I have been "into" these novellas. I enjoy reading , especially about religion, but I cannot find time ....that is where novellas have come in. I just finished "Siddhartha" for the second time. Although it has been years since I have read it in the first place I am glad I did. Since becoming more into studying religion it has made the book more enjoyable. Still questions remain... I suppose that leads to more research.......
• Even though the novel is formally divided into two parts, the first dealing with the Samanas and Gotama Buddha, the second with Kamala and then the ferryman, Siddhartha has a strict tripartite body. These three parts correspond to the three stages through which Siddhartha passes on his path to enlightenment: the stage of the mind: walking with the ascetics and listening to the Buddha; the stage of the flesh: tutelage in the arts of love with Kamala and the arts of commerce with Kamaswami; and finally the transcendence: the epiphany by the river and a father's lesson in love. Further, the action in each of these stages works together in a system of three. Even Siddhartha himself is projected out into the three possibilities of being, Govinda, Gotama, and Vasudeva. When reading I observed many instances in which even such minute units as sentences, clauses, and phrases adopt this same tripartite structure. Once I saw this trinity skeleton around which the novel is formed, it was easy to pick out the examples of it at work.

• The crossing of the river is the forsaking of the life of an ascetic. It is a death to the old ways and a rebirth into the new life as a man of the world. The ferryman however impresses him with his kindness and reminds him of Govinda. When he goes to the town, he meets Kamala who represents earthly pleasures. She introduces him to the sensual pleasures of the world. Later in the novel he is learning to recognize selfishness as he settles into the life of a merchant under the use of Kamaswami, but he still has the inner stillness. "You are Kamala and no one else, and within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself, just as I can. Few people have that capacity and yet everyone could have it."

• The true path now takes him onto right effort, which is serving others; he is developing good impulses and noble thoughts, under the watchful gaze of the ferryman known as Vasudeva. Vasudeva tells him that the river has many voices "the voices of all living creatures are in its voice." The Right mindfulness, which is the seventh path and is evident when his son returns and he buries Kamala his former lover. He is caught between a desire to guide his son in the one true path and the state of his conscience, which say that the son has his own path to follow. Vasudeva helps him through this problem which is the final death. They build another boat to search for the son who has stolen their boat and crossed over to the other side. Siddhartha eventually realizes that his son is lost to him and recalls his own childhood and the fact that he left his father to search for the one true path to enlightenment.

• Even if Siddhartha is supposedly about a young Indian Brahmin and his quest for himself, full of Buddhist terms and almost deliberately Indian in its setting, there is a certain degree to, which Hesse rejects this Eastern philosophy which he so carefully invokes? After all, Siddhartha does take his leave of the Buddha in the end. Instead of following the Buddha's Eightfold Path, he ultimately attains nirvana by living the life of the Buddha for himself, which is a completely Western twist on the Buddhist philosophy. In several other areas, it becomes clear that the setting of India is used not for its own sake, but to better express a general mythic quality. I feel to better accept this novel as a simple story of a Buddha's development, the reader would have to ignore the fact this was written by a questioning man from Germany.