34 pages • 1 hour read
Hermann HesseJourney to the East
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1956A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary
One autumn morning, Leo is missing: “It seemed that this apparently incidental but in reality extremely important event, the disappearance of Leo, was in no way an accident, but a link in the chain of events through which the eternal enemy sought to bring disaster to our undertaking” (37). H.H., and others in the group, feel that a catastrophe is coming. They spend the day looking for Leo and becoming increasingly convinced that this is the first sign of great trouble to come:
It seemed that the more certain his loss became, the more indispensable he seemed; Without Leo, his handsome face, his good humor and his songs, without his enthusiasm for our great undertaking, the undertaking itself seemed in some mysterious way to lose meaning (39).
H.H. feels the first doubts he has experienced on the Journey to the East, and soon he doubts the meaning of his own life.
As they search for Leo, each member of the group realizes that he is missing one important item from his own luggage. Each item must have been in Leo’s luggage. Eventually, with no explanation, all of the items reappear, as if they were never lost. He mentions one document that was truly indispensable, and which never reappeared. But as they discuss the document, the group becomes less certain of whether they actually ever had the document with them on their Journey. They begin to argue about their memories, or whether the document had been a copy, or a forgery of the original: “In brief, from that time, certainty and unity no longer existed in our community, although the great idea still kept us together” (44). H.H. recounts that the initial arguments were civil and quiet, but hints that they would become more aggressive with time.
H.H. now laments his inability to tell the story correctly. He believes he has led the reader into a story that is “boundless and incomprehensible” (45). He says that when he began the story, he had no intention of mentioning Leo or the document. The missing document arose in his memory and he included it, but he now worries that he might include other facts that may prove to be irrelevant:
Where is the center of events, the common standpoint around which they revolve and which gives them cohesion? In order that something like cohesion, something like causality, that some kind of meaning might ensue and that it can be in some way narrated, the historian must invent units (46).
H.H. says that the Journey to the East was the most important thing to him. Next to it, his life was trivial. He does not understand why he cannot describe something that was so precious to him. He compares his doubt in telling the story to the doubt that the missing document was ever in Leo’s luggage. H.H. wonders if his story is capable of being told: “Was it possible to experience it?” (48).
Chapter 2 Analysis
Leo’s disappearance, and the fallout in the aftermath, are the foundation of the brief Chapter 2. Before he vanishes, Leo is on the periphery of the group. He is acknowledged as pleasant and in possession of preternatural abilities like communicating with animals. He is also useful in the most practical sense, as he carries the luggage of the group. Once Leo is gone, however, the group’s agitation is not rooted in the fact that they no longer have someone to carry their bags. The fact that he is gone seems to be what makes him feel indispensable to the group, rather than any duty he performed, or whatever good feelings were to be gained from being in his company.
Although Leo was mostly ignored until his disappearance, the members cannot see how they can go on without him. Not only is Leo lost, but each member is now missing one special item, which they attribute to Leo’s thievery. The disharmony introduced by Leo’s departure will eventually be revealed to be a test of the group’s faith. In hindsight, they fail the test. The members began to blame each other for not working hard or caring enough. It is as if the thought of someone not being responsible for Leo’s disappearance is intolerable.
Having spent so much time writing about Leo, H.H. admits that Leo was never meant to be part of his account of the Journey to the East to begin with. This is paradoxical, given that Leo’s importance grows more obvious with each chapter. A tale without Leo in it would have been glaringly incomplete, indicating that H.H. truly had no idea of the project’s shape when he began to write.
As the chapter ends, he is so discombobulated by this revelation that he begins to wonder whether the story happened to him at all. It was already difficult to write. If it turns out that he is writing about something that never happened, or at least, which he cannot verify to have happened, it makes the whole venture seem pointless, which is reflected in his growing despair in the next chapter.
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By Hermann Hesse
