Hermann Hesse's Der Steppenwolf expresses a picture of anomie.
The novel tells the story of a middle-aged man named Harry Haller who is beset with reflections on his being ill-suited for the world of "everybody", the regular people. In his aimless wanderings about the city he is given a book which describes the two natures of man: one "high", spiritual and "human"; while the other is "low" and animal-like.
Thus, man is entangled in an irresolvable struggle, never content with either nature because he cannot see beyond this self-made construct. While Haller longs to live free from social convention, he continually lives as a bourgeois bachelor.
Haller argues that the men of the Dark Ages did not suffer more than those of Classical Antiquity, and vice-versa. It is rather those who live between two times, those who do not know what to follow, that suffer the most. In this token, a man from the Dark Ages living in Classical Antiquity, or the opposite, would undergo a gulping sadness and agony.
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