The Power of Change

Change is one of the world's most terrifying and concurrently inevitable phenomena. It occurs in all aspects of life, concrete or abstract, and spans the entire globe in all walks of life. Despite its extreme abundance, a huge portion of the world fears change more than anything else, for it is all-encompassing. But the inevitability of change needs to be embraced before any growth can happen, and the world can advance as it always has. The need for change is a major theme in Chris Magadza's poem "Old Tree," and it is a wonderful poem indeed. It's simple and short, yet complex and weighted at the same time. I am very happy I chose this poem to analyze in detail, and it was a very good way to transition myself from the world of facts to the world of poetry, with all its intricacies and perplexities. This is because it is very historically relevant, and the historical knowledge is pivotal to the underlying meaning that can only be seen once the literal has been left behind.

The history of his country is especially inherent in Magadza's poetry. Magadza is from Zimbabwe, but when he was born in 1939, his country went by the name of Rhodesia, after the famous (or infamous) British explorer and colonizer Cecil Rhodes. The British influence in Rhodesia was tremendous, and occupied the lives of every inhabitant of South Central Africa, foreign and domestic. The indigenous Africans, who had been free for thousands of years, were oppressed and discriminated based on convoluted European ideas of Western superiority. But as the ideas of the world (freedom, natural rights, equality, nationalism) spread to every corner of the world and took ample hold, the self-aware took arms against the British. In Magadza's case, this was through poetry. I looked at "Old Tree" through a historical lens, and analyzed it accordingly. "You who heard/The savage angry cry/Of angel turned brute" (Magadza 30-32). These lines entail the majesty of life and angelic manner of humans that is corrupted by greed and false claims of innate superiority. This was exemplified very well during the Scramble for Africa, and Magadza witnessed all the repercussions of this unwanted colonialism first- or maybe second-hand. One of the most hard-hitting excerpts of the poem is: "Seen the slaughter of/Father by son,/The rape of sister by brother,/The innocence of infancy/starve to laughing demon" (Magadza 33-37). This is packed with juicy references, metaphors, and analogies, and so must be broken down slowly and meticulously. The slaughter of father by son and the rape of sister by brother are both pretty horrible occurrences. This is exactly the point, of course, as this would be totally immoral under any circumstances. Magadza tries to get across the message of equality here, and puts Africans on the same level through these lines. Humans are all family. Fathers, brothers, sons, and sisters, no matter what race, are the same, and should be treated equally because of it. Instead, Magadza's country is in political turmoil and it is completely under the thumb of the British superpower. Continuing, the innocence of infancy is starving while a demon laughs. As Africa had been free for such a long time, they did not adopt the West's innovations as rapidly. These lines could allude to the new weapons brought in by the British that serve as the impetus for more fighting and death. Britain is the laughing demon, then, and it is then clear to see how Magadaza, and most Africans felt about the occupation by the British of their homeland.

To say the least I learned a lot during my research of this poem. I learned among many other things how to really break down a complex poem and scrutinize it for all I'm worth. Poetry can be so intricate, so beautiful, so befuddling, and so it behooves me very much to be able to break it down and decipher all the miscellaneous and elusive themes, symbols, and meanings. Another testament to the everlasting nature of change, my views of this poem deviate greatly from start to finish, as I learned more and more about the poem, its author, and the circumstances under which it was written. For example, when I first
read the lines mentioned before, "Seen the slaughter of/Father by son,/The rape of sister by brother,/The innocence of infancy/starve to laughing demon" (Magadza 33-37), I thought of conflicts within Zimbabwe, as I really, ashamedly, had the notion that Africans were always fighting with each other, incapable of "civilizing their societies like the West has. But I learned that Magadza is a very learned man with a PhD in ecology while he still manages to analyze the conflicts with the world and especially in his home country. This disproved my original theory and I revised it as I continued with my research. Another change in analysis was with the title figure, the Old Tree. The first time I read the poem, I paid very little attention to the tree itself, even though it is the title. My mom in our interview even said, "What is the significance of the Old Tree?" This definitely needs some deep thought and we just weren't there yet. After more time spent with the poem, a couple lines jumped out. "Old tree/ Giant towering/ above the forest" (Magadza 1-3). The tree became a deity after pondering these lines. It is the omniscient being that sees everything from its lofty position, above the forest. Unfortunately, it can't do anything to stop some of the terrible things that is happening, except offer hope. "And every blessing summer/ Adorned in new blossom / More life / You bring on earth" (Magadza 44-47). My first impression was that this speaks to the everlasting nature of his African culture by expressing how the tree has remained standing through all of this, and will continue to stand forever. But after further analysis, my understanding of the tree was taken even further. I grew to think that these lines also go with the dogma, Life finds a way. Life finds a way to survive in "Old Tree," and every summer more blossoms, more hope, bloom and flourish. Magadza's countrymen are life, and they will find a way, and they will keep coming back with new hope, until they get what is right. This is very powerful to me and this struggle with oppression speaks to me in a way only poetry can.

This process of finding, reading, working, and finally understanding was a fruitful one. All the steps I went through to try to reach that last step of understanding helped me greatly. To understand this poem, one would need to have all the pieces together, and I believe I rounded them all up during this project. The background knowledge was pivotal in this situation, and changed my view of the poem greatly. Overall, it was about the need for equality between races, which does not mean colonizing in places against the native people's wishes. After several readings and rereadings, it was very helpful to get a second opinion, and this was accomplished through the interview portion. Having a second opinion helps very much, as there is no correct way to interpret a poem. This allowed me to synthesize my thoughts with another's and raise my understanding of the poem to new heights. On a broader scale, I learned how to interpret and understand poetry altogether. This process can be applied to almost any poem, so long as there is plenty of time to undergo it, as the process does indeed take time. I now feel enormously more confident when it comes to understanding poetry and this will stay with me for all of my foreseeable future.

The theme of my research and this poem is change, as it has been made clear now. As I went through the project, my views changed, my ideas changed, my confidence transformed, and my mind expanded its horizons with ever-more knowledge. "Old Tree" is a wonderful and beautiful poem largely about the need for change, and how it will eventually happen. It showed me the persistence of life to overcome its boundaries. For example, the blossoms in the poem have much more meaning to Africans than is stated in the poem. Zimbabwe is located in "the bush" climate zone of Africa, and here, the soil has a nutrient deficiency and there is not much rain to sustain growth. Yet the African daisy still grows, and its colors are so vibrant that they light up the entire, gray-and-brown region. This poem has taught me resilience, perseverance, and confidence, and it has enlightened me in a way only poetry can. There is no description that accurately describes the effect of poetry on its readers. It is spiritual. The words, mood, rhythm all evoke certain emotions that are not felt through simple prose or conversation. It is a special feeing and poetry, understanding poetry, brings it on. Through this project I, albeit having run into some brick walls of befuddlement early on,  have learned to adequately understand a complex poem and I will take this skill through my entire life.

"Genuine poetry can communicate before it's understood" -- T.S. Eliot

"To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to se it with our ears" -- Octavio Paz

Interview with Sheri Wright: Fearless Mother of Two

I walk into my mother's welcoming office. It is warmer than the rest of the house, as always, due to her space heater turned on throughout the day. Her large, leather chair is set up facing the couch, with a small table in between, and her reading glasses are already on. She looks up with an anxious look on her face, reaching her hand out to receive my chosen poem. Once it is safely in her hand, along with a pencil for note-taking, Sheri turns into studious mode, and doesn't look up until she has finished Chris Magadza's "Old Tree."

My mother is very determined when she gets a task. She will devote herself entirely to it, a trait I admire very much. As she is reading Magadza's poem, I study her face for any cues that might allow me to enter her thoughts. At one point her nose scrunched and her brow furrowed, probably at the lines of the fourth stanza, which illustrate ominous and dark scenes; another time she grinned in peaceful resolve, undoubtedly caused by the concluding lines of "Old Tree," which offer hope for the future along with some beautiful wordsmithery. She nodded throughout, showing understanding of the insightful words authored. She also, after a first run through, went back to catch missing themes or imagery that she did not pick out the first time. Her pencil was jotting in the margins as she went, making sure she would not forget anything she analyzed, and she sipped her coffee intermittently, feeling the warm mug and allowing the heat to flow into her hands. Once her head rose, primed for discussion, we continued.

Chris Magadza is heavily influenced by his ancestry and the history of his country Zimbabwe. My mom did not know this going into the interview, and it showed to be very helpful indeed. When asked what she thinks of the poem, my mother automatically went to the thought of an enduring life, that can endure terrible things, like "the slaughter of/ father by son, / the rape of sister by brother." But she also said that this was only within Zimbabwe, and although she does not know much about Zimbabwe, assumed there was some conflict between ethnic groups or the like. Once I explained to her the circumstances under which the poet wrote this work, her viewpoint changed. She then revisited the specific verbiage and thought that it was the Africans, or Zimbabweans,  that were being abused, as well as the nature of their lands (brought into the poem because of Magadza's ecology degrees) by the British. She went on to explain that the words "father, son, sister, and brother" were pleas to the West, that Africans are the same species, and deserve to be treated as such. This was interesting to see because this is very similar to the thought process I went though myself. Before I knew the background, I didn't think of the British usurping the Africans' power had much of anything to do with it. With this worked out, my mother's face was much brighter all of a sudden, and it seemed as if he learned for more understanding and more analysis. So, we went on.

We were drawn to the first two stanzas because they seem to carry a lot of weight, even though it is in so few words. The stanzas say: "Old tree / Giant towering / above the forest; / You / Who saw the rise / Of ancient suns, / The fall of principalities, / The ageing of creation." While my mom thought about the majesty of nature, I thought about a deity being exemplified through the tree. This contrast in idea was very interesting to me, as it showed me there are many different perspectives one could take when reading this poem. We both liked the ending, and thought it provided hope for the future of Africa, and Zimbabwe. Nature always cycles through again, bringing new blossoms, replacing the ones that perished in previous times. It is also endless, watching over everything with "Timeless majesty."

I enjoyed this interview with my mom. It allowed us to discuss on an intellectual level a piece of literature. We would never normally do this, and so it was really fun to see my mom's thought process and point of view on certain things, that can be the same or different than mine.

Magadza Research

Christopher Magadza's life story is a pretty inspiring one. His rise from a poor farm boy to acclaimed ecologist is anything but probable. He was born in Burma Valley, in Manicaland, Zimbabwe in 1939. His family served as laborers on this farm, not even owners. Magadza, despite his humble beginnings, went on to be accepted into both St. Augustine's Mission, and Fletcher High secondary school, both prestigious institutions. This was mostly through self-teaching and dedication. He went on to the University of Rhodesia where he received his Bachelor's and Master's degree, and achieved his PhD in Auckland, New Zealand. He became a limnologist, one who studies the biological, chemical, and physical characteristics of lakes, and quickly returned to Zimbabwe to work. He established himself as a ecologist and moved on to co-found both the African Academy of Sciences and the Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences. Throughout his life, his work, specifically with nature, and the residue of British imperialism combine to form his major themes in his poetry. He lived through Zimbabwe's independence and renaming (South Rhodesia), and has many thoughts on how the British altered their ancestors' way of life. In later life, Magadza moved to teaching, and became a professor at his alma mater, the university of Zimbabwe. He is now retired and continues to write poetry, though keeps most of it for himself and his family.

When researching Chris Magadza's poetry, certain themes are bound to spring up. These themes are closely related to the history of Zimbabwe and its strides toward independence from Britain that just came to fruition in 1923. Many colonies of European imperialism view now show a disdain for European influence. This is a theme in Magadza's poem "Old Tree." Immediately, Magadza idealizes the tree as a deity and goes from there. He explains how it has endured for a very long time and has witnessed both the pre-imperial aspect of life and the decolonization efforts, and everything in between. Magadza, born in Zimbabwe, still reeling from the effects of being a British colony called Rhodesia, has seen the difference the British made, and reacts through his poetry in a generally bad way, but still sees hope, as in the last few lines of "Old Tree."

The Journey Through Experience

The search for knowledge is an age-old pastime of humans. They are constantly advancing into and out of higher levels in all subjects. This does not only include intellectual material, but the philosophical and spiritual as well. In fact, some prize the spiritual understanding of the world to be the utmost achievement in any one life. The Buddhist goal of existence is to reach this level of understanding and push out of the cycle of reincarnation. This coincides with the wave of modernism, some two millennia later, by focusing much more on the self than in previous generations. The spiritual journey needs to be isolated from the world, and given space for free thinking, and the modernist writers picked up on this since they focused on deviating from the "great machine" of society that everyone is pulled into. With this modernist theory affirmed by Buddhism, Hermann Hesse conceived Siddhartha, a story of a spiritually insatiable person who travels all over India, learning an enormous amount of material. Siddhartha is constantly searching for new aspects of life to study and master, especially the path to the expulsion of the Self, and Enlightenment. Ironically, however, it is this striving to achieve that is the largest detriment to his cause. Although the desire for new information is good, one cannot reach the utmost level of spirituality unless they throw off this desire, and let the information come in organically.

Siddhartha is a very gifted student, in everything he does. For example, he learns all the teachings his father has for him and needs more. "He had begun to suspect that his venerable father and his other teachers, all wise Brahmins, had already given him the richest and best part of their wisdom, had already poured their plenty into his waiting vessel, yet the vessel was not full" (Hesse 5). He is not contented with what he has learned. Like a child, he always wants what he does not have, but once he has it, it becomes worthless. This immaturity is also a central theme in Siddhartha's journey, as his arrogance gets him nowhere toward his ultimate goal. Among the Samanas, Siddhartha spends many years mastering their craft, learning how not to need anything. After a while, though, he grows annoyed at the nonexistent fruit this practice has bore, and questions another time the validity of his teachers. "'...I have little faith in words that come to us from teachers. But be that as it may, dear friend, I am prepared to hear these teachings, though in my heart I believe we have already tasted their finest fruit'" (Hesse 20). He has learned for years under the Samanas, yet does not believe he is getting enough. Just as arrogant as before, he abandons the Samanas for the Buddha, the only success story in many Hindus' strife. This ends unfruitful as well, and Siddhartha is left with a number of different teachers, from whom he has learned a lot, but that have not helped him in reaching his goal, so he decides to swear off teachers, and to learn from himself alone. As a last resort for seeking new knowledge, Siddhartha declares to be rid of teachers and doctrine. "I'll be my own teacher, my own pupil, I'll study myself, learn the secret that is Siddhartha" (Hesse 35). This is a particularly childish declaration, as completely swearing off something shows stubbornness and also cuts one off from a source of knowledge. He should be open to everyone and everything, but instead swears off teachers and decides to learn from himself, which has huge ramifications. Just the idea of this goes against his core beliefs. To get rid of the Self, Siddhartha should not embrace it and learn from it, but rid himself of ego. This is completely unseen by the main character and exemplifies his blind search for knowledge based on arrogance and immaturity.

The most obvious example of how Siddhartha's search for knowledge hurts his cause is his time with Kamala and the "child people." This chapter in Siddhartha's life does make room for additional knowledge, and the mastering of a new craft, love, but ultimately leads Siddhartha into despair and sorrow. He is introduced to the child people and immediately lust springs as his new test, a test that was not overcome. "'...Kamala, I would like to ask you to be my friend and teacher, for I know nothing of the art of which you are the master'" (Hesse 48). Wanting to learn from the child people is a huge indicator that Siddhartha is off his path. He had been committed to celibacy for his whole life but now is quickly wrapped up in the intricacies of love. He quickly, then, throws off his trappings of a Samana, and begins to become one of the child people, and likes it. "Simple is the life one leads here in the world, Siddhartha thought. There are no difficulties. Everything was difficult, laborious, and in the end hopeless when I was still a Samana" (Hesse 52). Siddhartha now forgets that there was a reason for his laborious endeavors as a Samana. He would now rather live an easy life and achieve very little than work hard and achieve enlightenment. He had previously scoffed at all people of the city, and gagged at lavish clothes and perfumes, but now he embraces it with open arms after his search for knowledge has been proven inconsequential. He spends many years living with the worldly, but stays a Samana at the core for a long time. Only slowly, and over the course of many years did his touch with spirituality ebb and fade away. He becomes a rich man, but without need he grows sorrowful, and colors lose their vivacity, life loses its allure. "The world had captured him: voluptuousness, lust, lethargy, and in the end even greed, the vice he'd always thought the most foolish and had despised and scorned above all others. Property, ownership, and riches had captured him in the end. No longer were they just games to him, trifles; they  had become chains and burdens" (Hesse 67). He is a child person now, and what he had looked down on and had just entered to gain more knowledge has become him. Knowing that there is in fact more to life, though, Siddhartha grows to disdain his life as a child person. He has learned the games of business and lavish living and now it is plain and unfulfilling. This leads to his abyss and hatred for himself, which is finally the exemplification of Siddhartha's maturation. This suffering is a necessary step along his journey and such is life. Life is full of hardships and suffering, but it all has a purpose, even if that purpose is not apparent yet. Siddhartha is passing through another threshold, and getting back on his path to enlightenment.

An extremely effective method of showing how the active search for knowledge does not succeed in finding enlightenment is by showing how enlightenment is actually achieved. Siddhartha does gain this level of spirituality in the end, and shows in itself the folly of his early practices. The first stepping stone to his achievement is in the very bottom of his abyss, wanting to throw himself into the river and die. This sets him on the right path, though, and makes him all the better for it. "Feeling profound weariness, he released his arm from around the tree trunk and rotated his body a little so as to let himself fall vertically, sink at last into the depths. With closed eyes, he sank toward death" (Hesse 74). This is Siddhartha's first step toward enlightenment because it is the first time he is letting himself be at the whims of nature. He is no longer trying to use it for knowledge, or riches, he is letting himself go. So it is no surprise that he is immediately rewarded for this. He hears Om, and then he had knowledge of Brahman, had knowledge of the indestructibility of life, had knowledge of all things divine that he had forgotten (Hesse 75). Once Siddhartha meets Vasudeva and becomes a ferryman alongside him, he is a completely new person, yet again. He reaches ever closer to Enlightenment and a big part of that is being passive. He does not search for knowledge, he simply listens. "But even more than Vasudeva could teach him, he learned from the river, which taught him unceasingly. Above all, it taught him how to listen -- how to listen with a quiet heart and a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgement, without opinion" (Hesse 90). His soul is waiting and open, in stark contrast to his previous outlook of gaining knowledge. He is open to all things, open to the doctrine of the water, the teachings of Vasudeva. Nothing is holding him back now from Enlightenment. All he has to do is wait. Siddhartha does indeed achieve Enlightenment shortly after Vasudeva does and leaves the river behind. His last act is to pass his gift onto Govinda, his kindred spirit, his soulmate. "Time is not real Govinda... No, in this sinner the future Buddha already exists-- now, today--all his future is already there" (Hesse 119-120). Siddhartha is saying that there is no time that is left waiting in between two stations of life. They are there in the present and always. Applying this to learning, it would be folly to seek knowledge actively, as Siddhartha once did, for the knowledge is already inside everybody. The enlightenment is just waiting to emerge. Siddhartha learned from the river to wait, and let the Buddha come out from within, not in from without. Everything is internal. The quote from David Foster Wallace's Laughing with Kafka immediately comes to mind: "You can ask them to imagine his art as a kind of door, that we approach and pound on this door, seeking admission desperate to enter, we pound and pound…finally, the door opens...and it opens outward: we've been inside what we wanted all along." Humans externalize everything when it really should be the opposite.

It takes Siddhartha a lifetime to realize that seeking information is not the right approach to gain Eternal wisdom, but all of this may well have been necessary. The process of maturation that Siddhartha endures was crucial to the learning process. Even Siddhartha says, "...I sorely needed sin, needed concupiscence, needed greed, vanity, and the most shameful despair to learn to stop resisting..." (Hesse 120). He needed to gain experience before all else. This suffering and deviation from his central goal only made him mature and wise. Wisdom is impossible to teach. It can only be gained through experience, just as Siddhartha was explaining to Govinda at the end of the novel. This maturation of Siddhartha shows that one cannot actively seek out Enlightenment and achieve it too. Siddhartha spent his entire youth seeking, and that set his journey back many decades, but Enlightenment is worth it. It is worth a lifetime of disappointment, sorrow, pain, and suffering. It is a goal that everybody, not just Buddhist, or Indians, has probably thought of at some point. But only a very select few can even come close to comprehending on this level, and thus its allure is so great.

Old Tree by Chris Magadza (Zimbabwe)

Old Tree

Old tree

Giant towering

Above the forest;

You

who saw the rise

Of ancient suns,

The fall of principalities,

The ageing of creation;

You

Who drank the drought

And bathed in mists

Of thousand winters

Cold;

You who heard

The rapture of mountains,

The breach of seas

And the angry thunder

Of broken waters

Icy;

Silent,

Timeless

In ageless majesty,

Sleepless guardian

Of mysteries old;

You

Whose confiding silence

Heard plotters

Whisper conspiracy

On your night probing branches;

You who heard

The savage angry cry

Of angel turned brute,

Seen the slaughter of

Father by son,

The rape of sister by brother,

The innocence of infancy

Starve to laughing demon;

Yet,

Every morning

A new orient bride

You kiss,

And sip the ancient nectars

from the earth's hidden veins;

and every blessing summer

Adorned in new blossom

More life

You bring on earth.

BP #34: Siddhartha Reflection

Hermann Hesse does an incredible job of reaching the readers on a spiritual level through his words. It is quite amazing, because these are just words. Words cannot match or begin to explain the emotions, can they? Even Siddhartha says in the book, that words are not as real. He says the emotions are falsified a bit the instant they are spoken (Hesse 121). This makes Hesse's writing very interesting, and enchanting. He makes the non-spirituals feel as if they were spiritual, only as long as they are captive to his words. Philosophy is so hard to materialize in writing that few are even taken seriously. Luckily, Siddhartha is a successful tale of the spiritual journey. And this journey is the same one as many other stories, and the same as the one defined by Joseph Campbell. Siddhartha is on a hero's journey just as Campbell  described it. For example, he has a very distinguishable abyss when he realizes he hasn't been living his life as he is supposed to. "All that was left for him to do was annihilate himself, smash to pieced the botched structure of his life, throw it away, hurl it t the feet of the mocking gods" (Hesse 74). He wished for death, and is pushed even to let himself fall into the river to feebly die.  It is the spiritual Siddartha that resurfaces and saves him, speaking the word Om, perfection. He also has a guide and mentor in the ferryman. "Siddhartha felt what a joy it was to be able to confide in such a listener, to entrust his life, his searching, his sorrow, to this welcoming heart" (Hesse 88). Vasudeva teaches Siddhartha his craft of listening, but is always the superior listener, and help Siddhartha greatly by listening to his sorrows and his life. This leads to his enlightenment, and proves the ferryman is Siddhartha's true guide among all his teachers.

Another theme that resurfaces time and again in the second half of this novel is the fluidity of life and its relations to water and its many forms. The river is commonly mentioned, and it is no coincidence that it is a river that saves Siddhartha from his abyss. This green river was a source of life, and was a baptismal solution to the main character's problem. It is also not a coincidence that Siddhartha is told by his guide, Vasudeva, to listen more than anything to the river. "'You will learn this,' Vasudeva said, 'but not from me. It was the river that taught me to listen, and it will  teach you as well. It knows everything, the river, and one can learn anything from it'" (Hesse 89). The river teaches anything and everything and is the ultimate answer to all of Siddhartha's questions and his search for Oneness. Once Siddhartha is enlightened, he passes on this gift of knowledge to Govinda, his soul mate. " He no onger saw the face of his friend Siddhartha; instead he saw other faces, many of them, a long series, a flowing river of faces, by the hundreds, by the thousands, all of them coming and fading away, and yet all of them appearing to be there at once..." (Hesse 125). This flowing river of life is a great way to exemplify the universe in its unimaginable complexity. Everything is moving, and changing, yet it is staying the same. Everything both is, and is not. Siddhartha explains how these are both true at the same time, because its entire existence is inside the whole time. There is no time or future to show how a person or thing has changed. That change has been inside the person or thing all along. A river shows the future, past, and present, and disproves time. Hermann Hesse did a wonderful thing in this novel, and it is very emotional to the very core. I enjoyed it very much, and can only wish I had the ability to think on such a level, or to even comprehend the ideas of enlightenment.

Siddartha Chapters 1-6 Reflection

Thus far in Siddartha, it can be easily seen that Siddartha is a person of conviction. When he gets an idea, he is one-hundred percent behind it and follows it until another idea comes along. For example, one day, basically out of the blew, Siddartha decides he wants to become a Samana. He will not be deterred and waits, standing, outside his father's house all night, until he is blessed. The same goes for when he finally quits his Samana group to seek out the Buddha, and when he refuses to become one of The Sublime One's followers. All of these decisions are stemmed from his insatiable spirit. He learns the ways of many groups very quickly. So quickly, in fact, he gets bored with one thing and must move on in an attempt to find some spiritual fulfillment. This can come across as arrogant in some parts, though. For instance, Siddartha, after hearing but one of Buddha's 'teaching sessions,' he says that he has learned everything he can from the Buddha, who is the only one in the world who has actually achieved what Siddartha is seeking. But he thinks this is the wrong way to handle it, and so moves on.

Another characteristic I have observed of Siddartha is a sort of forgetfulness. He is forgetful in the way that he throws previous convictions aside in new situations. There are two prime examples of this. One is when he completely swears off of desire and the senses, but then not much later he uses his senses, and feels desire. The diction of the author makes this very noticeable, and a bit annoying, as Siddartha seems to be one who doesn't back up one's words. He becomes not credible (not incredible) because of this, in my mind. The other example, is how, right after his encounter with the Sukyamuni, he declares that he will not be dragged down by any teachers or doctrines. He will be his own teacher and pupil. Yet once he comes to the city, he actively seeks out Kamala as a teacher. Siddartha, still young and a bit childish (which Siddartha calls all normal people in the world), jumps around through conflicting ideas very often. He wants to be abnormal, more spiritual, but he is not there yet. He is a "flip-flopper" right now and needs to settle into a single goal. I predict this will happen, but it will be interesting to see what pushes him to the final stage of his journey. And once, we get there, Siddartha might be looking for a completely different thing than he is right now.