Siddhartha Part 1 Summary

It is now in the novel that the mystic Buddha arrives.. Siddhartha goes to listen to the Buddha and decide for himself what he thinks about this holy man. Siddhartha recognized the Buddha immediately and saw the man has achieved Nirvana. The confidence and peace he moved and talked with radiated from him. “There was salvation for those who went the way of the Buddha" (Hesse). Here is a central theme of the book and that is suffering and peace from suffering usually by accepting Buddha. After a long spiritual discussion with the Buddha, Siddhartha was indeed able to find a flaw in the Buddha’s teachings. The Buddha reminds me of a holy person, this holy person from Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. “The Oracle was called Agbala, and people came from

Firstly he has renounced all teachers. He then pondered, what would those teachers teach him along the way and what answers would he hope to learn of the nature of Self. Siddhartha now jumps head first in to the world of the living. He spends the night with a wise but silent ferryman and dreams of suckling on a woman’s bosom. He then crosses the river and begins an affair with a beautiful mistress Kamala. She teaches him the ways of love making and love. She sends him to a man named Kamaswami to get work under. She tells him never be subservient but always his equal. Over the years Siddhartha gains quite a lot of material possessions including fancy clothes, a house, and a garden. He enjoys vices he used to consider part of the pain of living such as drinking and gambling. He continues seeing Kamala and has become quite the talented love maker. Siddhartha with his newfound lust for lovemaking reminds me of the soldier in Chekhov’s The Kiss. “But finding that hosts and guests were calmly dancing or talking, he regained courage, and surrendered himself to sensations experienced for the first time in life. The unexampled had happened. His neck, fresh from the embrace of two, soft, scented arms, seemed anointed with oil...”(Chekhov) Siddhartha notices the first traces of age on Kamala's face, provoking Siddhartha's own fear of time,

Disillusioned with himself and the world, he was going to throw himself into the river to commit suicide. As Hesse says, "There was no more purpose; there was nothing more than a deep, painful longing to shake off this whole confused dream, to spit out this stale wine, to make an end of this bitter, painful life" (Hesse). Right before he is to throw himself in the river to die he hears from somewhere inside him an “Om” and he is so tired, lost, and overwhelmed that he falls into a deep sleep right there on the river bank holding onto the tree. When he awakes his old friend who left all those years before to follow the Buddha, was sitting watch over him. They had a conversation and Siddhartha decided that there was much to learn from the river and he would stay there and become a ferryman. This he did and he grew old living meagerly with the old ferryman who taught him the trade. Finally, as many pilgrims were crossing the river to visit the Buddha on his deathbed, did the paths of Kamala and Siddhartha cross once more. She was taking her son to cross the river and visit the Buddha, when she was stung by a poisonous snake. Siddhartha recognized her immediately and he knew the boy must be his. She did not survive the night. But she did give him the best gift of all and that was his son. The boy is the first person that he had ever truly loved. The boy despises life with his