Dbq Varian Fry

The four stages of life choices, which favor both renunciation and world upholding, are 1) student 2) householder 3) forest hermit and 4) wandering ascetic (Ghose, 1/18/01). In the book, Siddhartha participated in each of these lifestyles for a significant amount of time. Unlike his father, Siddhartha did not want to be a Brahmin. He thought his calling

As with the Brahmins, Siddhartha’s experience with the Samanas is not a fulfilling one. Hesse writes, “he slipped out of his Self in a thousand different forms. He was animal, carcass, stone, wood, water, and each time he reawakened” (Pg-15). Siddhartha learned a great deal from the Samanas, yet he was still unable to reach enlightenment. During his time with the Samanas, Siddhartha never saw or heard of a single person achieving enlightenment. Feeling disillusioned with the teachings of others, Siddhartha decided to leave the Samanas, and seek out the venerable Buddha. Siddhartha seeks out the Buddha and hears his sermon, but he ultimately decides to seek his own path to enlightenment. In leaving the Buddha, Siddhartha begins to follow a Buddhist path. Siddhartha says, “But there is one thing that this clear, worthy instruction does not contain; it does not contain the secret of what the Illustrious One himself experienced he alone among hundreds of thousands" (Pg-34). In this part of his journey, Siddhartha realizes that no one can teach him how to achieve enlightenment. As Gautama did before him, Siddhartha heads out to find his own path to enlightenment.

“How many things have to happen to you,” Robert Frost Writes, “before something occurs to you?” A person wakes up every morning to the same gray walls and eats the same flavorless slop. Seeing no changes they seem to ask themselves if life is worth living. They are unhappy but are afraid of new environments and unknown areas. Wishing things can go back to when their worries were as simple as trying to memorize the multiplication tables. Although it is written that change is in every person’s destiny, there are several reasons a person might or might not seek out change. For instance, a person’s environment or way of living can be one of the hardest things to change. Living in the projects, bills to pay and people to obey are a few reasons many steer away from change. Secondly unexpected life events like suddenly having to become a parent and learning how to raise a baby while trying to balance sudden deaths that may occur. Thirdly, discovering a person’s true emotions for another human being can create what I like to call a domino effect. Whether you consider the environment to be the atmosphere around you or the place to which a person calls home, one thing is certain that in any environment a person must adjust in order to survive, and through any adjustments comes change.

Siddhartha is constantly flowing down the river of life, "Certainly I have learned that from the river too; everything comes back/ You, too, Samana, will come back" (49). He sees that life is never stagnant. It is constantly changing, ebbing and flowing. It takes a lifetime to satisfy Siddhartha's hunger for religious fulfillment. Siddhartha is found relating to the river: "A chilly emptiness in the water reflected the

At the beginning of the novel we see foreshadowing of Siddhartha’s constant tangle with conformity when it states “Govinda knew that he would not become an ordinary Brahmin… or just a stupid sheep amongst a large herd” (Hesse 4). This relates to the fact that Siddhartha doesn’t want to go through the motions of what the Brahmin’s are trying to teach. Rather he wants to find his self-fulfillment which he can only do by not conforming to ways that make him who he is not. The first instance of this is shown when Siddhartha confronts his father about leaving the house saying “With your permission, Father, I have come to tell you that I wish to leave your house tomorrow and join the ascetics.” (Hesse 10). At first his father rejects his son’s notion to leave, but after time has passed and Siddhartha remained where his father rejected him in

Siddhartha's experience of a rebirth and his way of life after this experience is parallel

Although he was still very aware of his mistakes, Siddhartha was able to use them as lessons. He learned to never again participate or become involved in situations like gambling or getting caught in the “ordinary” way of life. He now had new experiences under his belt and became more wise because of that. According to the Samsara cycle you have to go through the death stage of an experience in order to go through the process of rebirth. This is what happened to Siddhartha. He had to hit rock bottom before he could go on with his journey.

Siddhartha follows his journey through various changes in pace and mood, as he enters the samsara as a samana or one without possessions, he believes he can “think, wait, and fast”(64). Yet Siddhartha’s previous upbringing as a Brahmin and a samana, he refuses to accept the materialistic wealth “his heart was not in business”. (69) Yet his need to please Kamala, his love teacher, he needs to earn money therefore, by earning money he pleases Kamala “It (business) was useful in order to bring him money for

Siddhartha resolved that he would first go to the Samanas, ascetics that hard lives of self-denial of all comforts and pleasures in order to rid themselves of desire and those emotions that would hinder them on the journey to discovering Atman. Although joining these extremist monks was a high ambition, Siddhartha knew that he would succeed as a Samana, for he believed that the path of the ascetic would aid him on his journey of self-discovery. As his time with the Samanas lengthened, Siddhartha began to take pride in the knowledge that he was not blinded by the material world like everybody else was; he saw the world for what it truly was -- bitter lies and misery. Despite the fact that Siddhartha was becoming a great Samana, revered by even the older monks, he felt that what he had learned from them he could have learned on his own and in less time. Once again, he was not satisfied with the path that he was on and aspired to achieve even greater heights by parting from the Samanas. This ambition is plainly displayed when Siddhartha’s friend Govinda, who had become a Samana as well, proclaimed that Siddhartha would have learned to walk on water had he stayed with the ascetics. Siddhartha simply says that he would “let old

Siddhartha represents all of humanity, in that he is many things, yet he is himself. He is a Brahmin, a Samana, a ferryman, and he is Siddhartha still in all these things. Unlike Gregor, Siddhartha is very active in his quest for destiny. His choice to leave his father and all he had ever known is not influenced by any force other than the thirst for knowledge sending him on the quest for the meaning of life. Just as a sheep wanders in a pasture, Siddhartha wandered the wilderness in pursuit of his true self. He searched his soul to find his place in the world and the unity of all. He examined how his Self responded to hunger, pain, and all achings of the physical in order to reveal the strength of the spiritual. When Siddhartha entered into the world of “ordinary” people, he fed his physical being and through that discovered the weakness of his spiritual. Siddhartha finally quenched his thirst for knowledge at the river, where he found wisdom. Siddhartha knew who he was and at the river, he discovered why he had to go on the path that he did, and he found peace and discovered how he fit into the universe along with all other things. Siddhartha’s identity at that point had little to nothing to do with who he had been. Yes, he was once a Samana, a Brahmin, a ferryman, but what mattered was that he was now at

He then decided for him to answers his questions he must change his lifestyle from a luxurious one to a more humble one just as a samana. However he did not find nirvana and on the contrary he discovered how the oldest samana was sixty and had not yet reached Nirvana. This led him to move again and look for Buddha. When he found Buddha he then again found fault in this teachings. He explained how Buddha reached nirvana through his own experiences. He, nonetheless, persisted he couldn’t reach nirvana through teaching causing him to yet again move. Ending him to leave his loyal friend, Govinda, yet taking Buddhas adive of not beng too clever. All through the story Siddhartha depicts how through the changes he decided to make took him a step closer to Nirvana and to answer his questions of what the good life is. He does through the willingness to changing his teachers and surrounding to learn

Imagine going undercover in another country, without any help. Your dangerous mission that you're assigned to, involves risking your life to save strangers you don’t know. You guide these unknown people through secret escape routes and discreetly bring them into your home country with fake documents, making your action illegal in both countries. This is what one courageous man had to go through for about a year, every day. Volunteering for a dangerous mission, Varian Fry became a hero to thousands of Jews and other citizens living in the German-occupied area in France. In Varian Fry’s early life, people described him as moody and introverted. However, Fry’s attitude changed during the Nazi Era because of his experiences he went through. Because

In the departure phase of his journey, Siddhartha completely shuns both internal and external desires and lives a more than humble life. During Siddhartha’s conversation with his father about leaving home, Siddhartha’s father, “returned again after an hour and again after two hours, looked through the window and saw Siddhartha standing there in the moonlight, in the starlight, in the dark” (11). Hermann Hesse’s use of dark and light imagery, emphasizes Siddhartha’s stubbornness for his desire to go with the Samanas, whose religious ideals are severe self discipline and restraint of all indulgence; he is adamant about leaving home, as his father checked on him countlessly and Siddhartha stood there unwavering despite the many hours and change of daylight so he could earn his father’s blessing to live the lifestyle of an ascetic. Furthermore, Siddhartha travels to the Samanas with Govinda to destroy Self and the multitudinous amount of desire by quelling each desire and all together Self even though he knows it is a difficult goal to achieve, “Although Siddhartha fled from Self a thousand times, dwelt in nothing, dwelt in animal and stone, the return was inevitable” (16). The effect of Siddhartha’s multiple attempted destructions of Self as a consequence of living as a Samana are failure in his attempt to discover Nirvana. Moreover, Siddhartha travels with Govinda to the Buddha after leaving the

Him knowing little about going undercover except for what he had seen in the movies. Despite this, he was determined. “I might never come back alive. But I believed in freedom. I remembered what I had seen in Germany and I knew what would happen to the refuges if the Gestapo got hold of them.” (Pg. 4) Varian had an exceptional amount of compassion for others. This is why he reacted the way he did to the religious and political changes occurring in Germany. Hitler, the man in power convinced many that the reason for their country’s down fall was due to the Jews. Which then led to destruction of Jewish property and the beginning of the extermination of all Jews. How society reacted to this alteration divided people into three main groups. Ones who joined in on the massacre, those who did nothing both ways, and finally the people who refused to withstand this injustice and did something about it. Varian was among those who helped for the better. Although, he was not the only one. While Fry was staying at the Splendide an inspector came to inquire about his credentials. Being a Frenchman he knew something was up but being one against the occurrences taking place he kept quiet about what he suspected. “If I had found anything suspicious, it would have been necessary for me to arrest you here and now. You understand? He said.” (Pg.21.) Without individuals such as this man Varian may not had been able to finish his mission and many would have died. This shows that despite the obstacles in his path he continued

Born as the Brahmins Son, Siddhartha was surrounded by the luxuries and privileges of someone that has a supreme role in the caste system. The concept of Siddhartha's life is represented by the river comes into motion as we see the river being implemented in the early stages of the book as Herman Hesse describes Siddhartha’s childhood. Different actions, his childhood revolved around the river that Siddhartha grew up in but most importantly he performs his rituals and his holy offerings. “ Suntanned