From Spiritual to Experimental Enlightenment: A Study of Hermen Hesse’s Siddhartha as an Orientalist Text

Abstract

Hermen Hesse's Siddhartha recounts the story of a Brahmin named Siddhartha, who renounces the material and family life in search of knowledge. Siddhartha undergoes different phases of life since childhood. He leaves his family, joins with Samana, follows the path of Buddha, marries Kamala, gets a child, works with Kamanswami and leaves them all. The life of Siddhartha passes from his spiritual quest to an experimental one. In other words first he chooses the spiritual path by renouncing the family and friends but later on he moves into the experimental parts of life. Finally, he realizes the reality of life and works as a boat man. He finds himself enlightened working in the river as a boatman. Siddhartha's ways of life, plot, setting, theme, characters all are oriental. The difference between East and West ( Orient and Occident) and the hegemony created by the west by romanticizing and creating myths about India are clearly visible in this nove