The questions below are Due Friday, December 4.

Also, you must hand in your essay through turnitin.com by Monday, December 7, or have your grade for the paper and the semester replaced with an incomplete (IC).

Wesley

Siddhartha

December 3, 2015

Chapters 9-10

1.      What is it that brings Siddhartha feelings of love, enchantment, and gratitude?

2.      Who is Vasudeva?

3.      What is the first "secret from the river" that Siddhartha learns?

4.      Why do some people mistake Siddhartha and Vasudeva for brothers?

5.      Explain the metaphor, “I looked at my life and found that it also was a river” (p. 84).

What insight did Siddhartha gain from this realization?

6.      Explain how Siddhartha’s observations of Kamala as she lay dying reinforced his belief that time does not exist.

7.       Vasudeva observes, “You have experienced suffering...but I see that no sadness has entered your heart” (p. 89). Why has no sadness entered Siddhartha’s heart?

8.       Approximately how old is Siddhartha as he begins his life as a ferryman, and which of the Four Life Stages of Hinduism would Siddhartha now be entering

 The Four Life Stages

• the student – this stage is characterized by the individual being engaged in learning.

• the householder – this stage is characterized by the individual being engaged in the

domestic duties of maintaining a household.

• the retired person – this stage occurs when an individual is at or near the end of his

life. He has already been a householder and a student.

• the ascetic – this is a stage wherein the individual dedicates all his energy to spiritual

goals and rejects worldly pleasures.

9.      What one word does the river pronounce "when one is successful in hearing all its ten

thousand voices at the same time"?

10.   How does Siddhartha's son behave while living in the hut by the river?

11.  What does Vasudeva suggest Siddhartha should do for his son?

VOCABULARY ASSIGNMENT 5 Siddhartha

Part I: Using Prior Knowledge and Contextual Clues

Below are the sentences in which the vocabulary words appear in the text. Read the sentence.

Use any clues you can find in the sentence combined with your prior knowledge, and write what

you think the underlined words mean on the lines provided.

1. You have already learned from the river that it is good to strive downwards, to sink,

to seek the depths.

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2. I am not a learned man; I do not know how to talk and think. I only know how to

listen and be devout; otherwise I have learned nothing.

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3. I have taken thousands of people across and to all of them my river has been nothing

but a hindrance on their journey.

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4. As time went on his smile began to resemble the ferryman's, was almost equally

radiant, almost equally full of happiness, equally lighting up through a thousand little

wrinkles, equally childish, equally senile.

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5. Something emanated from the ferry and from both ferrymen that many of the

travelers felt.

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6. Siddhartha treated him with consideration and left him alone, for he respected his

grief.

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7. One day, when young Siddhartha was distressing his father with his defiance and

temper and had broken both rice bowls, Vasudeva took his friend aside in the

evening and talked to him.

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8. Do you not compel this arrogant, spoilt boy to live in a hut with two old banana

eaters, to whom even rice is a dainty, whose thoughts cannot be the same as his, ....

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9. He felt a deep love for the runaway boy, like a wound, and yet felt at the same time

that this wound was not intended to fester in him, but that it should heal.

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10. And when he felt the wound smarting, he whispered the word Om, filled himself with

Om.

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