On the Vanity of Existence – Schopenhauer

“The scenes of our life resemble pictures in rough mosaic; they are ineffective from close up, and have to be viewed from a distance if they are to seem beautiful.”  (This would work very well with an analysis of the garden metaphor in the treatise and then its extrapolation throughout the novel.)

• Haller sees nothing beautiful in life, but as time goes on he’s constantly looking back to his childhood where he wishes he could have been a part of the comfort that the bourgeois provided.
• When he’s in the magic theater, the man shows him that he can rearrange his life into any form he wants if he’s not content with it. It was only when Haller physically saw his life being molded into different forms did he realize how much power he had to make his life beautiful.
• Maria and Hermine are two women who helped him begin to see all of the beauty in life. [Read more…]

In the modern era, the functional capacity of individuals within larger organizations has risen to unparalleled importance and the development of functionality has violently relegated the individual’s spiritual development. Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf illustrates the psychological damage modern organization inflicts upon complex beings and follows one man’s journey to heal his shattered soul. Along with Hesse, Søren Kierkegaard and Carl Jung also resist modern paradigms by illuminating the ways individuals can preserve and develop the many souls that exist within them, despite modern dehumanization. Kierkegaard discusses how defining oneself within the context of a larger organization fragments individuality, and argues that a subjective relationship to the self and one’s spirituality creates a truthful individual. Jung’s discussion of our shared unconscious shows the true depth of our inner beings and brings to light the severe dehumanization modern views of individuality produce. [Read more…]