Contents: IntroductionPlot Summary Themes Style Critical Overview Criticism For Further Study |
Characters
Buddha Gotama Buddha
Gotama Buddha is said to have brought to a standstill the cycle of rebirth. Before his enlightenment, he first had been an ascetic and then had turned to high living and the pleasures of the world. Siddhartha recognizes his radiance, but, despite his attraction to Gotama, Siddhartha is disinterested in his teaching and will not become a disciple. Siddhartha reminds the Buddha of his own quest for enlightenment, stating, "You have done so by your own seeking, in your own way, through thought, through meditation, through knowledge, through enlightenment. You have learned nothing through teachings, and so I think, O Illustrious One, that nobody finds salvation through teaching. To nobody, O Illustrious One, can you communicate in words and teachings what happened to you in the hour of your enlightenment." This is the central idea of the novel, that one can find the secret of self-realization only by going one's own way.
Gotama Buddha is a fictionalized version of the historical Gotama Buddha (approximately 563 B.C. – 483 B.C.), born Prince Siddhartha Gotama. Gotama is the clan name, and Buddha, which means "to know," is the title which his followers gave to him.
Govinda
Govinda is Siddhartha's childhood friend and confidant. He loves everything about Siddhartha — his eyes, his voice, the way he walked, his grace. Govinda becomes Siddhartha's shadow. Like Siddhartha, Govinda must also go his own way. Siddhartha supports his friend's decision when Govinda leaves him to follow Gotama Buddha, stating, "Often I have thought: will Govinda ever take a step without me, from his own conviction? Now, you are a man and have chosen your own path." The friends meet at strategic points in their lives. After Siddhartha has attained eternal bliss, Govinda kisses his forehead, compelled by love and presentiment. It is through this kiss and not through Siddhartha's teaching that Govinda finally attains union with the universal, eternal essence.
Illustrious One
Kamala
Kamala, a well known courtesan, is beseeched by Siddhartha to teach him her art. She understands him more than even Govinda has; they are mirror images of each other. As Siddhartha tells her, "You are like me; you are different from other people. You are Kamala and no one else, and within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat any time and be yourself, just as I can. Few people have that capacity and yet everyone could have it." When she accuses Siddhartha of remaining a Samana in that he really loves no one, he acquiesces with the observation that "I am like you. You cannot love either, otherwise how could you practice love as an art? Perhaps people like us cannot love." But a time comes when she cannot hear enough about Gotama. Prophetically, she sighs, "One day, perhaps soon, I will also become a follower of this Buddha. I will give him my pleasure garden and take refuge in his teachings." When Siddhartha leaves, she is not surprised. She frees her caged bird and retires from her previous way of life. Having given birth to Siddhartha's son, she takes refuge in the teachings of Gotama. Years later, on hearing of the Buddha's impending death, she travels to see him. To appease her complaining son, she rests along the way near a river, the river where Siddhartha has become a ferryman. Kamala is bitten fatally by a snake; reunited with Siddhartha, she finds peace as she dies by looking into Siddhartha's eyes.
Kamaswami
Kamaswami's name, which means "master of the material world," is an appropriate one for the rich merchant who employs Siddhartha. He is beginning to grow old, and Kamala implies, Siddhartha could become his successor. For twenty years, Siddhartha masters this life only to despair. Thinking of his father, Govinda, and Gotama, he wonders if he had left all of them in order to become a "kamaswami." Unlike Kamala, Kamaswami cannot understand that Siddhartha leaves his life of luxury willfully.
Perfect One
Sakyamuni
Samanas
The Samanas are wandering ascetics who practice self-denial and meditation. Fasting for days and sleeping naked in forests, they shun beauty, sensuality, and happiness as illusions and lies. They have only one goal, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure, and sorrow, and, thus, to let the Self die. Only this, they feel, will provide the experience of peace and pure thought, an awakening of the innermost Being that is no longer Self. Siddhartha is attracted to their ways, and, along with Govinda, travels with the Samanas for three years.
Siddhartha
Siddhartha is the precocious son of a Brahman, a member of the highest caste in Hinduism. Beloved by all but unable to find inner peace, he begins his personal search. Abandoning his devout father, he joins the Samanas. Although he learns some skills of spiritual survival from the Samanas, including thinking, waiting, and fasting, he concludes that asceticism is merely an escape from experience.
Siddhartha meets with Gotama the Buddha, who has reached that perfect state of being in which the transmigratory life cycle and agony of time are transcended. However, Siddhartha realizes that no spiritual teaching or doctrine can impart what he wants. He believes teachers and scripture have yielded only second-hand learning, not the firsthand experience from which real knowledge emanates. Thus, Siddhartha embarks on a life of pleasure with Kamala, who shows him the ways of carnal pleasures, and Kamaswami, who introduces him to the ways of material pursuits.
Decades later, Siddhartha feels worthless and alone. Realizing that he has traded his pursuit of Nirvana for its polar opposite, "Sansara," or the world of illusion, spiritual death, and ultimate despair, Siddhartha understands that the cause of his soul sickness is his inability to love.
Sidhartha turns to Vasudeva, the quiet ferryman, and learns from the river. Years of bliss are interrupted by a final encounter with Kamala and the son whom she bore Siddhartha, unbeknownst to him. Siddhartha loves his son, clings to him, and is desolate when he runs away. Again, Siddhartha listens to the river and hears the unity of voices and the word "Om," or perfection. From then on, Siddhartha is in harmony with the stream of life, full of sympathy and compassion, belonging to the unity of all things.
Hesse gives his protagonist the Buddha's personal Sanskrit name, Siddhartha, meaning "he who is on the right road" or "he who has achieved his goal." Hesse does not intend to portray the life of the Buddha but instead attempts to prefigure the pattern of his own hero's transformations. Both Siddharthas, Hesse's character and the religious figure, were unusual children. Buddha left his wife and son to become an ascetic, as Siddhartha leaves his beloved Kamala and his unborn son to take up the contemplative life. Both spent time among mendicant ascetics studying yoga. Buddha spent several years meditating by a river, and Siddhartha's last years are spent in ferryman's service on a river. Buddha's revelations came to him under a fig tree, whereas Siddhartha arrives at his final decision under a mango tree. Buddha had a visionary experience of all his previous existences and the interconnection of all things, and Siddhartha's final vision also embraces simultaneity and oneness.
Siddhartha's Father
Siddhartha's father, a handsome, teaching Brahman who practices meditation and ablutions in the river, is filled with pride because of his son, who is intelligent and thirsting for knowledge. The author's father, a clergyman, performed ritual ablutions similar to those practiced by Hesse's fictional creation of Sidhartha's father. Siddhartha's father sees his son growing up to be a great learned man — a priest, a prince among Brahmans. As a Brahman, he does not try to control his son through forceful and angry words, but when Siddhartha requests permission to follow the ways of the Samana, he is displeased.
Vasudeva
Vasudeva is another name for Krishna, who is the teacher of Arjuna, the principal hero of the Bhagavad Gita and a human incarnation of Vishnu, a Hindu deity. Vasudeva's name means "he in who all thinks abide and who abides in all." Siddhartha's first encounter with Vasudeva, the ferryman, occurs just after he departs from Gotama and Govinda. When Siddhartha remarks on the river's beauty, Vasudeva responds, "I love it above everything. I have often listened to it, gazed at it, and I have always learned something from it. One can learn much from a river." He predicts Siddhartha's return.
More than twenty years pass before Siddhartha does return to the river and contemplates suicide. When the river revives his spirit, Siddhartha determines to remain near it. Remembering the ferryman who so loved the river, he asks to become Vasudeva's apprentice. Vasudeva tells him, "You will learn, but not from me. The river has taught me to listen; you will learn it too." As time goes on, Siddhartha's smile begins to resemble Vasudeva's — radiant, childlike, filled with happiness. Travellers mistake them for brothers; sometimes, when they sit listening together to the river, they have the same thought.
When Siddhartha becomes distressed by his son's rebellion, Vasudeva encourages him to listen to the river and reminds him that he, too, left his own father to begin his path through life. After the young boy runs away, Vasudeva brings Siddhartha to the river so that he can hear that the "great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om — perfection." When Vasudeva sees the look of serenity and knowledge shining in Siddhartha's eyes, he knows that it is time for him to go. "I have waited for this hour, my friend. Now that it has arrived, let me go. I have been Vasudeva, the ferryman, for a long time. Now it is over. Farewell hut, farewell river, farewell Siddhartha." Vasudeva then departs for the woods and the unity of all things.
Young Siddhartha
Raised without a father as a rich and spoiled mama's boy, young Siddhartha meets his father for the first time just before the death of his mother, Kamala. Disdaining his father's piety and simple lifestyle, the boy is arrogant and disrespectful. Finding his father's unconditional love and patience impossible to accept, he runs away. When Vasudeva reminds Siddhartha that his son must follow his own path, Siddhartha makes peace with his spirit.
Media Adaptations
- Siddhartha was adapted as a film by Conrad Rooks, starring India's leading actor, Shashi Kapoor, Lotus Films, Columbia-Warner, 1972; cassette, Newman Communications, 1986.
