“Most men will not swim before they are able to.' Is not that witty? Naturally, they won't swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for the water. And naturally they won't think. They are made for life, not for thought.
The first acquaintance with Harry Haller turned into an unexpectedly pleasant and interesting conversation for the Landlady’s nephew. It started oddly, with the apt remark “"Look at this little vestibule," Haller went on, with the araucaria and its wonderful smell. Many a time I can't go by without pausing a moment”. ‘Cleanliness and the araucaria’ have already captured the nephew’s mind, but subsequently, the conversation got more serious tone and reflection on life: “A man should be proud of suffering. All suffering is a reminder of our high estate”. As the conversation is interesting, it could easily attract readers attention as well as the nephew’s “He had got hold of me now. I was interested; and I stayed on a short while with him; and after that we often talked when we met on the stairs or in the street”. As the results, there is an opportunity to understand the Steppenwolf’s own world, that begins to open for us.
"Animals are sad as a rule," she went on. "And when a man is sad—I don't mean because he has a toothache or has lost some money, but because he sees, for once in a way, how it all is with life and everything, and is sad in earnest—he always looks a little like an animal.
Hermine, who compared Haller to animal, is not the first person who did this. Harry Haller has long been determined with his own Steppenwolf: "Yes, it's me. I am one who is half-wolf and half-man, or thinks himself so at least." But if we could easily understood Haller’s reasons for such a comparison, Hermine’s words are not so clear, “She gave me a searching look in the eyes, then looked at my hands, and for a moment her face and expression had that deep seriousness and sinister passion of a few minutes before. Making a guess at her thoughts I felt she was wondering whether I were wolf enough to carry out her last command” Whereas going deeper, the hidden sense can be find : "They (animals) may be terrible sometimes, but they're much more right than men.". The main ‘animal’s’ feature that is respected is their serenity : «They always know what to do. They do not flatter and they do not intrude. They do not pretend”. The main idea of this quote is in comparison of animals and humans and in the fact that anyone can take take something ‘humane’ from an animal and vice versa something ‘beasty’ from a human.
His life oscillates, as everyone's does, not merely between two poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint and the sinner, but between thousand and thousands.
Could people be divided into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, if the world itself is painted in a thousand shades of gray? Obviously, it cannot be. Harry Haller and his “division into wolf and man, flesh and spirit” in order to simplify his life – is a good example of it. Thus, no matter how good or how bad the person is, there are always polar sides. Harry “finds in himself a human being”, i.e. his thoughts and feelings, and also he “finds within himself also a wolf” or his dark world of instinct. But, despite perceiving world it this way and “clear division of his being between two spheres, hostile to one another, he has known happy moments now and then when the man and the wolf for a short while were reconciled with one another.” So, it is clearly understood that “Harry consists of a hundred or a thousand selves, not of two.”, as well as every other person.
