1914, with the outbreak of the First InWorld War, the German novelist Hermann Hesse was searching for answers to some important questions in his life. The strain of his pacifist beliefs and the domestic crises affecting his country spurred Hesse to undergo therapy with a follower of the pioneer psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung.

This experience gave the writer some fresh insights and added a new dimension to his fiction. The novels Demian (1919), Siddhartha (1922), and Steppenwolf (1927) reflect this and also the influences of the German philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky (18211881), German philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), and Buddhist mysticism. These three books are based on the belief that Western civilization is doomed and so man must express himself in order to find his own nature.

Literary critic Edwin Casebeer has observed that Harry Haller, the protagonist of the novel Steppenwolf, is struggling to become a Siddhartha...