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Demian by Hermann Hesse Audio CD

Demian is the story of a man named Emil Sinclair as he is looking back on his childhood and the friend, Max Demian, who did much to shape his thoughts and help him break free of his innocence and social constraints. It is his story of trying to find himself. Read Demian For Free Online

While normally I recommend reading over listening, the amount I am overwhelmed with senior thesis work hasn't allowed me to do much reading lately. My solution is therefore to do my work while listening to books on tape. I chose Demian because it has been my favorite book since it was introduced to me by a friend my Freshmen year of college. It seemed right to end my college career listening to the book that had influenced me so much at the beginning of it. It's really hard for me to explain what it is about this book that appeals so much to me. It is somehow comforting and inspiring. It makes me feel like I am on the right path, that I'm not alone, that whatever I'm facing I can handle. I don't know how it accomplishes all these things, but I know that every time I've hit a rocky patch in the past four years of my college career, Demian has been an excellent security blanket that I keep coming back to. Somehow, despite all the times I have read this book, I always find something new in it that helps me out.

For example, this time around I took note of the scene where Sinclair is asked if his journey to where he has ended up was all bad, he admits that it wasn't. It was difficult for him, just like life is hard sometimes, but the hard times make us who we are just as much as the happy times do. You can't make just become the person you're meant to be overnight. It's a long, hard struggle to find out who you are and what you're meant to be to the world. 


"Each man had only one genuine vocation - to find the way to himself. He might end up as a poet or madman, as prophet or criminal - that was not his affair, ultimately it was of no concern. His task was to discover his own destiny - not an arbitrary one - and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one's own inwardness."