Demian: The backdrop of BTS’ Wings | Part I
Confession: I’m an ARMY nerd. As any ARMY knows, BTS has many ways to pull you in: an awe-inspiring, sensory overloaded video, a touching lyric, the boy's charming and wholesome personalities, their dorky antics, inside jokes, and memes... all those things played a role in my journey down the rabbit hole. But what sealed the deal for me is that they tickled my brain; my knowledge-thirsty self found a well of information to drink from. The need to learn more was so relentless that I had no escape. Let me explain:
In 2022, as I researched endlessly about these seven “normal” Korean guys that were taking over my life, I started finding some ingenious traps they had set. The "Blood Sweat & Tears" M/V and, by extension, the entire WINGS album, was one of those traps. Inspired by Hermann Hesse’s Demian: The Story of Boyhood, every piece of content surrounding WINGS contains references that can throw any nerd for a spin.
My relationship with Hermann Hesse
My grandma loved Hesse. With barely any formal education, she cultivated herself through reading. I was an avid reader, so Grandma ruthlessly pushed his books into my teen hands. As any rebellious know-it-all teenager, I would grab the books only to drop them in my room’s corner to gather dust. I had zero interest.
But in my 20s, an older guy I had a crush on gave me a copy of Siddhartha. Even after gifting me a book, the guy rejected me a few days later, but another love affair had started. I fell for Hermann Hesse’s work. I was already winning.
First Edition Cover of Demian by Hermann Hesse.
My fascination with this album doesn’t come only from the artistry of every song. All of the WINGS content is connected deeply to the book, with references that go from simple to incredibly sophisticated. Many online articles cover these links in detail, but here are some appetizers that might tempt you to learn more.
What’s the book about?
Demian: The Story of Boyhood is a coming-of-age novel published in 1919 under the pseudonym “Emil Sinclair”, who also happens to be the name of the narrator of the story. Sinclair’s fall from childhood innocence and his subsequent relationship with his classmate Max Demian, are at the center of his journey of self-discovery, a path filled with angst that ultimately leads to awareness and enlightenment.
Good & Evil
The duality between good and evil, light and darkness, is at the core of Demian. Even the name of the main character, Sinclair, is a combination of the word “sin” and “clair”, which in French can mean “light.” This name represents the inner struggles of the character to balance both sides of himself, with frequent references to biblical stories about this duality, from the Garden of Eden to the story of Cain and Abel.
In WINGS, that realization from the book hits early on with j-hope’s solo comeback trailer Intro: Boy Meets Evil. In the M/V, a boy meets a devil and the devil has a name…
An apple on Jungkook’s plate in the dinner table scene from the “Blood Sweat & Tears” M/V.
Temptation
In the book, Sinclair also discovers that evil has an enticing power: temptation. Sinclair will eventually fall for it, losing his innocence. As Quince masterfully told us in Week 15: Take a Bite, there are multiple symbols of temptation planted in the Blood Sweat & Tears M/V, including some classic works of art. The title of last week’s blog also implies a reference to one of the most classic symbols of temptation: the apple.
Traditionally, apples have represented the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. In the story of the original sin, Eve bites into the fruit after being tempted by a snake, thus turning all humans into sinners. Apples feature prominently in the Blood Sweat & Tears M/V as well; we see all the members have one on their plate in the dinner scene.
Sin
We also see an apple in Jimin’s WINGS short film #2: Lie, a song intimately related to something that happens in the book. Apples are directly related to Sinclair’s fall from grace. And they aren’t even real! To impress an older bad boy in the school called Kromer, our protagonist invents a story about him being the hero in an apple theft, which ends up making him the subject of extortion from the bully.
The book's villain, who has some features that make him look somewhat like a snake, leads Sinclair to commit his first real crime, stealing money to pay for Kromer’s blackmail. Does that sound familiar? Very much like Jimin, Sinclair finds himself caught in a lie from which he can’t escape. The lyrics in “Lie” also include references to the proverbial snake, and in some of Jimin’s promotional photos we can see him surrounded by apples.
BTS Jimin biting an apple in a promotional photo for WINGS.
Whistle
Sinclair feels a similar desperation to Jimin, thinking that he has been permanently tainted, no longer fitting in among the pure members of his family. Unable to buy Kromer’s silence, the bully forces him to become his slave, summoning him with a whistle every time he wants to torture him. We hear a whistled version of Jungkook’s solo in WINGS short film #1: Begin. Jungkook symbolizes purity, the untainted Sinclair. The whistling seems to scare him like Kromer’s whistle scares the book’s main character, who hears it even in his dreams, later waking up terrified. Jungkook, like Emil Sinclair, also suffers from nightmares, although in the film they are also mixed with other references to the BU, like the sound of a car crash.
Salvation
In this film, the quote in Korean reads: The dawn right before the sun rises is the darkest. BTS has made multiple references to this quote across their discography and that’s exactly how Sinclair feels right before he meets Demian, his salvation. Max Demian is an older student and a bit of an outsider, but he’s also respected because of his confidence, especially around adults. He’s the center of multiple events in the book, the most astonishing of which is him being able to convince Kromer to stop torturing Sinclair. He doesn’t give in to his blackmail to do so, nor does he resort to physical violence.
Max Demian is incredibly complex and mysterious—to the point that sometimes we question if he and his family are real people or just part of Sinclair’s imagination and dreams. Demian’s name is similar to the word daemon, which links it to Greek mythology and their belief that every person has a good and evil spirit which inspires their actions and intentions. Psychologist Carl Jung, whose works inspired BTS’ Map of the Soul series, frequently used the term daemon. Hesse’s books are also deeply influenced by Jung’s ideas.
The Sparrow Hawk
One day Demian joins Sinclair on his walk home from school and engages him in conversation. Max mentions the sparrow hawk that decorates the doorway in Sinclair’s house. Emil has never looked at it, even though it is the coat of arms of his family. This emblem is represented in multiple ways across WINGS content. You see several manifestations of the sparrow hawk for the first time in Jungkook’s film. He is wearing a bird-embroidered shirt and there’s a picture of a sparrow hawk who also appears in other BTS member’s films.
Drawing of a sparrow hawk.
In the book, the sparrow hawk represents a recurring yearning to be independent and free. Any ARMY knows how this theme has colored a lot of BTS’s music, the first that come to mind would be Agust D’s Interlude: Set Me Free and Jimin’s Set Me Free Pt. 2. In the journey of becoming an adult, this desire for freedom is key as maturing involves becoming independent, coming out of the secure environment of our family’s home into the real world, with all the struggle and heartbreak it might involve. Sinclair might return to the arms of his family after being liberated from Kromer, but even the bird at the door of his childhood home reminds him that eventually, he will have to leave.
This covers the first part of the connections with the content covered in Week 15. I will continue exploring the connections with the book in the second part of this series, after we wrap up Week 16. I hope you enjoyed reading this, and let me know what you think in the comments below!
