The Prodigy, originally dating from 1905, is Hermann Hesses's bitter indictment
of conventional education. It is the story of Hans Giebenrath, the brilliant you
ng son of provincial bourgeouis in southern Germany who becomes the first boy fr
om his town to pass into a prestigious Protestant theological college. His spiri
t, however, is systematically broken by his parents and teachers; over anxious a
bout his success, they forget to consider his health and happiness. Subsiding in
to a fatal apathy, he is taken home for medical reasons. Here he falls in love,
becomes an engineer's apprentice, learns to drink alcohol, and eventually dies b
y drowning. Out of his attitude to the treatment that he perceived was common wi
thin the German schooling system at the turn of the century, Hesse developed his
own deeply personal views on the value of Eastern education in developing the s
elf.
