Author: [Germany] Hermann Hesse

Subtitle: All I want is to try to live according to my spontaneous nature. Why is it so difficult?

Publisher: Tianjin People's Publishing House

Publication year: 2020-5

Summary: It tells the story of young Sinclair's arduous journey of finding his own way. As the young Emil Sinclair grows up, he experiences the temptation of the complex world, tastes loneliness, timidity, hesitation, and rebellion, longs for love and friendship, and falls into doubts about himself and the outside world, until he meets his peer Demian. Under the influence of , step by step, I find the answer and move toward maturity.

Through the protagonist Sinclair, Hesse shows his process of "struggle for individuation and becoming human" and the difficulty of life choices under the guidance of Demian, Pistorius, Eve and others who are similar to spiritual mentors. sex.

"Everyone's life is a road leading to oneself, an attempt on the road, and a revelation gained on a narrow road.

I. One is a warm and beautiful home

II. The other is the barbaric and violent society outside the home.

III. Characters appear

IV. Sinclair experienced a bad childhood because he was bullied by Franz

I. Appearance: Max Demian

II. Sinclair and Demian became friends over the story of Cain in the Bible

III. Demian helps Sinclair get rid of Cromer's bullying and avoid Sinclair's fall.

IV. Rescued Sinclair returns to "beautiful and bright" family

I. Sinclair enters adolescence

II. The two discussed many topics

III. Demian gave Sinclair a habit of looking at and elaborating on stories and teachings more freely, more personally, more effortlessly, and more imaginatively.

I. The question faced by Sinclair in high school: To be a good son and a good citizen in the future, or to follow my nature and follow another path.

II. Sinclair is now lonely and withdrawn

III. Appearance: Alfonso Baker

IV. It was the first time Sinclair met someone he could chat with so well, and it was also the first time he got drunk.

V. Meet someone you like: Beatrice and start learning to paint

VI. Meeting Demian again and drinking together, Sinclair began to recover.

I. "The bird fights to get out of its egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wants to be born must destroy the world.

II. Begin to retreat into your heart and develop a new understanding in your heart;

III. Sinclair is going off to college, and here comes this sentence: All I ever wanted was to try to live according to my spontaneous nature. Why is it so difficult?

IV. All I long for is to live once, to throw my spontaneous self out into the world, to connect with it, or to fight against it.

V. Sinclair encounters music: My love for music is a natural expression from my heart;

VI. Appearing characters: Musician-Pistorius-Sinclair’s guide

VII. P121, Sinclair began to realize the true meaning of life and accumulated a little experience: observing a new scene, indulging in its irrational, chaotic and strange natural forms, and harmonizing with the will that created this scene in his heart ——People can quickly sense its temptation and regard this scene as their own emotions and their own creations. ——We see the boundaries between ourselves and nature trembling and blurring.

VIII. Discuss with Pistorius: Our definition of human nature is too narrow! We identify individuality in our differences from others, but we are made up of the totality of people in the world.

I. Getting along with musicians made Sinclair realize how naive, conceited and rebellious he had been.

II. P132, the conversation with the musician is very profound: if we hate someone, we are just borrowing his image and something about ourselves. What is not within ourselves never angers us.

III. What we see is what is within ourselves. Nothing is more real than what is within

IV. Most people don't live their lives authentically. Because they regard the external world as real and ignore their own internal world.

V. "This is how he repairs his inner world."

VI. Characters who appear: Knauer, Sinclair's long-time classmate

VII. Sinclair begins to rebel internally against Pistorius, the musician who once believed in him, and says something deeply hurtful;

VIII. P151, people have only one mission - to move towards themselves

IX. Pistorius’s inspiration to Sinclair is: look within yourself

I. Sinclair enters college, meets Demian again, and also meets Demian’s mother, Mrs. Eve

II. Talking mainly about dreams, humanity and dreaming with Lady Eve

III. Feeling in love with Lady Eve

I. Sinclair's image: accustomed to loneliness, accustomed to giving up, accustomed to staying with pain

II. Demian enters the battlefield

III. The damage caused to Sinclair by the war made him realize that everyone in the past is a mirror of him

IV. This sentence reminds Demian to live in Sinclair's heart: You must listen to the voice in your heart, and then you will find that I am in your heart.

Background: Before and after World War I

Along with the difficult growth of a ten-year-old child, he is once again tempted by the taboo, dark, evil, and universally antagonistic world, suffering from nightmares and anxiety, and fearfully looking forward to destroying the world around him;

In the inevitable fate, in the traditional belief, the liberation of thoughts and the development of one's own ethics, we think about the unconscious and the conscious, good and evil, men and women, God and the devil, and integrate ourselves.

Mature in evil, gain liberation and inner transcendence from the power of evil, and give birth to new life in love