A teenager grows up in the shadowy forests of the Black Forest. His early genius takes him out of the familiar circle of his classmates, who are destined, like all boys from the German countryside, to seamlessly integrate into a system that wants them to be obedient, puritanical, and good family men.
The system, with its representatives in education and religious upbringing, will quickly identify its potential favorite and undertake to elevate him as its pillar by providing him with a strict higher education in a rigorously selective college for gifted children. However, the teenager will resist the leveling machine of a questionable intellectual upbringing, in his attempt to remain the unique and special human being he unconsciously senses he is.
His conflict with the school environment will take on the metaphorical significance of a confrontation with the dominant values of a narrow-minded society that doesn’t hesitate, to protect its cohesion, to crush anything different from the standards it has imposed. Initially, the teenager will come to a bitter realization of his inability to fit into the world and from that point on, gradually, into a complete exhaustion and the deadlock of a loneliness that dramatically culminates in his death.
"Beneath the Wheel" is a novel about adolescence, with intricate psychological nuances and a distinctly poetic lyricism. As one of the early novels of Hermann Hesse, "Beneath the Wheel" with its exemplary structure and continuously escalating tension, is a pleasure to read and a fertile ground for reflection on the eternal problem of the different child growing up utterly alone in a hostile and inhumane environment.
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