Siddhartha Journey

The novel Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, tells the spiritual journey of a boy named Siddhartha and how he ultimately achieves true enlightenment within himself. As the novel is structured primarily around Siddhartha’s inner spiritual struggle, the moment that he deters from his path physically by entering the alluring material world is a huge event within the novel as his pain and thoughts of hopelessness are not confined within the mind but rather dangerously externalized. This deviation itself into the material world leads to the most pivotal moment within the novel, realizing that he has lost his guiding inner voice through his dream about Kamala’s dead songbird. Some may argue that the most pivotal moment is when his guiding voice is reawakened and Siddhartha is essentially reborn when the sound of the sacred Om reverberates …show more content…
He is not only exposed to it, he becomes a part of the repetitious cycle of “Samsara”, or the depressing path of normalcy where one lives, suffers, and dies. Siddhartha’s shallow, overly indulgent life of drinking, feasting, gambling, and partying have created a state of blissful unconsciousness. Siddhartha has enjoyed great pleasure with Kamala and she has taught him the ways of love but through this he has remained spiritually stagnant. Siddhartha realizes this in his dream where he throws Kamala’s rare songbird out of the house onto the street. This climactic moment shows that he has come to terms with the reality of the material world, if he continues to dwell in this place he will never achieve the enlightenment he hopes for, and die the same fate as everyone else. He realizes at this moment that he no longer hears his guiding voice and must leave the next day to escape the prison in which he has resided in for far too