Siddhartha:
The Son
Feraco
Search for Human Potential
17 October 2013
“The Son” poses Siddhartha with
his greatest challenge yet: how to
raise a preadolescent who isn’t
beholden to him in any way.
He realizes (consciously, at least)
that the boy has no connection to
him, and therefore no reason to
love him. (Must love be earned?)
He also realizes that his son will
not be happy living with him and
Vasudeva; their life holds as little
for him as the Brahmins’ held for
Siddhartha in his youth.
Yet he keeps him there anyway!
His desire to save his foolish son
from suffering is so great that it
causes him to repeat the mistakes
of the past – indeed, the same ones
his father made with him.
In a supremely ironic
masterstroke, Siddhartha turns not
the forest, but the river, into a sort
of permawomb for his son.
Unsurprisingly, many months
pass, and Siddhartha makes no
progress.
His son is just as stubborn as he
once was – or, perhaps more
accurately, remains.
Once again, he has taken an
obsessive interest in
something…and once again, he’s
stagnating.
Vasudeva recognizes this and gently
nudges him through debate, trying to
get Siddhartha to see that even actions
taken with the best of intentions can be
harmful. (Baseline implications?)
When Siddhartha asks him what he
would do, the ferryman advocates
returning the boy to his old life, where
he can continue developing as he once
had.
It may not be the best choice if you’re
trying to protect him from making the
same mistakes you once made, but
counterintuitively, it’s the logical choice
if you don’t want to trap the boy in the
samsara cyle forever.
Do you really think you have committed your
follies in order to spare your son them? Can
you then protect your son from Samsara? How?
Through instruction, through prayers, through
exhortation? My dear friend, have you
forgotten that instructive story about
Siddhartha, the Brahmin’s son, which you once
told me here? Who protected Siddhartha the
Samana from Samsara, from sin, greed, and
folly? Could his father’s piety, his teacher’s
exhortations, his own knowledge, his own
seeking, protect him? Which father, which
teacher, could prevent him from living his own
life, from soiling himself with life, from loading
himself with sin, from swallowing the bitter
drink himself, from finding his own path? Do
you think, my dear friend, that anybody is
spared this path? Perhaps your little son,
because you would like to see him spared
sorrow and pain and disillusionment? But if
you were to die ten times for him, you would
not alter his destiny in the slightest.
It’s a testament to how badly
Siddhartha wants to protect the
boy that he still disregards
Vasudeva’s advice even though he
knows it’s solid counsel.
He reflects back on the
conversation he had with Kamala
back in “Amongst the People,”
about love and stars and falling
leaves, and realizes that he can’t
help himself.
As it so happens, Siddhartha was
wrong in Chapter 6 (about oh so many
things, actually): he can love, but he
doesn’t know how to love appropriately.
He only knows how to throw his entire
existence at a person, and he’s just
going to helplessly, hopelessly follow a
course that he recognizes, on some
level, is doomed.
He’s determined to leave his heart
open because he feels like this sort of
desire is necessary… which is why it
hurts so badly when he finally gets
punched.
If anything, Siddhartha’s son
wants his father to discipline him,
to force him to do things, to fill in
the blanks for him (shades of After
You…).
Siddhartha may not have wanted
strict guidance and doctrine when
he was younger, but his son needs
it.
Instead, by constantly
accommodating his son’s worst
behavior, Siddhartha
unintentionally but inevitably
dooms any chance he has of
connecting with the boy.
And it’s here that Hesse’s booklong obsession with cycles, with
relationships, and with the ways
we repeat our histories comes to
the fore.
When push comes to shove,
Siddhartha’s son stands before
him, just as Siddhartha once stood
before the Brahmin…but he’s
openly defiant, willing to leave
without his parent’s consent
(remember, Siddhartha wasn’t).
When Siddhartha made his request,
the Brahmin said “No” without really
saying “No.”
Consequently, Siddhartha refuses his
wish without refusing it; in the end, the
Brahmin says “Yes” without really
acknowledging that Siddhartha
requested to leave (his parting words to
his son –“Go into the forest and become
a Samana…” are phrased as a
command).
Here, the boy shouts that he wants to
leave…and Siddhartha, true to (cyclical)
form, doesn’t acknowledge it.
The next day, he’s stolen the
ferryman’s money and stolen across the
river in their boat.
Vasudeva calmly makes a new boat to
use to retrieve the old one (rolling with
life’s punches!), and urges Siddhartha
to just let the boy go.
Siddhartha won’t listen, but
everything Vasudeva says – everything
he thinks – is true, down to the missing
oar.
It’s never explicitly stated, but the
implication is that the boy broke the oar
and tossed it in the river.
He pursues his son, but it’s
futile…and when his search is over, only
Vasudeva remains by his side.
Siddhartha was sad when he lost
Kamala, but this is different: this is
devastating.
In Kamala’s case, there was nothing
he could have done to save her; with his
son, he’s left only with unanswerable
questions about how he failed the
person he loved most, and what else he
could have tried to do in order to avoid
his abandonment.
Frankly, after the life Siddhartha’s
led, and the lessons he hasn’t learned,
he kind of deserves what happens
here…
…But we still feel bad for him.