For many Westerners, more specifically the driven citizens of the United States of America, time is viewed as a straight line. Our children realize this, consciously or not, early on. They make timelines in school, their classes switch on the hour, their intelligence is measured on a scale. We are born, we come of age during adolescence. We set a goal, we work to achieve success. Birth and death, childhood and adulthood are stages that occur only once. Life is black and white. Separate. The past is the past, the future is the future. Traveling on a straight line, we can only look forwards.
Eastern philosophy, on the other hand, might view time as a circle, a spiral, a figure eight. Time has no sharp corners, no harsh edges, no start and no finish. It is fluid. If it's spirituality and true understanding of the self that one seeks, perhaps this softer outlook is the right road. Consider standing at the top of a circle. But which way is the top? Or the bottom? Or the side for that matter? One must look around oneself to determine where one is. One must pay attention to the senses and environment. Walking on a spherical path makes it much easier to stay in touch with the past while preparing for the future. The circle never ends, thus the past is always clinging but the future never has a dearth of possibilities.
Hermann Hesse employed the latter model of time in Siddhartha. The river that the title character eventually lives by is the prime example of the fluid concept. Siddhartha comes to recognize the river as a metaphor for his existence. There is no definite starting point or finishing line of time, just as there is no specific beginning or end of a body of water. Time and wa...
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...the surface the theme seems to contrast with the book's structure. But upon further examination, one finds that the plot isn't nearly as linear as it seems at first glance. Siddhartha is not straight line construction, but rather a series of circles. The protagonist is born and reborn, but he never abandons his original goal: to reach Atman. And at each rebirth, whether he is becoming a Samana, a hedonist, or a sage, he is reunited with his friend Govinda.
And the gaps in the plot? Why did Hesse sometimes dwell for pages on one small point in time and then suddenly transport the reader ten years into the future? Could he not think of anything to write?
No, Hesse was just reinforcing that time's river keeps flowing whether we are looking or not and sometimes, we need to stop counting the minutes to experience its Holy Om, to hear its Perfection.
Hermann Hesse’s novel “Siddhartha” is one of spiritual renewal and self discovery. The novel revolves around the life of one man named Siddhartha, who leaves his home and all earthly possessions in an attempt to find spiritual enlightenment. The novel contains many themes, including the relationship between wisdom and knowledge, spirituality, man’s relationship to the natural world, time, love, and satisfaction. To portray these themes, Hesse employs many different rhetorical devices, particularly diction, symbolism, and point of view. These devices allow us, as a reader, to reevaluate our lives and seek fulfillment in the same way that Siddhartha did.
In Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, Unity is a reflecting theme of this novel and in life. Unity is first introduced by means of the river and by the mystical word "Om." Siddhartha's quest for knowledge began when he left his father and sought the teachings of the Samanas. By becoming a Samana Siddhartha had to give up all of his possessions and learn to survive with practically nothing. He quickly picked up all of the Samanas' tricks like meditating, abandonment of the Self, fasting, and holding of the breath. By abandoning the Self, Siddhartha left himself and took on many other forms and became many other things. At first, this excited Siddhartha and he craved more. He took on the shape and life of everything, but he would always return to himself. After he began to notice this endless cycle he realized how dissatisfied it really made him. He had learned all the noble tools the samanas had taught for attaining the innermost Being that is no longer Self, yet even after mastering all of the arts he never progressed further than his cycle of abandoning his Self and returning to it.
Rather than simply explaining the facts of the novel, authors use literary elements to make the reader think about what he is trying to get across and to make the text more memorable. From an allegory to the tone of writing, these elements will affect the plot and characters that associate with them. These elements can be used in many ways but for Hesse, they were used to help Siddhartha on his journey for enlightenment- introducing him to settings, characters and objects that would eventually help him discover himself.
approaches to convey the theme of the novel, Hesse appeals to the readers' senses and
"Siddartha" is a book of a man’s struggle to find his true self. But his searching leads him in all the wrong directions. Then finally after a long journey he stops looking. During his search he discovers four things, what the “oneness” of life is, how the four noble truths affect everything, enlightenment, wisdom and love.
... We see the timelessness of the dreamlike river scene and the mother’s hair floating under the water scene. Timelessness is a common theme that is representative of childhood and with the gift of the watch we can now see John as a man with the power to use time rather than drift helplessly along with it as he had drifted along with the river.
...been developing at a rapid pace, suddenly, all of Europe’s arrogance and opinions clashed. Everybody turned on the rest of the world. With Hesse naming the book and the main character Siddhartha, I feel as if his fate was predetermined. He is using this concept to symbolize the fact that the world and our human nature was inevitable, nothing could have changed that. Whether it took a war, unification and peace, or just time passing by, our human nature was predetermined no matter what the series of events. Overall, I firmly believe that Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha was indicative of World War 1 in three different phases: the before, the during, and the aftermath.
Ziolkowski, Theodore. Hesse: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973
...n, and all of the enjoyments and lavishes. He becomes entrapped in Samsara, the physical world, characterized by repeated cycles of birth, but finally breaks out of it after twenty years and returns to the river. At the river he joins the simple life of Vasudeva, according to Carl Yung would be considered the wise old man archetype, and for the next twenty years he listens and learns from the river. The river is no longer the divider between the material and spiritual worlds but now it symbolizes a unity in which past, present, and future, all people and their experiences, all features of life flow together. Siddhartha comes to realize that there is no conflict between the spiritual and the material, that all human occurrences are to be accepted, and that the only difference between the ordinary people and the sages is that the sages understand this unity.
Time itself is a never-ending cycle however; our time as humans on Earth is finite. Both “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse and “If God Existed, He’d Be A Solid Midfielder” by Aleksandar Hemon portray the importance of time, showing how patience and contentment is acquired overtime. Although each reading incorporates characters that experience moments of unease, losing touch of their passion and goals, their interpretation of time differs; Hesse portrays time linearly while Hemon views time circularly. Siddhartha seeks Enlightenment by taking the road less traveled, a Western belief ironically chosen by Siddhartha despite his residence in Eastern hemisphere. Similarly, Hermon displays pursuits of the Eastern belief of time within the Western hemisphere.
According to Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, Hesse was born in Germany in 1877. After rebelling from traditional education and being expelled from the seminary in which he was enrolled, he educated himself mostly through books. In his earlier years, he became a bookseller and journalist, which may have inspired his first book, Peter Carmenzind. Being a pacifist, Hesse moved to Switzerland during World War I. He came in contact there with renowned psychologist Carl Jung who inspired some of his better-known works.
Siddhartha, written by Herman Hesse, is a novel about a man's progression towards his goal to center his life with a combination of peace and balance. Many of the displayed philosophies can be applied to today's world. Through my reading, I noticed many similarities between my life and Siddhartha's. First, Siddhartha felt a need for independence, that to truly be happy with his success, he must attain his achievements in his own way, and not others. Even though, he feels he must acquire this by himself, he tries to be as removed from his human side as possible. Only later does he learn that individuality and freedom from necessity must be united to procure his objectives and free him from his imperfections. Second, Siddhartha discovers that things and riches do not bring happiness. They are only temporary. No matter the extent of wealth a person has this never satisfies the insatiable need for possessions. Lastly, Siddhartha found that balance is the key to peace and happiness. Although a simplistic teaching, it is very complex to learn and apply. In my life, I can relate to his path and lessons, because I feel the same struggles and battles with attaining serenity.
Everyone has a hero’s journey, a path of life. The choices one makes are categorized into the stages of the hero’s journey. The stages of the hero’s journey are utilized in many different forms of literature. These stages are prevalent in the novel Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. They are used to illustrate the transformation of a young naive Siddhartha, to an enlightened old man. The three most significant and recognizable stages of Siddhartha’s journey are the call to adventure, the belly of the whale, and the magic flight.
Siddhartha has the urge to become enlightened There was something telling him to endure on his journey to enlightenment and thus begins the Hero Journey This is the first step towards his journey After seeing the Samanas, he decides he wants to follow in their footsteps to learn more about himself and the world that he has been sheltered from his whole life When he tells his family about his decision of becoming and Samana they refuse to let him go, especially his father who has done most of
In my opinion time can be shaped quite a bit by the artist; after all, man is never time’s slave. (Lion in the Garden 70)