“As far as teachers are concerned, they define young geniuses as those who are bad, disrespectful, smoke at fourteen, fall in love at fifteen, can be found at sixteen hanging out in bars, read forbidden books, write scandalous essays, occasionally stare down a teacher in class, are marked in the attendance book as rebels, and are budding candidates for room-arrest.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: stop tormenting kids with education. In this story a young, brilliant boy, who for the better part of the book did nothing but study because that’s what his father, teachers and townspeople thought he should do with his time, moved from the point of pleasing and accepting naivete to heart-wrenching madness. I became aggravated half-way through the book because of the way everyone was pressuring him to do better, be better, never stop, and never once considered that what the boy needed was a little space to develop and breathe. When Hans begins to lose it in boarding school (aka falling beneath the wheel), the doctor laughs it off as “nervousness” and says he wouldn’t be surprised if the boy starts showing symptoms of St. Vitus Dance.
I don’t really know if I enjoyed the book, I mean, it was okay at times and too simple to be taken seriously at others. I think I got the message Hesse was attempting to deliver — I sympathized with the kids and failed to fathom what drove the adults to act so stupidly.
