Symbols and Symbolism in Siddhartha - The Snake, the Bird and the River

Suddenly “a small black snake, which had bitten her had crawled away”. (91) The snake was poisonous and Kamala died moments later leaving Siddhartha’s son in his own care. Siddhartha’s son was accustomed to riches, commanding servants, and other worldly desires. He did not want to live in a hut with two old banana eaters. Little Siddhartha wanted to return to the city from which he came. Siddhartha was troubled by this and asked his dear friend Vasudeva for guidance. One important thing Vasudeva told him was “Water will go to water, youth to youth”. (97) One day little Siddhartha was gone with the raft on the other side of the river. Siddhartha went after his son “And when he felt the wound smarting, he whispered the word Om” (103) Vasudeva came for Siddhartha and they both went back to their hut and “Neither spoke of what had happened”. (104)

Symbols have a major impact on both Things Fall Apart and The Poisonwood Bible. They help display the story in different perspectives and help us understand concepts we don’t always pick up on when first reading the novels. These symbols reveal more in depth detail about the themes of each novel as well as add to the development of characters. Some major symbols seen in Things Fall Apart are the locusts which make a reference to the Bible and are a metaphor for the coming missionaries, Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, who symbolizes Okonkwo’s failures, and fire which symbolizes destruction. The major themes in The Poisonwood Bible are the snake which represents a character from the bible, Methuselah who symbolizes the fate of the Congo and the poisonwood tree which symbolizes Nathan’s mistakes.

When you hit rock bottom, it becomes extremely difficult to get back up. The moment you do get up though, your life changes forever. In the novel Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, the protagonist Siddhartha finds himself contemplating suicide after experiencing a series of unfortunate events. He has to dig deep to get himself out of the situation and afterwards he gets caught within deep, remorseful thoughts. He finds a river and is reminded of what his original goal was and because he was on a journey to enlightenment he was able to be reminded of the spiritual muttering “om.” This moment is pivotal because Siddhartha is finally able to find his Self again.

        During this period-the realm of the mind, Siddhartha actively sets about letting the self die, escaping his Self. 

Siddhartha’s life was more of a journey, a journey filled with whimsical decisions and many questions; Siddhartha simply did as he pleased. After living this capricious lifestyle, he noticed that he felt empty inside. He wondered why he felt this way for a long time and decided to leave his current life. He abandoned all possessions and left his father in a quest to seek peace with the shramanas. Soon the cycle of the nature of Siddhartha was formed. Siddhartha would seek something and pursue that something blindly and by abandoning his previous lifestyle. It was not until he was an old man did he finally reach peace through the guidance of a river. Siddhartha’s life had changed immensely numerous amounts of times by the time he was old, but the change he experienced was not necessarily caused by of outside influences. He experienced change, but every change originated inside of him; of what he wanted to follow next. Of course, this still required Siddhartha to change to his new surroundings in every instance he obeyed new lifestyle. When he followed the shramanas, he left everything he had previously known and owned. When he left for the city, he completely changed his demeanor and became rich. Once again, when he lived by the river, he abandoned all possessions and former values. I believe that Siddhartha

Now that Siddhartha has gained his reward, he begins to enjoy this new sense of radiance with his new friend, the ferryman. Finally Siddhartha reaches the step in the hero’s journey of resurrection, but resurrection comes with a price. Siddhartha reunites with Kamala and realizes that she had given birth to his son many years ago. Unfortunately, Kamala was bitten by a snake and dies. Siddhartha’s son neglects him and eventually runs away from Siddhartha. That is when Siddhartha comes to the conclusion that he has to let his

Siddhartha is a young man on a long quest in search of the ultimate answer to the enigma of a man's role on this earth. Through his travels, he finds love, friendship, pain, and identity. He finds the true meaning behind them the hard way, but that is the best way to learn them.

This time around Siddhartha decides to become a ferryman. He gets rid of all the things that he doesn't need just like when he was becoming a Samana. He learns a lot through his new friend Vasudeva. Vasudeva guides Siddhartha and tells him to listen to what the river tells him. " 'The River has taught me to listen; you will learn from it too.' " (Pg 105) Siddhartha learns a lot from listening to the river. Then Kamala comes back to him with his new son, but then Kamala dies because she gets bitten by a snake. This brings down Siddhartha's morale. When he runs into Govinda after many years of not seeing him, he becomes happy

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

The Buddhist concept of timelessness is based on the wheel of life. Because of future reincarnation, Buddhists to not perceive time as a fixed linear progression and therefore time is irrelevant. The river signifies time in that "the river is everywhere at the same time...the present only exists for it...not the past...nor the future." (107) Time is the idea of passing events, just as the river comes to illustrate the same when Siddhartha sees his life has been a river of events. However, because a river is ever present and always in motion, time is also dynamic. Being perpetual, the river and time are symbolically the

Siddhartha tells Govinda that on the grounds that he is situating himself toward a solitary objective, he is missing everything. Siddhartha, goes onto contend that in each truth, the inverse is likewise genuine, and time is fanciful, that agony is important to realizing, that there is no division between the world and flawlessness. Govinda approaches Siddhartha for any last useful tidbits. Siddhartha teach Govinda to kiss him on the brow and all of a sudden, he sees a consistent, unending stream of confronts, individuals, creatures and a considerable measure of symbolism, all moving into each other. In the wake of losing Siddhartha, he is uncertain, if a solitary second passed or time everlasting has passed. Govinda distinguishes Siddhartha's

An important symbol that was present in Siddhartha was Kamala’s songbird. Such a little detail had a lot of deeper meanings and was almost a parallel for Siddhartha’s life. When Siddhartha returns to a life of greed, gambling, and pleasuring himself, he loses sight of his path. While he had originally set out to rid himself of desire and possession in order to achieve peace within himself, he leaves it all behind to remain with Kamala and Kamaswami.

Finally, Siddhartha leaves the city due to a dream he had. In this dream, “this bird, which usually sang in the morning, became mute, and as this surprised him, he went up to the cage and looked inside. The little bird was dead... and then he threw it away on the road, and at the same moment he was horrified and his heart ached as if he had thrown away... all that was good and of value in himself”(Hesse 82). This dream showed Siddhartha that if he stayed in the city he would die and never reach enlightenment. Kamala is heartbroken, as written by Hesse, “When she heard news of Siddhartha's disappearance, she went to the window where she kept a rare songbird in a golden cage. She opened the door of the cage, took the bird out and let it fly away" (85). In other words, it is using symbolism to show that Siddhartha is freed from his worldly desires. At the conclusion of his journey, Siddhartha returns to the river he once crossed. This represents his growth and how

Siddhartha Gautama, later on called revealed four noble truths which are the foundation of his teachings. To make understand the people that everyone have to experience unhappiness or despair, he taught Three Marks of Existence: dukkha, anitya means impermanence and anatman means no self. Thus, anatman means “there is no separate, permanent or immortal self” (Fisher & Rinehart, 2016, p.143). Buddha points that there is no eternal or permanent soul, be rejecting the Hinduism notion of atman. In Buddhism, permanent is only an illusion. Everything is in flux including the self. A person is always changing

Channa warned Siddhartha that the man was sick and anyone was capable of being infected. On the third visit, Siddhartha saw four men carrying another man on a stretcher. When asked about it, Channa told him that the man was dead and going to be cremated. He told Siddhartha that no one can escape death and everyone will have to die one day. The fourth sight was that of a monk. Channa explained that the monk had left his family to search for freedom from suffering. The prince was inspired by the monk and wanted to obtain the freedom that the monk had.