Fantasy, Modernism, Philosophical Literature
Boys turning into girls turning into boys, a magic theater where any fantasy comes to life… yeah, Hermann Hesse is asking us to believe in some pretty fantastical stuff.
Steppenwolf comes from the period of Modernism in Europe, and plays with the idea of the novel by breaking it into the preface and then "Harry Haller's Records." After World War I many artists had a hard time imagining creating nice, neat, hopeful art. Instead, they made fragmented, futuristic creations that reflected the chaos they saw in the world.
This novel's preoccupation with Eastern philosophy—like Buddhism and Hinduism—and its understanding that the idea of "the individual" is just that (a cultural idea), plops Steppenwolf down into the philosophical literature genre.