Warning: following content might contain some spoilers
In Demian, the author Hermann Hesse, who often voiced unfiltered and censorship-resistant ideas, rejects the concept of a moral code according to which we divide things into either bad or good. The author wants to convey the idea that not everything can be categorised like that. In the book, Hesse talks about the two worlds that both have a lot to do with how a person functions within those layers of reality.
The novel starts with a chapter called Two Worlds. The protagonist, a child named Emil Sinclair, describes the first world as the inner realm. It constitutes of mostly the surroundings of his parents’ house, or rather the world that is formed for him because of his parents. The light world is made of a child’s carefreeness in the safety of their home. The contrasting one can only be seen clearly once you strip off the comfort blanket of the familiarity of your home rules. Once you do that, a bit further down, your surroundings can be found in the other world: the darker side of living in a society where the gossip, the sin and the mystery rule. This world is the one that Sinclair wants to drink in.
The other side of the peaceful feeling of familiarity is not as attractive to the protagonist as the one filled with loudness, violence and scandal, or even a personified feeling of evil that Sinclair meets further down the novel. The dark world is the harsh reality that comes alive outside the four walls of a child’s comfort zone. What makes the other world so immersive, then? The protagonist even says that all of human senses can tell whether something belongs to the darker side; however, the two worlds somehow tend to entwine. There is no strict borderline between the two, yet the child only discovers the dark world later on, after taking off the rose-coloured spectacles.
Emil Sinclair is a confused ten-year-old boy, struggling with the social aspects of morality. The book posits that the audience should stop seeing everything in black and white, but rather as a blend of both worlds. Hermann Hesse encourages his readers not to be so influenced by what everyone thinks is good or bad. Not everything is binary. It is an appeal to acknowledge and comprehend that all of the realms surrounding a person in their development are involved in their search for what they feel is right.
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