Siddhartha Hero's Journey Analysis

Nearly all of human culture has some form of the stories of heroes or the epics, tragedies and fairy tales written about them. This type of story is so ubiquitous that we have a name to identify the common pattern that these hero stories follow: The Hero's Journey. It is a very effective method of writing stories and many stories follow the pattern unintentionally. In the novel Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse utilizes the Hero's Journey pattern to draw a parallel between its story and other "monomyths", particularly the stories of numerous important religious figures including the Buddha, Mohammed and Jesus.

A monomyth does not necessarily have to fulfil every part of the pattern and Siddhartha provides examples for very nearly every step of the journey, sometimes even fulfilling the qualifications for relatively obscure steps very particularly. The Hero's Journey begins with a "Call to Adventure", which is represented by Siddhartha's dissatisfaction with his life at the beginning of the story that leads him onto his adventure into the unknown. The pattern then leads the story through more steps, defining the character and the direction of the story as it moves along, reaching a peak as the hero triumphs over the challenges laid before him/her …show more content…
He does not return to his father, his home or his previous way of life, which is the expected path for a monomyth hero to take. Instead it seems that the return is represented by Siddharta's reunion with Govinda, with whom Siddhartha spent the majority of the story with before Crossing the Threshold. There also seems to be an absence of a "Refusal of the Call" by the hero, instead having Siddharta's father resist Siddhartha's desire to join the Samanas. Deviations such as these are to be expected due to author's choice and in any case Siddhartha fulfils the majority of the steps and thus adheres very firmly to the pattern of a