Siddhartha Review
Written: 28-11-2025
I have mixed feelings about this book. I think Hermann Hesse captures a moving story about the life of a man, but I don't know if I disagree with the way Hermann conveys fulfilment and happiness. Maybe it is just too simple, that you must accept that everything just is and not worry too much about it. Yet even Siddhartha cannot solely stick to this for his entire life in the book and it takes his life to truly understand it. Maybe I am too young to appreciate it or maybe it is not true. I guess I will have to find out.
I usually tend toward the principle of everything in moderation and Siddhartha's life is one of extremes. Extreme greed vs extreme depravity, extreme emotion vs no emotion, carelessness vs caring too much. The story uses these extremes to convey its ideas and yet something about they way they are used feels wrong. I feel like I have missed something even though there was nothing that I felt I misunderstood in the book.
I want to like the principles of this book and stoicism and yet they miss something of the human experience. Letting things be, not allowing your emotions to drive you, results in a life that is uninteresting. If I allow myself to accept everything it removes ambition, joy, love, sorrow, anger and with them the desire to do anything. If that is the case what is the value in my life?
The book puts forward the idea that everything comes from something else, almost a reincarnation type of idea but more that what we are made of comes from something else, which came from something else before it and so on. That we are at some point everything and nothing and that because time flows like a river we are all things at once. This is a nice idea, but I struggle to believe it because I believe there is something that makes me uniquely me and you uniquely you and separates us from the physical stuff we are made of. This is our brain, our memories, our self. As soon as the brain stops functioning that is lost and before it develops it doesn't exist. I am, only for the time I am alive and you are only for the time you are alive. So we have to make the most of it, experience what we can, live life to the full and in the moment.
Maybe it is my lack of belief in spirituality and religion that is holding me back from appreciating this or maybe I just don't want to. Either way the book was an enjoyable read that has made me think so I will commend it for that.