“Steppenwolf” by Hermann Hesse (post 5): Main theme is the art of the novel, which entails reorganization of the novelist’s alternate personalities.

The end of the novel elaborates the idea discussed in the last post, that a constructive reorganization of one’s multiple personalities is the art of life.

It is a potentially helpful insight for what I would guess to be up to thirty percent of the general public, and what I would estimate to be over ninety percent of novelists, who have a normal version multiple personality; and for the approximately one percent of the public who have the clinical version.

Since Steppenwolf was written by a novelist, and since novelists are so likely to have multiple personality, I interpret the main theme of this novel to be the psychology and creative process of novelists.

Novelists have many people (alternate personalities) inside them, and the art of the novelist’s life—the art of the novel—is the reorganization of the novelist’s alternate personalities.