The central thrust of Beneath The Wheel is a critique of rigid formal education, and its insidious effect on the development of individuals. It tells the tale of Hans Giebenrath, a small-town boy who leaves home to attend an academy. In time, he strikes up a friendship with a fellow student, Hermann Heilner, who has much less regard for the strictures of his tutors and teachers. Eventually Hans assigns greater priority to his relationship with Hermann than to his studies.
After returning to his home town following the onset of a nervous breakdown, Hans struggles to adapt, and is plagued by difficulties, some of them stemming from the estrangement previously induced by the pressures of education. At the end, Hans is found drowned.
Although Beneath The Wheel was originally published in 1906, some of the subjects which it throws up are as relevant now as ever. The sometimes stultifying effects of academia and "bourgeois" conformism on mind and spirit, and the measures undertaken by the establishment to maintain people on a pre-defined course in life, this manipulation leavened with the promise that one will be "looked after" in return.
The experiences of Hans on his return to his home town are perhaps a reminder that even when one is allowed to find one's own way in life, and we experience peaks and troughs more intensely and vividly, we are prey to the same pitfalls and pressures as everyone else. Such an existence is not necessarily idyllic. At the same time, the denial of natural emotional and spiritual development at a crucial stage of life is often irrevocable.
In addition to its philosophical angles, Beneath The Wheel contains some of Hesse's most evocative and compelling descriptions and depictions of nature and places.
This is another Hesse novel which as well as exercising the grey matter, has the power to make one glad to be alive.
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