Siddhartha The Different Sides Of World Essay

The Different Sides of World

One can argue, and many have, that all tales are stories of self-discovery. A character must go on a journey in order to make sense of themselves and, by extension, the world around them. It is these journeys that are the backbone of most stories. These journeys that seem to follow a set pattern, and the first time is always leaving the world you know behind. To be world-denying. But that assumes that is only one definition of the term “world.” That the world around us is just material goods. It fails to account for the multiple definitions that fall under the umbrella that is the concept of “world.” This concept sees an unlimited number of definitions that could fall under it-each one specific to the individual. But all of these individual

Siddhartha is initially presented with the typical mindset of a protagonist: the world is that of material goods and must be rejected in order to move along his journey. Hesse over the course of the first third of the novel, however, reveals that the world in this section is the world of ideas-specifically, the idea of learning. Siddhartha’s rejection of material goods, through giving up his clothes and fasting for 14 and 28 days (Hesse, 10), is his attempt at being world-denying in order to achieve self-discovery. But, as Hesse will repeatedly reaffirm, one cannot be world-denying to reach the point of self-actualization. Luckily, the world that Siddhartha needs to accept in this section is that of the idea of learning. Learning being the world is reiterated by multiple figures in Siddhartha’s life-from his father who felt that Siddhartha must be a “great learned man” (Hesse, 2) in order to