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God's Long Summer

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God's Long Summer
God’s Long Summer

The novel Siddhartha and God’s Long Summer both show commonalities of religion as being an important part in the main characters of both books. In God’s Long Summer, each of the main individual characters in the first four chapters like the character Siddhartha, all were consistent with the statement, “What we believe matters.” All of the characters from both books used religion for giving them the strength to speak their minds, move on in their lives, and fight for what they believed in or wanted to accomplish. Also, in this book there is the statement of, “What we believe affects out vocation in relation to culture” and this pertains to the religious ideas and people’s courses of action through their faith and experiences they have went through. A person’s background determines his or her perspective on faith, so this shows how everyone is different. The statement, “What we believe matters” is the first point that sticks out to me. It is portrayed in the novel Siddhartha multiple times when Siddhartha goes through his different phases of being the son of a Braham, to living with the Samanas, to finally living on his own. He needed to try out different paths, so he would be about to find his own enlightenment or meaning of life. He would not feel whole as a person or have peace, until he found a path that caused him to experience enlightenment. The characters in God’s Long Summer were the same way. Fannie Lou Hamer, Sam Bowers, Douglas Hudgins, and Ed King all were fighting for something, and did not want to give up until they were successful. An example of this is when Mrs. Hamer was being beat in the county jail after trying to vote. Even after being beat, Hamer still used God as her guide to influence other people. She never backed down, but instead was comforted by God and instilled her faith for strength and acted in what she believed. Hamer was different than Siddhartha though, because she was out to change the world, and

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