Siddhartha's Mid-Life Crisis
Siddhartha is a complicated man with complicated existential problems, and we seem to accept this premise because it aligns with the hero’s journey narrative, and this English class is about the hero’s journey, so it all works out quite nicely. However, sometimes I wonder what would happen if we briefly removed the cloak of this narrative. Are we still left with the knowledgeable, wisdom-searching, rebirthing hero we all know and love? Or is Siddhartha really just a typical man encountering the journey that is life? How much of a hero is Siddhartha really? This question, I think, is the true inquiry to ponder.
In the chapter “Samsara,” Siddhartha, after meeting Kamala, has been living with the ordinary for many years and is now struggling because he has lost the “glorious exalted awakening” that he had discovered two chapters ago (Hesse 76). He becomes too accustomed to the way the ordinary live: gambling with dice and learning how to “exercise power over people, to amuse himself with women…to wear fine clothes, [and] to command servants…” (77). He is now not only a shell of Siddhartha, but a shell who also has a gambling problem. In the hero’s journey, Siddhartha and his life with the ordinary can be seen as the phase Woman as a Temptress, where “the hero faces those temptations, often of a physical or pleasurable nature, that may lead them to abandon or stray from their quest, which does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman” (“The Hero’s Journey”). While Kamala is the obvious temptress, Siddhartha's life now tempts him as well where he gets sucked into the life of normal people and loses his path of rebirth, which can also represent the phase Woman as a Temptress.
It seems that Siddhartha is a weak man, for despite his awakening, he easily strayed from the path of his new identity. He is tempted simply by the “pleasures” of the people who he had initially looked down upon. He had thought of their life as a game, yet he played it. It seems that in Siddhartha’s hero’s journey, he has reached something of a mid-life crisis. He says “he had always felt different from and superior to the others…yet he envied them [for] the sense of importance with which they lived their lives…” (77). Siddhartha seems to be struggling with his identity and morals, for he has lost the connection with his inner voice. However, luckily for him, the hero’s journey narrative justifies this self-doubt of his, perceiving it as only a phase, so in the end, he is still deemed a hero.
I think in relation to the whole cycle of the hero’s journey narrative, this phase is where us common folk (non-heros) are able to relate to the hero’s struggles; it humanizes the hero when we see that they, too, cannot always resist temptation. However, in this part of Siddhartha’s hero’s journey, I don’t feel any compassion for Siddhartha and his struggles, perhaps because it takes him so long to, as one might say, “snap out of it,” or because he is not tempted by just one aspect of our lives, but all of them. I feel that for Siddhartha’s journey, these years of his life are no longer a phase, but a prolonged mid-life crisis.
Great post! I like how you explain how Siddhartha comes off as condescending and unsympathetic instead of relatable when he 'falls to temptation'. I agree that after reading multiple chapters of Siddhartha clearly (to us) doing the wrong thing can get annoying. How would you write him so that the audience would find him likeable?
ReplyDeleteYour final point, about how Siddhartha comes off as entirely unsympathetic, very much resonated with me. The book spends a great deal of time on that part of his life, all the while emphasizing the material wealth he has gained; I found it a little difficult to sympathize with how hard Siddhartha was having it while the book was talking all about his beautiful wife and big house with a wonderful garden. The fact that it hammers in his weakness doesn't help either.
ReplyDeleteFor most of the story I felt that Siddhartha was pretty unsympathetic since he seems to have nothing but disdain for ordinary people's lives. I agree that he's not much of a hero at least during this stage of the journey, and only at the end he finally becomes less condescending towards normal people.
ReplyDeleteI like how you interpret the middle chapters of Siddhartha as a prolonged mid-life crisis. It's as if without the hero's journey structure, Siddhartha doesn't seem much like a hero, and as readers, it's hard to sympathize with him. Do you think other hero's journey narratives also have a similar problem?
ReplyDeleteThis is such a great blog post! Your point in the last paragraph is very important, because it is a key part of the Hero's journey. This point where the Hero has fallen to some state or temptation that causes them to feel much more human and relatable than they did in their somewhat more "godlike" state is a key reference point to enable the reader to get more into the story, because they relate to the character in a more personal way.
ReplyDeleteI really like how you questioned the importance of Siddhartha's character and compared him to the life of a "non-hero." Hesse makes a point about how Siddhartha is always learning, which he even says as much in his final speech to Govinda. Hesse also includes Siddhartha's downfall into samsara, serving to portray Siddhartha as a weak man, as you said. What if, instead of Siddhartha achieving ultimate enlightenment at the end of the story, he travelled with Govinda or otherwise continued to live a normal life? I feel like an ending like that what be a better representation of the human experience while preserving the spiritual importance of the river and Vasudeva.
ReplyDeleteI love how you related how the reader feels about Siddhartha to his place in the hero's journey! In the beginning it was difficult to sympathize with him making it hard to view him as a hero. I wonder how much impact the readers' opinions of the hero's character changes the hero's journey.
ReplyDelete