The Frighted Constraints In Herman Hesse's Siddhartha

Human tendency to constantly seek self-validation through externalities reveals the sardonic manner of life. Our true infinitesimal importance captures the evading pursuit in finding a sense of purpose which our fingertips to no avail try to grasp. Our attachment to prevalent tangibles parallels the parasitic host dynamic in which we cast ourselves to give ourselves a sense of significance and need. Reveling in the uncertainties and doubt, life feeds off us breeding a false notion of time. Its apparent limited and linear structure embeds an internal clock to which we find ourselves racing against fruitlessly. Its fixed rigid facade relinquishes what little autonomy we have on our own life. The curtained constraints gives an imposing figure
in which if we are unable to understand it, renders futile to even make an attempt to beat it. To know life in all its deceiving nature, in all its compromising ironies, take us one step closer to a cognizant awakening. Discovering the artificial linear passage that veils the circular construction life really is delves us into an abyss to find the truths behind every notion. Its circular motion mirrors the samsara game Siddhartha in Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha find himself trapped in. The tenacious hold life had on him projects him into a quest, through which he finds himself at various stages of his life binded to be a pawn to its game. His refusal to continue to walk amongst the blind allegiance which connotes the renouncing of self-sovereignty, leads him to discover the constant cycle. His epiphany reveals the flaws discreetly hidden in between all worldly things, the ironic details of everything entitles him to question the world, faith, and himself.
Siddhartha, son of a Brahmin, discontent with the redundant design of each day which offered no true progression, discontent with night being the only distinguishing mark between each day has withdrawn from that society’s conventions. With staggering footsteps, begrudging recital of the prayers, and dissatisfaction with the ugly truth that regardless of the constant learning no one has attained a life in bliss, he left. However as he walks he has not a destination but a goal, a goal to leave the impractical faiths. He then finds himself idly stumbling upon the world of vices. Upon entrance he is stunned by the beauty in simplicity. “He saw and acknowledged visibility, he sought his home in this world...it was beautiful and delightful, so without distrust” (Hesse 43). As he unconsciously slips into this world, he disregards the fretful thoughts of what lays “beyond” which once gnawed at him. Kamala, one of the first people he meets lures him in and teaches him a newfound appreciation for the materialistic world. His new escort in the “art of love”, acts as a catalyst for worldly experience as she introduces him to Kamaswami, a merchant. Siddhartha’s unforeseen quickness to not only adapt but excel in each subject (sexual desire and business) foreshadows his abrupt demise to his past identity. “But easily as he managed to speak to everyone, learn from everyone, he nevertheless remained aware that something separated him from them.” (Hesse 62). His superior feeling amongst the other people to which he owed to his social awareness withstood no longer. Treating the worldly pleasures as a game, he unknowingly gets played himself, putting the veil covering life’s outward pretense himself. His condescending pity to the people’s blindness to the cycle ironically anticipates his veiling to which he has only himself to blame. With a worse turn of events, because although they are blind to it they have never been aware of it in the first place unlike Siddhartha who in a way is physically now covering his own eyes. Consumed by the lust, the greed, and the power he diminishes to the same animal fashion he once described these “child people”. He epitomizes their ignorance to be the cause of their detrimental state of vacillation between the two extremes of human emotions. Yet, as he finds vacuity to fully enjoy all these indulgences he begins to envy them and their simplistic “burden”. “Perhaps people like us cannot love. The child people can; that is their secret. (Hesse 65). Passion through vices, passion through seeking, passion to the world no longer are viable to Siddhartha. Hindrance to his own accord paradoxically compels him to love and hate the child people simultaneously.
Siddhartha’s inadequacy to emanate passion authentically contrasts his initial ambition.
With a conflicting principal need to fill self with void, Siddhartha’s inefficacious objective inherited by the Samanas, a cohort of ascetics to which he fled Brahmin life for, ruled impotent. The disdainful taste in his life left by the samanas due to their antipathetic nature in which they desired to rid ego leaves another faith unable to meet his measurement of validity. “When the entire self was transcended and extinct, when every drive and every mania in the heart had fallen silent, then the ultimate was bound to awaken” (Hesse 13-14). Hesse’s precise use of meticulous diction symbolizes the unclear nature which Siddhartha perpetually finds himself in. “Bound to awaken”, crystallizes Siddhartha’s wistful contemplative state as Hesse throws up in the air a false hope of possibility which had yet to be uncovered by Siddhartha. Another unprolific belief failing to mitigate the irreconcilable adversities protruding at every instance in his life heaves him into a constant cycle. This cyclical nature also highlights the subtle love and hate duo present not only in the child people but also enlightenment. This recurring dynamic embodies another one of life’s hidden ironies to which he bestows himself gratuitous. With the subtle implication that emotions are of no place in the journey to enlightenment reiterated in both Brahmin life and Samana life who believe the holy books of teaching will reveal the solution and the riddance of ego elevates you into this higher form, respectively, Siddhartha finds the solution through this shunned method of feeling. “And now this is a teaching you will laugh at: Love, O Govinda, seems paramount to me.” (Hesse 128). With the pushing aside of emotions prevalent in both Siddhartha and Govinda, a childhood friend whose departure still kept him in the mindset to abstain from emotions, we see that this may seem ridicule. The astonishing realization
that love and hate lead to enlightenment, Siddhartha ornaments its peculiarity this with the basis of its findings through self-experience rather than teachings.
Siddhartha’s novelty life substantiates the discontent with which thirst can take over. Although living in a life where everyone loved him, where destitution would never be a concern, where security would never be an issue, this thirst seizes the permanence that any of these comforts could provide. With the constant bickering at the growling insatiable thirst he recognizes without thinking twice the source and its immediate solution. Knowledge, ego, understanding, pride all seemed to obscure within one another in his life. Siddhartha’s swift ability to drain every possible information and his agility to memorize and think way beyond his years, eventually got to his head. “Too much knowledge has hindered him...his ego had hidden away in this pride…[which] no teacher could ever have redeemed him.” (Hesse 87-88). Siddhartha’s contrived ego rendered him incompetent amidst the Brahmins, samanas, and monks leaving his need for validity to only being satisfied by himself. The ironic nature in which too much knowledge is detrimental to the soul, establishes the need to learn not by ear but experience. Knowledge taught by ear is purely facts, wisdom however is understood from experiences. Siddhartha’s experiences achieve a renewal of himself. Caught up in the worldly pleasures, he contemplates suicide as an escape, but peering into the river, its linear falsehood that parallels life’s masked cyclical nature, give him comfort. Flustered with a sudden rush of exciting rejuvenation he becomes cognizant to life’s manipulation, to its discreet hiding of ironies in beauty.
Siddhartha’s inherent thirst for answers leads him on a journey in which he unintentionally discovers small but significant ironies. With specifics such as love transcends the boundaries of definition and life is a big circle, he eventually finds himself by the river and is humbled in knowing that experience is the only “teacher” worthy of being paid attention to and life is the only lesson worthy of learning.