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Demian Hermann Hesse

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In life, everyone is searching for something. Some people search for things like money, love, power, and fame while others are just simply searching for themselves. Published in 1919, Hermann Hesse’s, Demian, tells the story of an older man’s reflection on his childhood. Throughout the novel, main character Emil Sinclair struggles to find a purpose and meaning for his life. He faces many difficulties in an attempt to find himself. This is a novel of self-discovery and the pursuit of happiness. Because Hesse displays a power struggle between two elements of binaries, the binaries mirror the struggles that Sinclair faces and his final acceptance of this. The novel begins with recollections of 10 year old Sinclair. Hesse illustrates the two realms or worlds that Sinclair is aware of at this age. One world is of light and one world is of darkness. The world of light consists of everything good, pure, and innocent while the world of darkness is everything evil, sin and deceit. “It was wonderful that here among us there was peace, order, and repose, duty and a clear conscience, forgiveness and love- and wonderful that all the rest existed, all those noisy, …show more content…

Having grown up in the world of light, Sinclair believed in the bible and all things God. This also means he believed in the Devil. When he enters the dark world, he begins to experience the Devil more than God for the very first time. This is really hard on Sinclair and he “was living as frightened and tormented as a ghost” (Hesse 15). It isn’t until he learns about Abraxas that he finally understands the purpose of these two binaries. “But it seems that Abraxas has a much greater significance. We may look upon the name as that of a deity who had the symbolic task combining the godlike and the devilish” (Hesse 60). Understanding Abraxas and his significance is able to put Sinclair at some peach with God and the

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