Yup Essays - Allegory, Siddhartha, English-language Films

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse is about one man?s journey to find inner peace and happiness. Siddhartha seeks peace and happiness in several different ways such as following the Buddha, but fails. How, indeed, could he not know love, he who has recognized all humanity?s vanity and transitoriness, yet loves humanity so much that he has devoted a long life solely to help and teach people? Pg 119 ?He is doing what you yourself have neglected to do. He is looking after himself; he is going his own way.? Pg 101 ?Siddhartha had one single goal- to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow- to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought- that was his goal.? Pg 11 "He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha. Instead he saw other faces, many faces, a long series, a continuous stream of faces-hundreds, thousands, which all came and disappeared and yet all seemed to be there at the same time, which all continually changed and renewed themselves and which were yet all Siddhartha...? At the end of his journey, it is only through the acceptance of the spectrum of human emotion that Siddhartha attains Nirvana. As written, at the exact moment of enlightenment, Siddhartha experiences the emotions of humanity through the River all flowing from and to its source. The new Siddhartha felt a deep love for this flowing water and decided that he would not leave it again so quickly" (p. 81). Another powerful theme is the concept of the circle in time portrayed through the relationship of the father and son, exemplified with his experience with his father and again with the experience with his son. This idea is shown throughout by Siddhartha's need of companionship: first Govinda, then Kamala, and finally Vasudeva--each companion symbolized the attainment of the various stages in his path to enlightenment. The novel is unique in that time is not linear, the series of events occur at varying jumps in time; yet the themes throughout the book seem to come back to its origin. This symbolizes the essence of the River, being that the River is its own beginning, middle and end--or the source of life. At the end, Siddhartha was only able to reach enlightenment through this realization: that no matter how much life splits from the source, everything tends to gravitate back towards it. After abandoning his worldly life, Siddhartha begins to appreciate the beauty of the river