The protagonist is Harry. He's over 40, intelligent, educated, and loves music and books. But he feels like an outsider and unhappy. It's as if he's not living, just observing. Inside him, there are two beings:

• one is a person who is drawn to beauty and spirituality,
• the other is a wolf, wild, gloomy, hating everything around him and longing for solitude.

Harry is constantly tormented by this dichotomy and thinks about suicide.

One day, he meets Hermine, a woman who immediately recognizes his pain. She becomes his teacher. Hermine shows him simple joys: how to dance, how to have fun in company, how to love a woman (through her friend Maria), how to indulge in pleasure.

Then Pablo, the musician, appears. With him, Harry enters a "magic theater"—it's like a dream or a hallucination. There, he sees different parts of himself. Not just "man" and "wolf," but dozens, hundreds of different faces, desires, destinies. He understands: within each person, there are many "selves," and that's normal.

In the end, he realizes that life isn't about choosing one self and cutting off the other. Life is a theater, a play where different roles coexist within you. And if you approach this with humor, not despair, you can move on.

In a nutshell: The book is about a man who feels like an outsider, but finds a way out - to understand that he is multifaceted, and to stop tormenting himself about it.

Steppenwolf: a man who cannot be contained within a single "I"

There are books that aren't just read—they're lived. Hermann Hesse's "Steppenwolf" is one of them. It feels less like a novel than a mirror, where each person encounters themselves, fractured, weary, and searching.

The protagonist is Harry Haller. He is an intelligent, refined, and educated man. At the same time, he is a wolf, wild, embittered, and yearning for solitude. This duality torments him: he feels he belongs neither to the world of spirituality nor to the world of simple joys. He lives in a crack.

But herein lies what's important to each of us: no one is reducible to a single role. We think, "I'm this—strong," "I'm weak," "I'm a mother," "I'm an artist," "I'm an outsider." But life is broader. We are filled with many selves: a child and a sage, a warrior and a weary wanderer, a wolf and a human. And the crisis begins when we try to squeeze ourselves into a single definition.

Hesse demonstrates that salvation comes not from moralizing, but from experience. Hermine teaches Harry to dance, laugh, and love. Pablo's music opens doors to other states. "The Magic Theater" reveals a kaleidoscope of his inner personalities. And suddenly it turns out: he is not a prisoner, but an entire troupe, an entire theater.

There's an important psychological lesson here. People suffer not from having different sides to themselves, but from trying to suppress them. Accepting one's multiplicity means giving yourself the right to be different. Strong today, weak tomorrow; a child now, a philosopher in an hour. And all of this will be authentic.

The novel teaches us not to seek wholeness in homogeneity, but in the harmony of differences. It teaches us to allow ourselves to be many. It teaches us to treat our own internal conflicts not as a death sentence, but as material for play, creativity, and life.

"Steppenwolf" is a book about us today, in the 21st century, when we live online, play with masks, and yet still seek authenticity. It reminds us: don't be afraid to be different. There's a theater within each of us. And the art of living is learning to watch this performance with interest and, perhaps, even a smile.

Practice: Meeting Your Selves

We often live our lives thinking we must be "one person"—strong, determined, successful. Harry Haller shows that this is neither possibl