Dichotomies In Siddhartha

Siddhartha: Dichotomies and Dialectic In Sanskrit, Siddhartha means “one who has accomplished a goal”, referring, in the novel by Hermann Hesse, to the protagonist’s search for enlightenment. However, the Siddhartha in the novel in not Siddhartha Gautama, otherwise known as Buddha, but the son of Brahmans, whose life happens to temporally intersect with that of the Enlightened One, the first of a series of parallels Hesse draws in order to elucidate the differences between the two. Siddhartha is a novel of such dichotomies, written in repetitive, rhythmic prose, with deep symbolism and an allusive structure meant as a critique of the extremes of both Western and Eastern religions and seeking a reconciliation of body and mind. Although the
Whereas Siddhartha Gautama was a prince of the Sakya clan, shielded from pain and suffering most of his life, yet moved to asceticism upon seeing the plight of the people of his kingdom, our Siddhartha follows the reverse path, having been born into a pious family, seeking asceticism in joining the samanas, and then rebuking the spiritual life for the physical before achieving enlightenment. Interestingly, the two parts of the novel consist of four and eight sections respectively, evoking the four noble truths and the eightfold path preached by Buddha. Again, this closely parallel structure serves to bolster the theme of self-enlightenment, but, more significantly, a deeper, three part structure in the novel evokes the Hegelian dialectic. The first part, the thesis, consists of Siddhartha’s spiritual journey in the Eastern ascetic tradition which focuses on the denial of the self and the privations of the physical world. This is when he learns from and travels with the samanas and meets Buddha. The second part, the antithesis, is his journey into the physical world and his gradual yet resisting assimilation within the society he had once so abhorred. Siddhartha, considering himself superior, repeatedly calls these people so concerned with the worldly “child-persons” and plays along dispassionately yet competitively in their daily games of life (buying, selling, working, drinking) until,
Here, he meets Vasudeva, a ferryman, who advises him that, “The river taught me how to listen, and you will learn from it, too. It knows everything, the river, a person can learn everything from it.” (56). Hesse is using the river as a symbol for passage into the next life, or, in this case, freedom from the cycle of birth and rebirth, and Vasudeva as a Charon-like guide across it. The river is an appropriate symbol for this passage because Siddhartha’s enlightenment comes from the realization that both mind and body are part of the great unity, a fact that is visualized in the river, an object which literally separates the two phases of his life, the spiritual and the physical. When Siddhartha is listening to the river, he is in fact searching for that bridge between the two worlds. Siddhartha soon becomes a ferryman on the river and helps Vasudeva, and in the act of ferrying people from one side of the river to the other and listening to their stories, it is implied that he gains a deeper understanding of both the spiritual and physical nature of humanity, the love and the abnegation, and thus comes to realize that the human form itself is a manifestation of the great unity. Hesse also uses a river to symbolize eternal flow,