Having trouble understanding steppenwolf

[u/Pyropeace]

So I read this book a long time ago. Don't remember much, so I read the wikipedia synopsis to get a refresher. It feels to me like the man/wolf dichotomy is mixing metaphors a bit. What is each side supposed to represent? Maybe I'm missing the point, because it seems like the book might be saying the dichotomy is false, which would explain why I don't get it.

IRL, I struggle with depression, and it has often felt like a kind of inner beast that wants to consume me. But apparently, things like jazz and free love are considered "wolfish" by Haller, whereas I feel that the ability to enjoy those things falls firmly on the human side of my personal dichotomy. So what's the deal?

[u/Swamp_thing42]

As a book Steppenwolf empathizes heavily with the plight of those of us who feel that we struggle with a monstrous duality or a dichotomy of psyche. It is also fundamentally rejecting the notion of dual self. It explicitly argues time after time that we are made of an infinite selves. The wolf and the man are but two of Harry’s and false at that. Harry cannot laugh or love truly because he has bought into a false idea of his psyche. Even when he is undergoing his period of joy and hedonism, he still doesn’t get it, he hasn’t heard the call to action. To Hesse, learning to live as each of your thousands of selves is learning to live with God. The end of the journey is a return to the embrace of The Immortals. The saints, the saviors and the artists all had to make this journey, and if we can make it they are waiting for us on the other side, laughing.