I decided to do research on Hermann Hesseās āDemianā because I got to read that book a couple years ago and always ended up curious about certain topics that I never really got the answers to. My research question is, How did Hermann Hesse apply real world psychology in DemianĀ and in what ways did he use his characters to show people that morality is relative to the individual?. The reason I am interested In this topic is because Demian really started my interest in psychology, more specifically Psychoanalysis. I remember writing a paper on Hermann Hesse for my Literature class in junior year but it was more centered on who he was as a person and less on who he was as a writer, so I would like to take this chance to talk about his writing. I found DemianĀ to be such an interesting book with so many unanswered questions about its characters, what they represent and why certain things happened the way they did. While researching I expect to find the meanings and ties to the real world that Herman Hesse applied to the book, as well as more on the back story on what inspired him to write a story like Demian including why he chose to connect things like natural evolution, biblical allusions, conscious ego, collective unconscious, self, and anima to this story and his concept of āmagical thinkingā. I also expect to learn more about the characters and what they represent, especially Demian himself and Beatrice/Frau Eva.
