Siddhartha in connection to the Hero's Journey
Herman Hesse's Siddhartha is a hero's journey. Throughout the book, Siddhartha undergoes his own hero's journey in order to find personal enlightenment within himself. While at times the connection between Siddhartha and the hero's journey are a bit hard to make out, most of these steps can be pretty well seen in the book. These steps that are more clearly shown especially add to Siddhartha's own hero's journey, as their clarity show examples of these steps and provide details for said steps. The beginning is easy to connect, which makes sense, the middle gets a little difficult and a bit confusing but nothing too crazy to handle, and the end is most likely the most confusing part in terms of connecting the story to the hero's journey. To me, the ending was the hardest to make out because not all of the steps were clearly presented, and the ones that were presented weren't done very clearly.
I would say that specifically, the middle of the book provides some of the clearest depictions of the hero's journey. Pacing-wise, the middle of the book also lines up with the middle of the book. These steps that are presented here also take up a big part of the book, which in return allows for a lot of time to pass and a good amount of growth to happen for Siddhartha. The steps in question being "woman as temptress", "meeting with the goddess", and the "road of trials". The imagery shown in these steps really proves the connection to the book itself. With the "woman as temptress step" it starts out with Siddhartha's very weird dream, which begins with Govinda, giving him the temptation to return back to Govinda and his old life. Then as the dream progresses, Govinda becomes a woman who Siddhartha goes to, showing his desire to be with a woman, and live a completely different life than the one he knows now.
Right after his dream we shift to the next step, "woman as temptress", where we find Siddhartha has wandered into a village and comes across Kamala. Stunned by her beauty, he decides that this village and Kamala will be the next step of his journey. It's kind of interesting to me that right after his temptation dream that involves a woman he comes across Kamala and decides right then and there that he was going to be with and learn from her. Especially because being with her would mean that he would have to completely change how he lives his life. In a way his temptation dream kind of foreshadowed this.
Immediately following his meeting with Kamala is the "road of trials" (I know, crazy that this step is a bit out of order). This long segment in the book dives into his new life in this village. It shows him adapting to the new ways of doing and thinking about things and learning things that ultimately stick with him later in life. Like any challenge he doesn't get it right away, but he eventually gets it. I liked how long this part was because it really gave us a chance to look at and understand this part of his journey. Overall these three back-to-back parts of the story proved to be clear parts of the hero's journey. From the descriptive wording to the distinctive imagery, they all mix together to make these steps easily pointed out.
This was a great blog post, Chloe! I liked the way that you interpreted Siddhartha and analyzed how certain parts of the novel are harder to understand in terms of which step of the hero's journey Siddhartha is pursuing. I definitely agree that the most clear parts of the book were in the middle, when Siddhartha reaches the "woman as temptress" stage. I wrote my in-class essay on this for that reason! I also think that it is interesting how you pointed out that the "road of trials" step is out of order compared to the rest of the steps. I hadn't thought about this, but I agree with your point!
ReplyDeleteGreat post Chloe! I agree with your observation that it became more difficult to connect the later steps of the Hero's Journey to Siddhartha, and I wonder if the author intentionally increased the difficulty or ambiguity. While I mainly found that the beginning part of Siddhartha provided the clearest depictions, your focus on the clarity of the middle section of the story makes me question the ambiguity of the Siddhartha's return phase because the other parts of the story directly correlate to steps in the hero's journey. I wonder if the author adds this ambiguity in the return phase because Siddhartha has lost all the significant people (e.g. his father) of his known world, except for Govinda.
ReplyDeleteHi Chloe! I really liked your blog post and how you interpreted the book. I agree with you that the ending of the book was really hard to make out in terms of the Hero's Journey steps. I felt like the ending was much more fast-paced compared to the rest of the book, muddling the steps of the Hero's Journey in the process. I also agree with your point on how the "women as temptress", "meeting with the goddess", and "road of trials" plays an important role in Siddhartha's journey. It was intersting how the author goes into more depth during these scenes compared to the ending of the story.
ReplyDeleteChloe, great blog post. I really liked how you described how the whole book represented a different step of Hesse's template, even though some steps were hard to pick out. I agree that the "woman as temptress", "meeting with the goddess", and the "road of trials" can be the harder steps to pick out in Siddhartha, and they're really important steps in Siddhartha's journey. Good Job!
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