Point of View

The book is written in the third person point of view. The narrator, for the most part, is Joseph Knecht, along with Hermann Hesse, the author. This approach is much better in telling the story than the first person approach. If the story is told in the first person, the reader only has knowledge of what happens in the narrator's presence. This situation is avoided with the use of the third person, so the reader is made aware of any action that takes place away from the main character.

The Glass Bead Game is the first novel of the German-born Hesse, who became a Swiss citizen during his life. This book wasn't his only novel, as he wrote many others. He wrote The Glass Bead Game as a way of showing how complex life can be. Hess writes the book with a seriousness that emphasizes the...