[mikhailfranco]

I assume Hesse was familiar with Kafka and Freud.

GBG has that dream-like Kafkaesque frustration of having a concrete objective, but not be able to achieve it, even though it should be simple and tangible.

However, in GBG it is all meta: the game is unspecified, the objective is unspecified, the adorable miraculous winning play is unspecified. It is meta-Kafka, which is incredibly doubly frustrating...

SPOLIER ALERT: then, slowly, awkwardly, painfully, a realization creeps over you - GBG is life.

Really a tremendous literary achievement.