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