A Constraint of Choice
Hermann Hesse’s novel Demian and a Constraint of Choice.
Lisbon 2017
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Early in Hermann Hesse’s 1919 novel Demian, we meet a young boy who is thoughtful, polite, a tad naive, and primed to stumble:
I could not go upstairs. My life was ruined. I wondered if I should run away and never come back, or go and drown myself. But these thoughts were not clearly formulated. I sat crouched in the dark on the bottom step and I surrendered myself to my misfortune.
Upstairs, for Emil Sinclair, once led to a bucolic and soothing and reliable home. It is the only home Sinclair knows, the only sanctuary he needs, as nothing dangerous penetrates its walls, nothing impure clouds its rooms. This barrier is, of course, childlike, and now we have a childlike spill—with globs of dirt tracked onto the floor.
The hat and sunshade, the good old sandstone floor, the big picture over the hall cupboard, and the voice of my elder sister in the living-room, all this was dear and more precious to me than ever, but it was no longer consolation and secure possession. All of it was now a reproach. All this belonged to me no more, I could share no more in its cheerfulness and peace. I carried mud on my shoes that I could not wipe off on the mat, I brought shadows in with me, of which the home-world had no knowledge.
What has Sinclair done? How has his shelter crumbled? He has told a single lie. A boastful tale to impress. An untruth that leaves him vulnerable to playground harassment. And the lie, he senses, is a mere beginning. Because the playground bully has new demands, and there’s a rather predictable escalation coming, as his small boast turns into a larger problem.
For a moment I felt no further dread of the morrow, but I had the terrible certainty that my way was leading me further downhill and into the darkness. I realized clearly that from my wrongdoing other wrongdoings must result, that the greetings and kisses I gave to my parents would be a lie, that a secret destiny I should have to conceal hung over me.
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A downfall, alas, can be gradual; there’s no need for a dramatic stumble. What usually begins a descent, instead, is a choice that’s poor but forgettable. And then a secondary slip triggers another mistake, with your staircase now tilted toward an even lower floor. After that you miss an opportunity, overlook a danger, forget what’s valuable. Until, one day, you discover yourself splattered with mud and looking upward, marooned so much lower than you ever thought possible.
Of course Sinclair is young, and most of his peccadillos are yet to arrive. You could even consider his mistakes a worthwhile aspect of his growth. To imagine his adult character without the benefit of remorse is to imagine an inferior Sinclair. In the early chapters, he’s exploring, with much to learn, ponder, and with a lifetime of questions still ahead of him.
Yet Hesse provides the occasional nudge, and we begin to discern the narrowing of this student’s path. These little diversions of life—alcohol, new enticements, a bit of cynicism—all come with choices. What’s favorable redounds to even greater fortune, and what’s unfavorable, well, has a different result. Yet it all feels so incidental, haphazard, as pure chance, the mere consequence of what’s directly before his eyes. If Sinclair ever manages to turn around, however, he’ll see a long trail of choices behind him, all of which constrain his current circumstance, which is a fate, in fact, that he shares with every reader.