My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I had high hopes for this book. Quotes like “the bird fights its way out of the egg” or “true freedom requires the destruction of the world we were born in” (or something akin to that) intrigued me. But I must say Demian disappointed me in the end. Sinclair’s life comes across as drama-queenish and dull. His fascination with Demian is kind of peculiar and arbitrary, while Demian himself is uncanny and not very “realistic” a character at all. I enjoyed reading it more closer to the beginning, when Sinclair is just a patronised little boy, than later on, when as a young adult he becomes just a bit too worked up over his “knowledge” and all his weird, pompous friends. I felt like this book left me with nothing. Its philosophical and ethical braveries felt stale, as if they haven’t aged all that well. Whether this book was deemed revolutionary for its time, that is almost 100 years ago, that I cannot say.
I don’t plan on giving up on Hesse. I just hope some of his other books I want to read live up to their names more than Demian.