Steppenwolf

“It was a look that did not simply criticize the lecturer, annihilating the famous man with its delicate but crushing irony. That was the least of it. It was more sad than ironical; it was indeed utterly and hopelessly sad; it conveyed a quiet despair, born partly of conviction, partly of a mode of thought which had become habitual with him.”

The narrator sees Haller’s insight into the lecturer as a sign of his intelligence and isolation. While Haller sees through the pompous speaker, he also invites the narrator to look at society from a different perspective, and the narrator concludes that society is only pretend. However, Haller’s look is sad, as Haller’s dedication to criticizing others has led him to live alone and without comfort.

“Don’t you smell it too, a fragrance given off by the odor of floor polish and a faint whiff of turpentine together with the mahogany and the washed leaves of the plants—the very essence of bourgeois cleanliness, of neatness and meticulousness, of duty and devotion shown in little things. I don’t know who lives here, but behind that glazed door there must be a paradise of cleanliness and spotless mediocrity, of ordered ways, a touching and anxious devotion to life’s little habits and tasks.”

Haller’s remarks on the plants in the stairwell betray his torn perspective between “man” and “wolf.” He praises the doorway for its cleanliness and safety, but he undermines this praise with terms like “mediocrity” and “bourgeois,” both of which are derogatory in this usage. Likewise, the “anxious devotion” Haller projects onto the doorway implies his own discomfort with cleanliness and safety.

“It was not in my power to verify the truth of the experiences related in Haller’s manuscript. I have no doubt that they are for the most part fictitious, not, however, in the sense of arbitrary invention. They are rather the deeply lived spiritual events which he has attempted to express by giving them the form of tangible experiences.”

The narrator, while establishing a framework to add credibility to Haller’s writing, also undermines that credibility in this passage. He asserts that Haller did not likely experience the events of the manuscript, but he encourages readers to find abstract meaning in the writing. This suggestion foreshadows the ending of the novel, in which the events of the narrative are implied to be purely imaginary.