Siddhartha's Journey as a Hero
What is the meaning of a hero in a story? A story would never be a satisfactory story without a hero, and without a journey a hero would never be existed. In every story, there's a meaning to the journey of the hero. The meaning of the journey can be really important; it's something that would open up the mind of the book to the reader. Significantly, the meaning of the story would teach the reader either of everyday life struggles or the true meaning of life. Most of the time, the author would express such thing through the actions of the hero and not through the mind of the hero. But in Herman Hesse's point of view, it's a whole new different hero's story. In Hesse's story, he did not express the teaching of life through the hero's actions but actually through the hero's mind. Hesse's most respectable work is "Siddhartha," in which he used a young Brahmin Indian, Siddhartha, to expresses his intellect. . In "Siddhartha," there is no expression through the action of the hero, but only through the language of the hero or through the thought of the hero. Hesse expresses that everyone's has a journey in their life, such as the Brahmin has a journey to reach Nirvana, to become the "Illustrious One." The significant thing of Hesse's intellect is that he uses only Siddhartha's journey to express what he wanted to tell his reader of self-knowledge in the Buddhism's world, even though Hesse is not from the Buddhism's world. In the beginning, Hesse expresses that Siddhartha is just an ordinary Brahmin, but also a clever and handsome one. At first, Siddhartha did not know the real meaning of life, he was never happy for most of his life. Siddhartha was not happy until he set out a journey with his friend Govinda and by himself to find out what's this happiness that he's missing. As his journey continue on, Siddhartha learned that love seemed to be the most important thing in life, as he struggles from his cleverness, and improved his most important aspect, self-knowledge.