The Role Of Enlightenment In Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha

The novel Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse is a story about a man named Siddhartha and his quest to reach enlightenment. Siddhartha’s journey is littered with analogous revelations that repeatedly continued his progress towards enlightenment along the way, slowly inching him towards his goal of complete and utter Zen. There was no single moment that allowed Siddhartha to reach enlightenment but rather a series of small seemingly inconsequential lessons that culminated into Siddhartha reaching enlightenment. At first glance, the novels progression follows what would most resemble an Ouroboros, a serpent eating its own tail, with Siddartha making the same choices over and over again, never learning from them thus rendering his ultimate goal of enlightenment

After mastering the words of the holy books from a young age, Siddhartha believed he could no longer learn anything else useful from them as he understood as much as they could offer. Proving his determination to attain enlightenment, Siddhartha set out from his childhood home thirsty for knowledge and on a path towards his eventual enlightenment. When Siddhartha left home, he went with his best friend Govinda, whom looked up to Siddhartha pseudo-religiously with the goal of joining the Samanas, a group of wandering nomads who live an ascetic lifestyle. This lifestyle requires the individual to only live on what 's absolutely necessary with the intent to live as empty of a life as possible. This leaves no room for any of life’s distractions such as: cooking food before consuming, pleasures of the preferred sex, wearing anything more than a loincloth, etc. The Samanas believed that if one had no life distractions and were as close to empty as one could get then that would open the opportunity to achieve enlightenment. Siddhartha fully embraced this lifestyle which displayed the level of grit he had to reach enlightenment. Another factor helping him to be able to live such a minimalistic lifestyle was the size of his immense ego. Time and time again, Siddhartha shows contempt for those that are not actively seeking their enlightenment and in the beginning of the book seems to believe the way he is discovering is the only way to reach enlightenment, or at least the best shot and most efficient way. After roughly three years, Siddhartha had learned all he can from the Samanas. Siddhartha has drained all the useful knowledge he can from the nomadic tribe. The most important lessons learned which suit him well later are: “I can think I can wait. I can fast.”(50). These three skills had the most impact on Siddhartha 's journey towards enlightenment as they play a key role in Siddhartha