ABSTRACT
As in Death in Venice, different forms of aesthetic expression in Der Steppenwolf have different social meaning, and Harry Haller’s internalization of conservative cultural tastes implies an internalization of the very elitism and oppression he abhors in the world around him. Whereas the procrustean nature of the word—music polarity is so entrenched in Mann’s novella that its dissolution is seen as cultural collapse, Steppenwolf presents alternatives to the status quo suggestive of different relationships between a society and its culture. In Death in Venice and Steppenwolf, it is clear that Gustav von Aschenbach and Haller, like their readerships, have been influenced by public institutions that promulgate the furthering of a conformist national identity. In the course of the novel Haller changing relationship to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and jazz indicates his changing relationship to the elitist stratification which has formed and oppressed both him and others like him.
