(ENGL5001 ELA4 AP Literature, AP prompt writing)
Have you ever struggled about your own identity and place in this world? In the novel Siddhartha you might find the answer. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse tells a story about self-discovery and conquering thyself to become a unity with the world. The protagonist, Siddhartha, goes on a quest seeking for salvation and the truth of this world. His path has been winding: he spent years being an ascetic, he listened to the Buddha’s words, he learned the pleasures of love from Kamala and pleasures of money from the businessman Kamaswami. Finally, after seeing all the pains and pleasures, the stupidity and wisdom of this world, Siddhartha arrived at a river and gets reborn. The river had taught him to listen, and by listening to the river, Siddhartha has heard all the voices of the creatures in the world, and also his own voice, his Self. This pivotal moment in the novel, the “rebirth” of the hero, represents Siddhartha’s moral development has come to maturity and recognized both his place in this world and the truth of this world.
A spiritual “rebirth”, requires a spiritual “death”. Right before Siddhartha’s enlightenment, he “died”. In chapter seven, Siddhartha was a successful businessman with a wealthy material life and he was into gambling and alcohol. When he saw himself in the mirror, he realized that he had gotten old, ugly and sick, and so dis Kamala – his lover. He was “nauseated with himself” (Hesse, 82), all the perfumes, fine clothes, wine and money were no longer “pleasures” to him. Siddhartha reflected for a long time under the mango tree in his pleasure garden, and realized this “game called Samsara” (Hesse, 84) should be over. We can see that Siddhartha is referring his wealthy material life as a “game”, and he was done playing this superficial game. We can also understand this “game” as a double-entendre, because actually Siddhartha was done playing the “game” of gambling. “Then Siddhartha knew that the game was finished, that he could play it no longer. A shudder passed through his body; he felt as if something had died.” From this quote we can see the narrator directly addressed his “death”, not physically, but deep inside his soul something had died. This was foreshadowing that sometime in the future Siddhartha is going to reborn, and push the story, his quest, to a climax.
Siddhartha escaped from his garden to a river, the same river that he had crossed over before he became wealthy. When he stared into the water and saw his distorted face, he thought “he was at the end” (Hesse, 88), yes, he thought about suicide. Then “from a remote part of his soul” (Hesse 89), he heard the sound of Om, and he realized his folly action. Siddhartha sat down under a coconut tree by the shore, murmuring “Om”, and fall asleep. In his sleep, he didn’t know how much time had passed, but when he wakes up, he was reborn. The trigger of this enlightenment, I would say it is the “Om”. This pivotal moment was sudden and quick, yet we can draw a conclusion of his life philosophy from Siddhartha’s later reflection. After Siddhartha’s awakening, he reflected about the purpose of his life as different identities, and his conclusion was that “all forms were transitory” (Hesse, 100), it might be your job, your social status, or even your form of human; but thy-Self will never change, yet you must experience the pain and pleasures in life to find thy-Self and get rebirth, time after time. This moral had developed because Siddhartha’s Self had crawled into the priesthood as the Brahmin’s son, and as a sage. He was full of knowledge, so he needed to experience the material life to let the priest and Samana Siddhartha die; and now he suffered from nausea and reached despair, so he needed to let the man of property Siddhartha die. To Siddhartha, he had developed morally through spiritual death, rebirth, death, rebirth, death, and rebirth… In the following chapter Siddhartha had learned from the Ferryman, Vasudeva, and when Vasudeva thinks Siddhartha had learned how to listen from the river ( a personification and a symbol), he left and Siddhartha became the ferryman.
Siddhartha has experienced multi-identities: a young prince – the son of Brahmin, an ascetics, a students of Gotama, a wealthy business man, and finally a ferryman. Sometimes he was spiritually abundant, and sometimes he was materially wealthy. In his final rebirth, all things have come an end, and this is when he finally “conquered his Self” (35), and found his place in this world: a student of the river, a ferryman, a life-long friend with Govinda, and most importantly the sole existence of him-Self, as an unity with the world and Gotama. Siddhartha was a seeker, but he was also a finder. When you seek, you set a goal and only remembers what you were seeking for; but when you find something, you often need to abandon, to give, and to listen. Siddhartha managed to balance both, by abandoning his past life and identity, so that he found his new Self and seeked salvation. What is the meaning of this work as a whole? I don’t know. Maybe you have to abandon what you heard from Siddhartha, or Govinda, or Kamala, or this essay, and discover your own life secrets.