irst. Silent he stood in the rain, water dripping from his hair... Silently Siddhartha crouched among the thorns. Blood dripped from his smarting skin, ulcers formed, and Siddhartha remained stiff, motionless, till no more blood flowed, till there was no more pricking, no more smarting.”(14). Had the novel been written as “a fly on the wall” the reader would not know what Siddhartha was trying to accomplish, and that he is a man who “Has one single goal- to become empty... to experience pure thought. (14)”. A reader without being able to get into Siddhartha's mind might think that he is just a psychopath who mutilates himself. When Siddhartha finally found a teacher who had something to offer him, one might have expected him to stay. This man, this Buddha, was truly a holy man to his fingertips. Never had Siddhartha esteemed a man so much, never had he loved a man so much. (28)”. But, again, because the reader has knowledge of Siddhartha’s thought process you know before he leaves that he wasn’t going to stay. “ Siddhartha did not reply. He was not very curious about the teachings. He did not think they would teach him anything new (28)...As Siddhartha left the grove in which the Buddha, the Perfect One, remained, in which Govinda remained, he felt that he had also left his former life behind him in the grove (37).” Siddhartha left because, “He realized that he was no longer a youth; he was now a man... He had to leave him; he could not accept his teachings. (37-38)”. I don't think that him leaving would make much sense if you didn’t know his reasons for leaving.When Siddhartha first meets Kamala he resists the urge to fulfill his manly desires. But as time goes on, he eventually gives in to the primitive desire that he had resisted for so long. Now if you only skimmed the book, you might have missed why Siddhartha finally gave in. “Before evening of th...
