Spiritual Elements In Siddhartha

In the passage from Siddhartha, he and his friend listen to the waves and sounds of a river hoping to find peace and wisdom. To bring meaning to this spiritual scene, Hesse uses symbolism, allegory, a spiritual writing style. By using these literary devices, the author describes the spiritual elements and its importance to Siddhartha attaining them.
Hesse attaches importance to the elements and emotions of spirituality by symbolizing them. He states, “Vasudeva's smile was radiant…….now the same smile appeared on Siddhartha’s face.” As Siddhartha starts to smile, Hesse adds “His wound was healing, his pain was dispersing; his Self had merged into unity.” Smile, in this text, symbolizes a spiritual enlightenment, when Siddhartha smiled his pain and worries faded away. “Unity” symbolizes peace, love and wisdom.
Writing style in which Hesse writes and communicates with his readers is clever and magnificent.
The Author connects his spiritual style to the mood and main idea of the passage, which is also spiritual. As he states, “Siddhartha listened. He was now listening intently, completely absorbed, quite empty, taking in everything.” This action of listening to the river is detailed and made into multiple phrases which makes it more meditative for readers. He later adds, “And all the voices, all the goals, all the pleasure, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life.” The author keeps the meditative writing style, making the audience stay connected to the writer’s ideas and main points. The use of a meditative style is essential in a book that’s about
spirituality.
To make major ideas in the text more enchanting and connected, the author uses allegory. Hesse states, “When siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this of a thousand voices; when he did not listen to the sorrow or laughter, when he did not bind his soul to any one particular voice and absorb it in his Self, but he heard them all, the whole, the unity.” Why is Siddhartha listening to the river? What is he after? Then the author suddenly explains the hidden meaning and purpose behind Siddhartha’s actions. Siddhartha listened to it because it contained unity and perfection, which is what he was after and now he found it. This revealing of hidden messages contains in it the power and how meaningful the idea being hidden truly is. Allegory is important in this passage because it adds depth and meaning to the concept behind the river.
The literary devices brings meaning to the spiritual elements of the scene. From river to unity, allegory and symbolism adds importance to the ideas and the reasons behind it. The calm and spiritual writing style contributes to the passage by making it more interesting for the audience.