Siddhartha

1) Herman Hesse’s novels before Siddhartha focused on alienated young men who rejected the cultures of their upbringings. However, these other novels did not feature the spiritual elements of Siddhartha. Do the spiritual elements of Siddhartha make it different from any other story of an alienated youth? If so, how?

In most stories when a main character leaves home, it is with the desire to escape some sort of cage, or start over with new opportunities that were not formerly available to them. This often comes with a complete rejection of who and what they were before, and the formation of a new sort of personality through which to present themselves to the world. Siddhartha’s journey, though it does reflect many of the common themes and steps taken by other literary characters, likewise shows some significant differences.

Siddhartha employs neither of the two clichéd endings for stories like these: a complete reversal wherein the main character realizes the error in his ways and returns home like a prodigal son, or an ending which concludes with the character fully settled and fully content in his new - and entirely different - way of life. In fact, though the winding storyline does alter Siddhartha’s character and way of life by the end, no sudden or dramatic events ever occur to cause unexpected change without warning or catch the reader by surprise.

The novel’s smooth pace could be attributed to the presence of religion as a major theme in the book, for while Siddhartha did indeed leave home to seek out his own path in life, even by staying with his father he was destined to become a Brahmin. In other words, his eventual status as an enlightened religious man was predestined. This coupled with the fact that he never had any intention of breaking away from that religious aspect of his life in the first place, and only, in fact, sought the very same final goal of enlightenment through different means allowed spirituality to stand by as a constant in his turbulent life. This source of stability provided a kind of padding against the extremes that such stories are prone to portraying.

Siddhartha effectively shows that changes can be made, a lifestyle can be altered, and ultimately a goal can be reached without having to resort to drastic measures, and without requiring the one desiring to make the change to thrust themselves fully into the alien and unknown. The character of Siddhartha was searching, more than anything else, for experience, and through this, wisdom, but never in his search did he set foot outside the comfort zone of his spirituality. His deepest core value did not once waver, so by the time he’d matured, and after gaining a greater worldly understanding, Siddhartha ended up, perhaps, a very similar man to what he would have been before. Enlightened, wise, respectable, but the point of the journey, obviously wasn’t the destination, but the road taken to get there.