Friday, March 8, 2013
The River, the power, and the pleasure of it all...
In the book Siddhartha there are certain motifs that help explain the book if one sees the importance behind it. The three most important motifs in the book are water (in any sense; brook, river, lake), power, and pleasure. Hindus believe that water can release a person’s soul of all sins, “‘it is a very beautiful river. I love it above everything. I have often listened to it, gazed at it, and I have always learned from it.’” (Hesse, 40). Hesse chose to utilize this quote, because the Ferryman is showing his eternal devotion to this river through his words; he is trying to teach Siddhartha that this river is holy, it can guide him through anything, and it has given him some sort of safe haven from himself and his sins. Power in this novel plays an important role, because it can demonstrate the straying of one’s path to enlightenment; “Slowly the soul sickness of the rich crept over him” (Hesse, 63). This quote is placed here in order to make the connection of power to evil; being that once you have the ability to overcome people in a corrupt fashion you begin to slowly begin to fade away from what you once were, in Siddhartha’s case a young, humble, religious man. Pleasure has taken a large role in various ways, like how to overcome worldly desires, how to overindulge in material possessions, and how those objects can hold one back spiritually, “Gradually, along with his growing riches, Siddhartha himself acquired some of the characteristics of the ordinary people, some of their childness and some of their anxiety. And yet he envied them” (Hesse, 62). Although Siddhartha has seen himself superior to these people he is becoming more and more like them everyday, and although he does see this he refuses to acknowledge the fact that he is slowly deteriorating in faith and humanity. He dislikes the “ordinary people”, for the sole reason that they are obsessed with themselves (who they love, what they are doing, etc.) and this is what transformation Siddhartha is going through. These motifs have various interpretations depending on where the motifs is located in the book, and their multiple variations play a key role in uncovering the hidden truth behind the words.
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