Siddhartha,I Chapters 1-6

So, over the weekend I was FORCED to read six chapters of this book called Siddhartha!! This book is like none else we have read because of how much action happens in it. So far there has been literally no action, which makes it rather boring! I'm not being offensive or anything dumb like that, but I really don't like this book compared to the other books we have read in this class! We read Lord of the Flies, and Oedipus Rex, both of which I honestly enjoyed the whole time! I don;t know if it's just that Siddhartha is so arrogant in EVERYTHING he does, or that he thinks he knows everything and nobody can help him reach Nirvana, I'm not sure. I'm atheist, so I don't fully understand the whole "God and Heaven thing, so there is really nothing that I can relate too and be like "ooooooh, now I understand!" I'm just sure that this book could have been written much more interestingly. I'm not exactly one for complaining (irony intended), but this is by far the least exciting book we have read all year. I'm sorry anyone who enjoys this book, but I am a teenage boy who needs to fulfill his stereotype of needs action and blood in everything he does, so this book just really isn't my slice of cake. Woot woot; glad I got that off my chest! Maybe this book will surprise me and open my eyes to something new, who knows?



Now that I said that, I can continue with the prompt. I chose a few days ago that I would study Siddhartha and his "hero's journey" path. In the very first few pages he gets a "call the action", meaning he has to leave his home place and, in his case, goes with a group of Samanas (people seeking Nirvana through constant suffering). The next main point I wanted to mention was that the hero's journey is completely out of order! After he has left his family, he gets small challenges that he has to complete to prove that he is worthy of seeking Nirvana. He slowly gets through all them so far, and he meets continuous Mentors on the way doing so. In the normal hero's journey the hero will get a single mentor to help him seek out his destiny, but Siddhartha has had about three and it's only chapter 6. Siddhartha is constantly bombarded with diffeent temptations that he has to overcome, but in the end I feel that he will reach Nirvana and become the new "O' Illustrious One".

Partner Analysis by Simone and Me.

"To penetrate to this point, to reach the Self, oneself Atman--could there be any other path worth seeking? Yet this was a path no one was showing him" (Hesse 6).


"He killed off his senses, he killed off his memory, he slipped from his Self to enter a thousand new shapes--was animal, was cadaver, was stone, was wood, was water--and each time he awakened he found himself once more. The sun would be shining, or else the moon, and he was once more a Self oscillating in the cycle; he felt thirst, overcame the thirst, felt new thirst" (Hesse 14).


"Nonetheless he scrutinized Guatama's head, his shoulders, his feet, his quietly dangling hand, and it seemed to him that every joint of every finger on this hand was doctrine; it spoke, breathed, wafted, and glinted Truth. Thisman, this Buddha, was genuine down to the gestures of his littlest finger, This man was holy. Never had Siddhartha revered a man like this, never had he loved a man as he loved this one" (Hesse 25-26).


"Meaning and being did not lie somewhere behind things; they lay within them, within everything" (Hesse 35).

Kafka Modernism

Tons of works have been made out to express a certain point or moral in a persons life. Kafka's Metamorphosis pinpoints many morals in everyday life, has concepts of existentialism, and humor. Throughout Kafka's Metamorphosis, it is obvious Kafka threw out some morals for the reader to adopt as something to relate to their own lives. In on one of the very first pages of his story, Kafka blatantly shows that even after Gregor's shift from human to pest, he was basically a vermin all along. Samsa has gotten nothing out of his life, has nothing to show for, and his metamorphosis to a worthless bug makes this even more clear. Gregor cannot be understood anymore by his family and "although they seemed clear enough to him, clearer than previously, perhaps because his ears had gotten used to them" (Kafka 6). Samsa still thinks his family love him as a son and money tree. The key to this sentence is that he has never been important to them for anything other than money. They have never been able to hear his words and needs, just their own. Another moral that is prominent is that if you don't change your daily cycles, to will fade away into nothingness. Throughout the whole story Gregor has ONLY been working and his family mooches off his money that he suffers through because of THEIR debt. Then, as he slowly dies because of the apple, his life form fades away, and his family moves on, understanding that if they don't get off their lazy butts, they will end up like him. When the family finally gets jobs, this happen: "Bent far over the light, the mother sewed fine undergarments for a fashion shop. The sister, who had taken on a job as a salesgirl, in the evening studied stenography and French, so as perhaps to obtain a better position later on" (Kafka 18). Once the family has moved on they realize they need to change their habits and get jobs to support themselves. The last moral taught in this work is that one needs to stand up for themselves,or else one will turn into 'Gregor'. This is to say that if we do not stand up for ourselves, we will get used. This is exactly what happens to Gregor and later on; his sister. His parents are basically vampires in a way: When his sister is chosen: "And it was something of a confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions when at the end of their journey their daughter stood up first and stretched her young body" (Kafka 27). They are vampires who suck on the life of other people. They used up all of Gregor, and are now moving on to their young, loving, daughter. Gregor didn't stand up for himself and his wants, so he was used and wasted. Morals are everywhere, even in a story about a man transforming into a bug, where you least expect them.

Kafka is interesting in his wording throughout his stories.

Eating With You

So a little earlier in time we read a short story thing called Nice to Eat with You by Thomas C. Foster. This writing is about how we like to only eat with people we enjoy, or like. We refrain from eating when we are in the company of people we are not comfortable with. This piece is trying to explain that eating is an act of communion in a sense because it is such a sacred thing to stuff our faces with things needed for survival. We eat depending on our relationships with those around us. If we eat with friends or family, it should be a very talkative, boisterous meal full of love and all around happiness of those we are with. If the family is cold, or you eat with people you don't like very much, the dinner will be quite and maybe even very formal to make sure everyone is polite and not laughing at each other the whole time. If a meal gets interrupted for any reason in a story, you know something in their relationship has gone wrong and bad things will happen. When Foster says "I'm with you, I share this moment with you, I feel a bond of community with you" (Foster), he is saying because putting food in our bodies is so holy, we only want to do it with the best of company.

Reflection On That There Metamorphosis

This short story is not one to take easy. Kafka's Metamorphosis has so many metaphors it's insane. Obviously the biggest metaphor is Gregor (the main character) waking up in the form of a huge beetle. Gregor is first described in a way like this: "a monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his armor-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes" (Kafka 1). One can already see just how genius Kafka is with just the first few sentences of this masterpiece. Kafka has described Gregor as a filthy, giant bug. At the moment we do not know why he has been turned into a bug; all we know is that he is probably turned into this bug for something he did in life. This whole piece honestly reminds me of the afterlife and how the soul changes, like in What Dreams May Come because Gregor is "dead" on the outside, but his soul inside his bug cage is still the same. Gregor is the only one that knows he is still alive on the inside. His dad is the first of his family to give up on him as "Gregor", and assumes all of Gregor is gone, "his father clenched his fist with a hostile expression, as if he wished to push Gregor back into his room, then looked uncertainly around the living room, covered his eyes with his hands, and cried so that his mighty breast shook" (Kafka 6). Gregor's dad completely and only thinks of this huge bug as a pest. Gregor is no more in his eyes, and this vermin left over means nothing to this father. Next, Gregor's sister starts to turn to his father's side as-well: "In the midst of minor attacks of asphyxiation, he looked at her with somewhat protruding eyes, as his unsuspecting sister swept up with a broom, not just the remnants, but even the foods which Gregor had not touched at all, as if these were also now useless, and as she dumped everything quickly into a bucket, which she closed with a wooden lid, and then carried all of it out of the room" (Kafka 11). At this point in the story it seems that Gregor is completely doomed. His only ally was his sister, and now she even thinks everything he touches, or does, is poisoned. Ever since Gregor has been turned into a cockroach, he has been treated more and more as one, not the brother and son they once knew.



Later in this story Kafka brings in a new metaphor; an apple. You may be thinking, "what the heck does an apple have to do with anything in this beetle story?" Well it actually stands for wisdom and understanding strangely enough. His dad "was throwing apple after apple. These small red apples rolled around on the floor, as if electrified, and collided with each other. A weakly thrown apple grazed Gregor’s back but skidded off harmlessly. However, another thrown immediately after that one drove into Gregor’s back really hard" (Kafka 18). After this apple is thrown, it starts to slowly kill Gregor. I believe that this resembles "realization" because once this apple is lodged into Gregor, he and his family both realize he is completely worthless now that he can't make money for their family. His only job in life was to get his parents out of debt. This understanding took place because "Gregor later earned so much money that he was in a position to bear the expenses of the entire family, costs which he, in fact, did bear. They had become quite accustomed to it, both the family and Gregor as well" (Kafka 12). Gregor has basically turned into their families personal bank account, and once he couldn't do that anymore, he was of no use to them. They finally realize this, and once they do, they all go against him and think of ways to get rid of this "vermin". Luckily he dies before they can do something about him still being an inconvenience to them. Right after his death, the whole family can once again unite in Gregor's room, "In spite of the early morning, the fresh air was partly tinged with warmth. It was already almost the end of March" (Kafka 25). This is quite strange because all throughout the whole story Gregor's room has been depressing to everyone who enters. I think that this is symbolizing that once Gregor died, a huge burden has been lifted from his family, and they are real people now; not just lazy jerks who feed off their family member. They have transformed into the better side of society because of their loss of family. They have had a family wide metamorphosis.