Rachel's Observations

First off the first two pages before chapter one really interested me how he compares himself to other authors. He makes the allusion that authors potray God while writing or write about someone else acting as God. He states that his story is really unique because he wrote it and everyone else has a story to tell, a story to live. And when you tell someone about it its special to you, so it may have an affect on someone like this book had on me. On page two the last line it says “we can understand one another, but each of us can only interpret himself” and this could refer to the dark side that has been explained in chapter one because once in everyones life, you fall into the darkside because it gives you life lessons and ways to find out who you are, even when others don’t realize. The dark side is when we let Satan corrupt us, just like the beginning. Basically the world and how messed up it is is the dark side. The violence, the lies, the backstabbing, the gossip, ghost stories, falling into temptation, and basically anything that man developed that is wrong in Gods eyes.
After Emil goes into the darkness, he kinda controdicts himself and wants to go back to his protection, the light world. He feels scared and vonerable, and he even says hes ashamed and isnt apart of the family. I personally think the dark side represents all three. It can represent out sin because it’s basically Satan tempting you and you fall for it and submit to your sinful nature. Which our sinful nature is our natural human nature. We chose from the beginning the dark side, our sinful human nature. And it is also “the dark side” of our personalities because we all have our flaws, whether if its pride, bad temper or anything, and usually we need to regonize our flaws. We all have a dark side in our personalities, we all gossip, we all lie, its just our sinful nature. I think Emil is in between being confortable and unconfortable at the dark side because he says hes scared, but then he says he loves the thrill, or at least implies it. And plus with him swearing on God he probably feels like he cant go back, that God will never forgive him for his wrongs. And plus he’s bonded there because of Franz, and I think when Franz started saying hes gonna turn him in was all a lie. Because later on he kinda hints that he knows Emil lied and hes just messing with him.
Emil is too young to understand, to understand that he can go back to the light world but mostly he veiws it as boring. He wants thrill, but he finds it in the wrong places. In the beginning of Chapter 1, Emil describes himself as having a huge conscience, he feels guilty about everything he does. Guilty about turning all his little sisters gamse into violence so he feels like he has to say sorry. He feels like everything is his fault. That’s kinda how I am usually. And yea ive been kinda to the dark side for alittle, but I didn’t feel comfortable. I felt like I was nothing to the world, nothing to God. Anger always built up in me until I hated everyone. But now im kinda realizing that its just the world and yea its screwed up, but you cant change anything about it. You just need to realize the true beauty God created before it was ruined. I think the dark side is the world and the light side is heaven. And that’s maybe what Hermann Hesse is stating in Chapter 1.