Hermann Hesse explores in depth the issue of service to a community in Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game, an issue which he does not cover in any significant way in Steppenwolf. "Community" here is best seen as the community of human beings as they live in the real world, not an ideal realm such as Castalia. Actually, Joseph Knecht is concerned with service to two communities, the elites of the Castalian Order and then, leaving that utopia, the non-elites outside of the order, or, at least, the embodiment of that outside world in the person of Tito, Knecht's student. Knecht's maturity in this concern for service to others is what differentiates him most from Harry Haller, who focuses almost entirely on what he wants as an individual with little real connection with any community. On the other hand, one can fairly argue that even the far more spiritually and philosophically evolved Knecht is following an internal, self-oriented rather than a social urge. This does not mean Knecht is self-centered, but rather that the purest service to others also fulfills the deepest need of the self.
The best way to approach and understand these two novels relative to each other is to see Haller as a student in the kindergarten of life (despite the fact that he is well into middle-age at the book's beginning), and to see Knecht as a graduate student. Haller's journey of learning (about himself, others, the world) is essentially only beginning by the end of Steppenwolf, while Knecht by the end of Magister Ludi) arrives at the end of his journey of learning, in death, but the response of his student Tito suggests that that death will mean deeper spiritual life for Tito. This major differences between the two characters is in large part due to the fact that the structure of Magister Ludi contains the entire context of Knecht's life, while Haller's life has reached only another of what will certainly be additional plateaus of awakening. Magister Ludi...