Monday, November 17th
• I will write in a fresh and creative way.
• I will analyze symbolic aspects of the setting.
• What is an aphorism?
• “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely” (Lord Acton)
• “Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience
deceptive, judgment difficult.” (Hippocrates)
• “The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying
away small stones.” [William Faulkner]
• “Life’s Tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too
late.” [Benjamin Franklin]
• “Life is a tale told by an idiot — full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.” (Shakespeare’s Macbeth)
• Aphorism is a statement of truth or opinion
expressed in a concise and witty manner.
• An original thought about life spoken or written
in a concise and memorable form.
• Three-word tradeoffs.
• No clichés!
• When one ends, begin another.
• There will be a much shorter quiz on Thursday
or Friday. It will be like the last one, but it will not be
open note. It will still be open book.
• Hesse was fascintated by the dualistic nature of
existence mind and body.
• Siddhartha experiments with and exhausts both
possibilities.
• Father’s house 
• With the Samanas
• With Kamala and Kamaswami 
• At the River with the Ferryman 
“Above all, he learned from it how to listen, to
listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul,
without passion, without desire, without judgment,
without opinions” (106).
He learns how to listen to both at the same time.
• What do you make of all this? What does
Siddhartha learn about time? Can you
make any sense of it?
• He learned the secret from the river that there is no such
thing as time.
• It is only the present moment
• It “flowed and flowed yet it was always there. It was
always the same yet at every moment it was new” (102).
• The river is everywhere at the same time.
• It all adds up to one, unified, total entity.
• When you try to break time down into measureable
amounts or you try to break one’s lifetime into separate
periods, you detract from the unity of things.
• “Siddhartha’s previous lives were also not in the past,
and his death and his return to Brahma are not in the
future. Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has
reality and presence.”
• Or in other words, every part of him, every part of his
life is with him in the present. (This kind of reminds me
of Willy Loman and Arthur Miller playing with time
and reality.)
• I hope you’re paying attention to all of these
beatific smiles! Siddhartha and Vasudeva are
smiling up a storm!
• What do you think the river might symbolize?
Before you answer this, take some time to draw the
river using the details mentioned in this chapter.
• What’s on each side of the river? How many times
does Siddhartha cross the river?
• Can you find a way to depict the sounds of the
river?
• Where are Siddhartha and Vasudeva?
• In Buddhist symbolism, a river symbolizes an obstacle
to cross. This is not the case for Siddhartha, right?
• Siddhartha feels that his life is like a river.
• What is on one side of the river?
• What is on the other?
• How does he synthesize both sides together?
The landscape of Siddhartha’s soul.
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Timelessness
Oneness/Unity
Totality
Harmony
• Silently to yourself.
• I will put up a question to consider in a few
minutes. I don’t want you to spoil a key event.
• Why isn’t Siddhartha sad when Kamala dies?
What comforts him?
• What makes life indestructible?
• Remember that Siddhartha realized that killing himself
would not have destroyed the bird in his chest, his soul.
It was part of something larger than just the shell of his
body.
• He loses Kamala but gains his son.