Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Beneath the Wheel by Hermann Hesse, Michael Roloff ISBN: 0374507481 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: October, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33
Rating: 5
Summary: A message of warning
Comment: I couldn't have read this book at a better time. Like a lot of American high-schoolers in the "fast track" to college, I was feeling way overworked. I never had time anymore to enjoy nature, good books or anything else. It seemed that my life was school, and nothing else.
On a whim, I picked this up. "Beneath the Wheel," or "Unterm Rad" (auf Deutsch) is the story of a brilliant young man (in the prodigy sense) who is worked to death by those who unconsciously care nothing for him, but to see his advancement.
While I never experienced anything as extreme as Hans, this book really made me question why I was doing what I was doing. Why was I working myself to death in high school? Was I learning anything? Was I growing as a person?
This book is wonderful because Hesse tells the story is such a simple and poetic way; and it is translated marvelously. Simply a joy to read. I can read it over and over again. So, take heed, reader. Enjoy this book and spend many an afternoon questioning the merits of forced education; and different systems of learning. A good technical follow-up is "Teaching As A Subersive Activity." Check it out.
Rating: 4
Summary: Fall from grace
Comment: BENEATH THE WHEEL is the tragic story of young Hans Giebenrath. Young Hans is a precocious, possibly genius young man from a small one-horse German village. It's a working class town that is known for its steadfast character of its denizens, but not for the scope & breadth of their erudition. Hans is the exception to the rule: he is far & away intellectually superior to his peers, and he knows it.
So bright is Hans that he is selected to attend a German monastery to continue his academic studies. So prestigious is this academy that it would be comparable to an American student being accepted to Princeton or Stanford. It is on this journey that we join young Hans; so full of promise as well as a wee bit of arrogance.
In some ways, this book could be described as the anti-CATCHER IN THE RYE. Instead of extolling education as something worthwhile as opposed to merely banal, Hesse has a far less flattering view of the educational system. The crux of the book is found in the following passage:
"A schoolmaster will prefer to have a couple of dumbheads in his class rather than a single genius, and if you regard it objectively, he is of course right. His task is not to produce extravagant intellects but good Latinists, arithmeticians and sober decent folk." (99-100)
Here it becomes evident that Hesse has little regard for a German pedagogic system which places pragmatism above nourishing persons of exceptional mental acumen. Most of the rest of the book revolves around the nucleus of this passage.
The whole tone and style of this book very much reminds me of Thomas Mann. The theme of transition from adolesence to adulthood is present in Mann's works as well. By coincidence, due to the fact that they're both German authors, Mann's & Hesse's books are alongside each other on my bookcase. After reading this novel, I found this arrangement to be all the more fitting. I do know that Mann & Hesse were friends; it appears that they held an influence over each others works as well.
This book is highly recommended, particularly to promising high school students who plan on attending college. It engages one of the most horrifying prospects that a serious student faces: flunking out and falling back into the milieu of the blue collar working environment. Of course, working any honest job is a noble endeavor. However, we at once remember the closing paragraph of Schopenhaur's essay ON GENIUS:
"A person of high, rare mental gifts, compelled to attend to a merely useful piece of business for which the most ordinary person would be fitted, is like a valuable vase decorated with the most beautiful painting, which is used as a kitchen-pot; and to compare useful men with men of genius is like comparing bricks with diamonds" (Arthur Schopenhaur, PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS, p. 97. Trans: E. F. J. Payne)
For those of us caught in the middle of Schopenhaur's dichotemy, it is with the greatest strain that we reach for the one, but end up plunging into the other. This is both a consoling and cathartic novel for all the people out there who (like me!) have strived for greatness, but fallen short. When it comes to profoundity, most of us tend to fall beneath the wheel.
Rating: 3
Summary: A life wasted
Comment: Hermann Hesse's second novel, Beneath the Wheel, concerns the plight of young Hans Giebenrath who is a highly-prized student of his village. the pastor, the school master and Hans' father contrive to make the boy work hard so that he can take the examination that would allow him to enter the academy.
In a society rife with class-consciousness, a middle class youth has few options. An academic career leading to a church position is the highest they can achieve. There is not much between. To be a clerk or artisan is looked down upon at his school. Hans achieves well.
But his success is not enough. he is worked harder and at the academy he finds a friendship that clearly demonstrates that this type of striving is wrong-headed. His friend, Heilner, is considered a revel and forced to leave the school. The hypocrisy of the staff is evident in the losses the school suffers.
Hans returns home in disgrace having experienced a breakdown no one diagnoses correctly. His own death is something only the shoemaker Flaig can assess correctly.
Some of this plot seems aubiographical, but Hesse makes a point in 1906, the year in which this book was published, that a society that divides people by class and forces their young into desperate work is doomed. The wheel of time, of fate, of relentless, mindless motion will grind the ones who seek something more transcendant.
The book is touching. Yet in light of Hesse's other works, this book is somewhat immature. It certainly remains a good start and the author will go on to write farw more challening material. Yet Beneath the Wheel offers challenge to the x-generation. Are they, too, mindlessly achieving without attending to the transcendant?
 |
Title: Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse, Ursule Molinaro ISBN: 0553275860 Publisher: Bantam Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 1984 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
 |
Title: Gertrude by Hermann Hesse, Hilda Rosner ISBN: 0374508127 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: July, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
 |
Title: The Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse, Hilda Rosner ISBN: 0374500363 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: September, 1988 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
 |
Title: Rosshalde by Hermann Hesse, Ralph Manheim ISBN: 0374508968 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: July, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
 |
Title: Demian by Hermann Hesse ISBN: 0060931914 Publisher: HarperCollins (paper) Pub. Date: July, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
