the old Western idea of ​​a strictly defined personality, to learn to laugh, to become loving toward themselves and their fellow human beings, and to seek liberation deep within their unforeseen selves. to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay One of the main points Hesse makes is the Western world's inability to grasp the complexity of the human personality. Harry suffers because he cannot accept the fact that a part of himself defies the expectations of his immediate social environment. Sometimes Harry sees himself as an animal, a beast of the steppes: “He walked on two legs, wore clothes and was a human being, but nevertheless he was really a steppe wolf. He had learned a lot. . . and he was quite an intelligent boy. What he hadn't learned, however, was this: finding contentment in himself and in his own life. The cause apparently was that deep in his heart he knew at all times (or thought he knew) that he was in reality not a man, but a steppe wolf.” Unfortunately, Harry fails not only to accept or understand, but even to see many parts of himself clearly. While his soul is a baroque mosaic, Harry perceives any unconventional part of himself as an anomaly. In a race for money, in an attempt to remain moral, in a struggle to educate themselves, people often forget a sensual and "animal" part of themselves. . Harry spends years reading with sophistication and loses contact with Harry's child, Harry's dancer, and Harry's lover. "Oh! how stiff you are! Go straight as if you were walking. . . Dancing, don't you see, is just as simple as thinking, when you can do it, and much easier to learn. Now you can understand why people don't get into the habit of thinking," says Hermine, Harry's closest friend. Through Hermine, Hesse teaches the reader not to neglect what modern Western society considers a part ". primitive" of a person Laughter, dancing and warm feelings towards other humans are components of the potion that Hesse prescribes to Harry to combat the psychological illness from which the main character suffers: "An experience happened to me this. evening of the ball that I had never known in my fifty years, although every boy and student knew it: the intoxication of a general party, the mysterious fusion of the personality in the mass, the union. "mystical joy." An immersion in the larger human mass, the disintegration of personality brings to Harry the joy and liberation that he has long lacked. In other words, confined within the narrow confines of a well-defined character, acquiring wealth and status, but losing touch with himself, a person does not find true happiness. Not only does Hesse admit that there are different souls trapped in a single mind, but he also emphasizes the need for "space" and attention of each of them. By.