If you were one of the two thieves crucified next to Jesus, what would you do? Repent and confess? Or remain defiant to the end?
The Bible tells us that alongside Jesus, two thieves met their end. One, in his final moments, wept and repented, earning the promise of salvation. The other remained silent, unrepentant, and met his death.
In the conventional script of our world, we are taught to praise the repentant thief. But in Hermann Hesse’s Demian, the protagonist offers a subversive take: he admires the one who never repented. Because that man was true to himself. He walked his own path to the very end, never betraying the “demon” that had guided his life.
Rereading the book years later, I realized I admire the unrepentant thief, too.
I remember a summer vacation back in my hometown. My father hosted a dinner for old friends, and among them was an uncle whose daughter had just been accepted into a prestigious “Project 211/985” university—the gold standard for academic success in China. I don’t know what was going through my father’s mind, but he looked at me and said, “Look at the university she got into. Now that’s a real school.”
I froze. At the time, I was in my second year of a master’s program at a fine arts academy. Almost instinctively, I defended myself. “Well, everyone has their own path. She’s brilliant with the sciences and math, but that doesn’t mean she’s a better designer than I am…”
He didn’t even pause. “That’s a top-tier university. Yours is… well, it’s an art school.”
In China, those words carry a weight beyond their surface. They’re not just about jobs or money—they’re about who counts.In a system where one exam decides your future, and science rules above all, art is tolerated, not honored. It’s what you do if you’re not “serious.” And in that single sentence, I wasn’t just told my path was lesser—I was told I was invisible.
My father’s judgment was a single, sharp blow. My mother’s was a constant, quiet rain, delivered in a gentle, recurring question that always meant the same thing: “Is that any way to be?”
It was a question that wasn’t looking for an answer, but for correction. A soft but firm reminder of the invisible lines I was crossing, of the proper way a life should look.
When I was unemployed: “Staying home like this… is that any way to be?”
When I had a job but no baby: “Waiting until you’re older… is that any way to be?”
When I wanted to change careers: “Jumping from job to job… is that any way to be?”
And each time, a quiet question rose in me: But what if I don’t want their version of ‘right’? What if I just want to be my own “right”?
I could have chosen to “repent.” I could have played the part of the good thief, followed the socially approved script, and put their minds at ease.
But I would rather be the unrepentant one. I would rather be an outsider who is true to herself, than a “good child” living someone else’s definition of a life well-lived.
Peeling Back the Mask of the “World of Light”
From a young age, we are placed in a pre-designed “world of light,” where the lines between good and bad, right and wrong, are drawn for us. It’s a world with a clear script for success and a defined path for life, much like the value system my father championed at that dinner party.
But for some of us, for those with a different voice stirring within, a seed of doubt begins to grow. You can’t quite describe the feeling, but you hear a faint whisper: “Something is wrong here.”
For that whisper to be heard, it needs a catalyst—a stone dropped into a deep well. In Demian, the protagonist, Sinclair, a boy who feels out of place in the “world of light,” encounters such a stone: his classmate, Demian.
“A whirlwind of thoughts dropped like a stone into the well of my young soul. For a long time after, the story of Cain was the starting point of my journey toward knowledge, doubt, and criticism.”
Demian is an enigma—calm, precocious, and skeptical of all accepted truths. While others saw him as an outcast, Sinclair was drawn to his unique spirit. Many who read this book envy Sinclair for finding a mentor like Demian. But I find myself more drawn to Sinclair.
The signal is always in the air, but only those tuned to the right frequency can hear it. Demian wasn’t the first to send the signal; he was the first one Sinclair truly heard.
This reminds me of a time when I was deeply lost, feeling that life had no meaning, until I met a mentor, Mr. D（my husband）. With his guidance, I slowly found my direction. When I later thanked him, he said, “You shouldn’t thank me. You should thank yourself.” I didn’t fully understand then. It was only after reading Demian that his words clicked into place, resonating with the book’s core message.
True awakening never begins with a thunderclap from the outside, but with a tremor that has long been building within.
The first thing Demian does is offer Sinclair a revolutionary perspective on the story of Cain, the Bible’s first murderer. In the traditional telling, Cain is the embodiment of evil. But Demian suggests that perhaps Cain was not a villain, but a hero. The mark on his forehead wasn’t a curse, but a badge of honor, a sign of his unique courage and strength. People vilified him, Demian argued, simply because they feared a soul so powerful they couldn’t understand it.
“If you had to choose one of the two thieves for a friend, or consider which of them was more trustworthy, you would certainly not choose the weeping one. No, the other is a man of backbone, a man of character. He scorns conversion… Under the circumstances, it was undoubtedly a piece of hypocrisy. He follows his path to the end. At the last moment, he does not betray the demon that has been his helper. He is a man of character. But in the Bible stories, men of character like this often come to a bad end.”
This conversation was the first crack in the foundation of Sinclair’s faith.
And if the story of Cain felt distant, Demian’s interpretation of the two thieves was a blade aimed directly at our modern moral dilemmas. Think about it: if a thief repents on his deathbed, can you truly say he is redeemed, or is he just yielding to the fear of absolute authority? I question his motive. To feign remorse simply to be saved—how is that different from those who do wrong with abandon, believing they can simply wash their sins away with a later confession?
The unrepentant thief, however, shows me his complete, authentic humanity. I’m not here to debate morality. I just know that anyone who dares to be true to their inner choice, to live out their authentic self, is worthy of respect. And that, I’ve realized, is the choice I have repeatedly made in my own life.
Demian’s goal was never to make Sinclair a common criminal, but to use the spirit of the unrepentant thief to achieve his true purpose: to awaken him. To awaken his ability to question every pre-set answer and to finally ask the only question that matters: “Who am I?”
When the cracks in the “world of light” appear, we begin to see that “social norms,” “success,” and “morality” are all systems of meaning constructed to maintain order. Isn’t it a tragedy to only know your place in the world by comparing yourself to others or by fitting into a group?
For those who choose to walk away and find their own standards, loneliness becomes the inevitable landscape. This is the first harsh truth of awakening: tearing off the mask means you will face a wilderness with no signposts. Here, no one can define you, but you must also bear the full responsibility of discovering who you are, alone.
Breaking the Shell of “Safety”
After tearing off the mask, the first feeling is often not freedom, but panic. The old world has crumbled, but a new one has yet to be built. Instinctively, we reach for the familiar—even if we know it was a cage. We reach for my father’s unshakeable success metrics and my mother’s gentle, relentless questions. We reach for the warmth of a world with clear rules, and the simple, seductive comfort of a path walked by everyone else.
Hesse captures this process with a powerful metaphor:
“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God’s name is Abraxas.”
This reveals two core truths about growth.
First: Growth is painful. It is a relentless act of self-revolution. “Who would be born must first destroy a world.” This declares that growth is not a gentle refinement but an explosion from within. Every act of resistance, every choice, is your fragile beak striking against that hard shell. The process is agonizing because you are not just destroying a set of rules, but the very world that sustains you.
Second: Beware of building a new “world of light.” Embrace a fluid system that includes contradiction. When we finally break free, bloodied and new, the easiest mistake is to rush to build a new, “correct” system of our own. But a system that only contains light, that refuses darkness, that never changes—how is that different from the one we fought so hard to escape?
This is the meaning of the god “Abraxas.” He is not a demon; he is the union of God and Devil, the ultimate integration of all opposites.
To embrace Abraxas is to dare to face your imperfect, true self. We all have a polished “ideal self”—diligent, disciplined, always positive. And we all have a suppressed “shadow self”—lazy, procrastinating, sometimes filled with envy and resentment. We used to want to kill the “bad” self. But a healthy psyche allows the ideal “god” and the real “demon” to coexist within you, to acknowledge each other, and finally, to find peace.
Does Abraxas sound a bit mystical? It’s as simple as the drama that plays out in your head every morning: one voice says, “Time to get up,” and another whispers, “Just five more minutes.” It is these seemingly trivial conflicts that constitute the first step toward selfhood.
And crucially, this new world you build is not eternal. One day, it too will become an eggshell, waiting for you to break it all over again.
Wrestling with the Self in the Wilderness
The great paradox of growth is this: the more we rush to escape our shackles, the more likely we are to fall into new ones.
After breaking free, Sinclair doesn’t find freedom. Instead, he falls into two traps: indulgent self-exile and dependent hero-worship. He starts drinking and boasting, playing the part of a cynical prodigal to mask his inner emptiness. This isn’t freedom; it’s a “reverse imitation”—deliberately doing the opposite of what the “world of light” dictates. His actions, while seemingly rebellious, are still defined by the very world he’s trying to escape.
“I never felt I belonged with my companions. Among them, I was deeply lonely and suffered for it. And not without reason. I was a tavern hero, a wild mocker. When it came to teachers, school, parents, and the church, I could always show my wit and spirit—I could take smutty talk, and even tell some myself—but I never went with them to find girls.”
When that path leads to a dead end, he falls into the second trap: seeking a new authority. He yearns for Demian to show him the way, to tell him what to do, idealizing him as a savior.
At this point, we must ask ourselves a sharp question: Is a world defined by an idol you’ve chosen truly different from one constructed by society? If we have merely swapped one authority for another, then our “awakening” is just a move from one prison cell to a more refined one.
“I often thought of Demian, and sometimes I hated him, feeling it was all his fault that I was in such a miserable state, as if I were afflicted with some loathsome disease.”
Growth happens in the wilderness, where there are no signposts and no answers. You must face your inner chaos, fear, and desire alone, wrestling with your deepest contradictions in the un-witnessed dead of night.
This battle is the equivalent of Jacob wrestling with the angel. There is no audience and no winner. Its meaning is not in “winning,” but in confirming: Can I, in absolute solitude, still choose to move forward?
This is not mere loneliness; it is an existential solitude—the unbridgeable gap between you as a unique individual and the rest of the world.
“There is only one duty for a man: to find himself. Whether he ends up a poet or a madman, a prophet or a criminal—that is not his affair, it is of no ultimate importance. His duty is to discover his own destiny—not a destiny at random—and to live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else is a makeshift, an escape, a flight into the herd-ideal, a life of ease, a fear of one’s own heart.”
The end of this struggle is not to cling to your guide, but to say goodbye. You must realize that any mentor can only offer you a torch to light the way, not the light source within you. You must extinguish that external flame yourself so that your inner fire can truly burn. Only then can you be sure that every step you take is your own.
The Final Lesson: Saying Goodbye to the Guide
After wrestling with the self in the wilderness, what the soul craves is not another battle, but a place to rest its whole, authentic self—a spiritual home where no masks or explanations are needed.
In Demian, this home is personified as Frau Eva.
She is not a specific woman but a symbol, an archetype. She is the final destination for all the “outcasts” who bear the mark of Cain. In her home, there is no judgment, only profound understanding and resonance. For the first time, Sinclair feels he has “come home”—not to the house of his childhood, but to the truest state of his own soul.
“In our circle there were a number of other seekers, more or less closely associated with us. People with special aims, who were devoted to special ideas and duties. There were astrologers, Kabbalists, Tolstoyans, and all sorts of gentle, timid, and vulnerable people, members of new sects, students of Indian philosophy, vegetarians, and so on. We had no spiritual communion with them, except for the respect we had for one another, and for our appreciation of each one’s secret dream of life. Some were exploring mankind’s desire for gods, the visions of ancient peoples, and were closer to us.”
Her circle of friends is not bound by uniform thinking, but by a total respect for individual differences. This stands in stark contrast to the worldly alliances Demian despised, where people “flock together because they are afraid of each other.”
Frau Eva’s home is not a refuge from loneliness, but a sanctuary where lonely souls can resonate together.
And it is here that Sinclair faces his ultimate lesson: saying goodbye to his guide.
War breaks out, and Demian must leave for the front. In their farewell, he tells Sinclair:
“Listen, little Sinclair! If you ever need me again… I won’t be able to come riding to you on a horse or a train. You’ll have to listen to your own soul, and you’ll find that I am inside you.”
This is the spiritual turning point of the novel. It declares that the true mentor must eventually disappear. His entire purpose was not to lead you, but to make you understand that in the end, you must walk the path alone.
When Sinclair, wounded in a field hospital, looks in a mirror and sees his own face merge with Demian’s, he finally understands. The voice that once guided and awakened him has become a part of his own being.
All the external answers we seek—mentors, lovers, belonging, meaning—must ultimately be internalized. Demian, Frau Eva… they are all signposts, torches, and mirrors. Their value is not in leading you, but in helping you recognize yourself.
“People will need us, not as leaders or new lawgivers—we will not live to see the new laws established—but as the willing, as those who are ready for their fate.”
We once longed to meet a Demian, to find a Frau Eva, thinking they were lighthouses that could guide us home. But the real path is not in a distant light; it is within you.
The Only One Who Can Save You Is Yourself
At its heart, Demian is a solitary expedition toward the self.
This journey has no final destination and no trophies to be won. Its only purpose is to teach us that everything we encounter—be it guidance or hindrance—is ultimately a mirror, reflecting our weaknesses, our desires, and our undiscovered strengths.
Now, when I think back to that dinner party, to my mother’s questioning refrain, the answer is completely different.
I can be myself. And at the same time, I can accept my parents’ disapproval and calmly observe the various value systems that exist in the world.
I no longer need to flaunt my uniqueness or scorn the values they hold dear. Because when you truly find yourself, you no longer need to define yourself through resistance. Any deliberate attempt to be different is just the construction of a new cage.
And this new cage is built from rituals of freedom that are just the old rules in a new costume. Joining a niche subculture, completing a soul-searching pilgrimage, or giving yourself the label of ‘awakened’—these are just new ways of seeking external approval, no different from chasing the ‘right’ degree or the ‘right’ job that my parents praised.
True freedom is not a battle against the world, but a peace treaty with it. It is the ability to see and accept the world’s expectations for what they are, while choosing to live by a truth that comes only from within.
And you must know that no one can walk this path for you.
The Only One Who Can Save You Is Yourself.
