Conclusion

Note: This is the last post! Since I posted these in order, please start at the bottom-most post and work your way up!

              Siddhartha is a wonderful book in that it is so short, yet so meaninful. Hesse wastes no words and relates a simple plot. The thoughts and feelings of Siddhartha are communicated directly to the audience. Perhaps this is because the intended audience is not intimately familiar with Eastern religion and spirituality. Perhaps there were more subtleties, but they were lost in translation from German to English.

At any rate, the various themes of the text interweave just as Siddhartha’s journey progresses towards unity. Each stage of his life builds on the experience of the previous. When he joins the Samanas, he determines to leave behind the teachings of his youth and put aside physical possessions. This allows him to think for himself, and hone his mind. As a side effect, his psyche suffers – he develops arrogance. He meets the Buddha, who he admires for being childlike, and becomes determined to make himself like that. Each time he discovers a new goal, he orients himself like a laser towards it. At this point, he enters the town of Kamala and learns about love, business, and hedonism.

Here he stays for many years, undergoing the bulk of his physically and mental suffering as his outlook becomes fatalistic. This time degrades his mind enough that he loses his former arrogance, and only has his material possessions to hang on to. When he stumbles out of the down, rejecting his possessions in a haze of sorrow and ennui, he is reborn. With nothing, he can hear the voice of the universe coming through the river.

After seeking to destroy his Self, then to be the same as other people, he realizes that he is part of a collective soul. He becomes a part of a whole, all things become one, and all binaries exist together. His journey ends.

Thanks for reading my blog on themes in the middle half of Siddhartha. I hope you enjoyed it as much I as I enjoyed writing it, and gleaned a bit of my feelings.