A Look at the Hermeneutic Code in “Demian”

When reading Hermann Hesse’s “Demian” the hermeneutic code can be seen in Sinclair and Demian’s reluctance to discuss Kromer. The subject of Kromer is first brought up by Demain when he happens upon a startled Sinclair. Somehow Demain already has knowledge of Sinclair and Kromer’s previous encounters, he even knows his name. When Demain asks about the boy that has been bothering Sinclair he says “Just say it! What is his name?” (31). Sinclair answers “You mean Franz Kromer?” (31). Demain just nods in agreement seeming to say that he already knew his name. After this first discussion of Kromer, Demian says that he will take care of the situation. The next day Demain claims to have dealt with Kromer and Sinclair wants to know how he did it. Sinclair requests an answer from Demain, but he “dodged the question no matter how hard I tried to find out what had happened. I was left with the same awkward feeling toward him, a strange mix of gratitude and shyness, admiration and fear, affection and inner resistance”, (33).  Sinclair is now instilled with the desire to know the answer that Demain seems hesitant to give. After this first conversation about Kromer, both boys seem to avoid the subject, although Kromer is still engrained in Sinclair’s mind. Sinclair may avoid the subject because he feels as though his owes Demain something. Demian’s reasons may be something much more inherent and complicated.

The first time they refuse to discuss Kromer, it sets up the enigma the text seeks to answer. It questions how Demian knows about the situation with Kromer, and makes Sinclair wonder how it was handled. Then, the repetitive avoidance of answering the question creates more questions about why it isn’t answered. The mixture of emotions described on page 33 gives the impression Sinclair doesn’t know how to feel, because he doesn’t know what happened, or what he should be feeling. This withheld answer keeps him in the dark about his emotions, and also keeps the reader in the dark with him. Had Demian answered his questions from the start, it wouldn’t have raised the level of curiosity about his character and what his character is seeking both for Sinclair himself and for the audience. Demian led him to want to discover for himself what it was that was wrong with his involvement with Kromer. Had he told him, Sinclair would have continued his path of following rules, and thus never reached the freedom of thought and action he reaches at the end of the novel. By the time Kromer is mentioned by Demian and they have the promised conversation, Sinclair knows who he is and does not need to follow anyone else’s footsteps to defeat the Kromers in the world. He is left questioning through the novel so he can find his answer rather than being told, which he would not have questioned each time it was brought up until the end, where he already knew the answer.

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Isn’t it strange how Demian and Sinclair never discuss how Demian got Franz Kromer to leave Sinclair alone?  Isn’t it even more strange how Kromer is mentioned on the very last page in the novel? “Listen, little Sinclair! I have to go away. You may need me again someday, against Kromer or something else. The next time you call me, I won’t come so obviously on horseback or by train. You will have to listen inside yourself, and then you’ll realize I’m in you. Do you understand?” (135)  Why does Demian tell Sinclair that he is inside him? This strange encounter becomes more clear after reading the text more closely than ever before.

I propose that Sinclair has Multiple Personality Disorder, and that Demian is not actually a person but just a character made up inside Sinclair’s mind. According to WebMD,

“research indicates that it (Multiple Personality Disorder) is likely a psychological response to interpersonal and environmental stresses, particularly during early childhood years when emotional neglect or abuse may interfere with personality development.”

Demian doesn’t even appear in the novel until after Sinclair is constantly bullied by Franz Kromer, which causes Sinclair a great amount of stress at a young age. This could very well be the cause to Sinclair’s disorder. Demian also has no contact with any other character in the novel, except for his mother, who I believe is another extension of Sinclair’s mind. When Sinclair goes to Demian’s house and meets his mother, Sinclair describes the experience as a dream on page 117: “Outside was ‘reality’; outside were streets and buildings, people and institutions, libraries and lecture halls–but inside here was light, and the soul; here dreams and fairy tales had come to life.” This is the textual evidence that, after closely reading, proves Sinclair made the whole thing up. His whole life he felt like he didn’t belong anywhere, so his mind, yearning for acceptance, made up a fantasy world in which Sinclair fit inside perfectly.

The novel provides textual evidence in which Hesse delays the revelation of Sinclair’s disorder multiple times using the Hermeneutic Code. First, the thematization is presented through Demain as a character being extremely mysterious:

“I kept looking over at Demian, whose face strangely fascinated me: I saw his bright, unusually determined and intelligent face bent attentively over his work, looking nothing at all like a student doing an assignment, but rather like a scholar or scientist conducting his own research. I did not actually find it pleasant to look at him–on the contrary I felt resistant to him, he was too superior and cool for me, too provocatively sure of himself, and his eyes had the expression of a grown-up (something children never like), slightly sad, with flashes of mockery within them. Still I could not stop looking at him, whether I liked him or not; whenever he glanced back at me, though, I quickly looked away in alarm. Today when I think back to what he looked like as a student, I can say that he was different in every way from anyone else: he was utterly stamped with his own individual personality, and stood out for that very reason, even though he did everything he could not to stand out. He carried himself like a prince in disguise, living among peasant children and making every effort to seem like them,” (20-21.)

Next, the proposal of the enigma, the dawning of the actual mystery, takes place when Sinclair walking home with Demian, and Demian proposes his new perspective about the story of Cain and Abel. The enigma revolves around “who is the kid Demian anyway?” “why is Sinclair so drawn to him?” and “why is he so interested in talking about Cain and Abel to Sinclair?” Sinclair never thought about the Bible story so deeply before, and “was dumbfounded” (23) when Demian proposed his theory. As soon as Demian turns down another road to go home, Sinclair is left “more astounded than [he] had ever been in [his] life” (23.) But then “almost as soon as he left, everything he’d said seemed entirely unbelievable to [Sinclair.] Cain a noble person and Abel a coward! The mark of Cain as a badge of honor! It was absurd, it was wicked blasphemy!” (23)  The formulation of the enigma, the amplification of the mystery, is aroused when Demian seems to know everything about the situation between Sinclair and Kromer. On page 31, Demain seemed to already know that Sinclair owed Kromer money, even though Sinclair had not even mentioned it yet. Then Demain proposes that Sinclair kill Kromer, “You need to break free of him! If there’s nothing else you can do, then kill him! I would be impressed if you did, and happy. I’d even help you,” (32.) Sinclair has contemplated the importance of breaking free from Kromer for as long as the very first time Kromer started blackmailing him, but Sinclair was too afraid to do anything except give in to Kromer’s demands. Demain, being an extension of Sinclair’s mind, reinforces this importance of breaking free from Kromer. Demian even offers to help Sinclair kill Kromer because they would be doing it together–as one human being.  

Next, the request for an answer appears once Sinclair attempts to get Demain to reveal how he got Kromer to leave Sinclair alone. “Just tell him to remember Demain,” (33) Demain tells Sinclair. However, “[Demian] dodged the question no matter how hard [Sinclair] tried to find out what had happened,” (33.) Demain could not reveal what happened because, in reality, it was Sinclair himself who had scared away Kromer, and Sinclair’s disorder would not allow him to remember the truth. This also explains why Kromer was so terrified when he saw Sinclair after this ordeal–because it was Sinclair who actually scared Kromer away: “When he saw me he flinched, twisted his face into a wild grimace, and turned around on the spot to avoid me,” (33.)

One significant instance of jamming occurs in the novel on page 44, which triggers the desire to know, but fails to answer the question of why Sinclair and Demian never talk about what happened to make Kromer back off:

“But that was another odd thing between us: neither he nor I ever, ever made the slightest reference to this decisive intervention he had made in my life. It was as though there had never been anything between us, or as though each of us firmly believed the other had forgotten it. Once or twice we even ran into Franz Kromer when we were walking down the street, but we exchanged not a glance, not a word about him.”

This leaves the first time, mimetic reader with the burning desire to know what happened between Kromer and Demian.

A suspended answer appears in the novel when Sinclair receives an anonymous note that he is convinced came from Demian on page 73: “The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wants to be born must destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The God is called Abraxas.” First of all, Demain does not attend the same high school that Sinclair moved away to. How did Demain stick that note in Sinclair’s book? Then, coincidently, Sinclair’s teacher begins lecturing about Abraxas the very same day. Could this be a strange coincidence? The answer to the mystery is that Sinclair has multiple personality disorder, but is suspended by Sinclair’s assurance that it was Demian who wrote the note, when in reality, it only makes sense that Sinclair actually wrote the note himself while playing the role of Demain in the disorder’s extension of Sinclair’s mind.

The partial answer is revealed at the very end of the novel, when Demain magically appears in the same hospital as Sinclair–in the bed directly next to him. The partial revelation of Sinclair’s disorder is made clear when Kromer is mentioned on the very last page of the novel, and Demian tells Sinclair that he is inside of him–literally since Demian is a fictional character that comes to life only in Sinclair’s mind. Demian tells Sinclair that he has to go away, which could be why the story ends here. It could be possible that this is the last time Demian appears, physically to Sinclair, in Sinclair’s life. The next morning, Demain was no longer on the mattress next to Sinclair. “Someone woke me up the next morning to be bandaged. When I was at last fully awake, I turned quickly to the neighboring mattress. On it was lying a stranger that I had never seen before,” (135.)

I do not think there is an actual moment of disclosure about the mystery revolving around Demian and Sinclair’s multiple personality disorder. For the entire duration of the novel, Sinclair is retelling the story of his childhood as an adult. According to the way Sinclair talks about Demian throughout the story as an adult, I believe that Sinclair still has no suspicion that Demain is not actually real. So the disclosure is not apparent to Sinclair as a character in the story, and the disclosure only becomes visible to readers after closely reading the text numerous times and uncovering the clues that the text gives about its mysteries.

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Something I felt represented the Hermeneutic code was the title character Demian. For most of the book I felt that the author built up the character Demian as some sort of enigmatic character- a character that I felt had a lot of mystery to him. I felt like the character of Demian represented the hermeneutic code because of how he seemed to know what Sinclair was going through, especially on page 29 of the book. During this part of the book Sinclair and Demian are talking and Demian begins to scrutinize Sinclair’s life and almost know exactly what to say to him. This seems normal for the most part, but then towards the end of the page he goes into detail about mind reading. “There’s nothing magic about it, but if you don’t know how it’s done it can seem very mysterious.” (Hesse 29) It seems like Demian is somehow all knowledgeable and comes off as a very mysterious and somewhat unpredictable character- like he seems to know everything, which could be the result of mind reading. It also seems that throughout the book Demian just appears in certain places where Sinclair is, like on page 108. Sincalir is walking when all of a sudden he comes across a familiar voice, Demians. There’s even a quote that just seems to solidify the enigmatic character of Demian: “There you are, Sinclair! I’ve been expecting you.” (Hesse 108) This phrase in particular seems to almost confirm my belief that Demian is pretty enigmatic- or at least that something just feels off about his character, and with dialogue like on page 108 it seems to raise more questions than answers. Towards the end when Sinclair and Demian are together, for possibly the last time, Demian describes how he won’t be able to help him with his problems like he used to, but instead Sinclair should rely on himself, and maybe that’s the true nature of Demian. A character who seems almost divine in a sense.

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I’m very happy to see that all of these contributions agree that there is something off about Demian himself, and the fact that Kromer, while an integral part of Sinclair and Demian’s relationship, is never brought up between them until the very end of the book. I like what I’m seeing in terms of why that is, and I think you are very much on the right track. The breakdown of the terms in the Hermeneutic code in the middle section was very well done, and I encourage, as you become more familiar with dealing within the Hermeneutic code to apply those terms not only to what you read mimetically, but to what you close read. We will explore it more in the next blog post, but how does the narrator (Sinclair?) use those aspects of the Hermeneutic code on you (the reader/audience)?