The River in Siddhartha

A major motif that occurs in Herman Hesse's Siddhartha is the reoccurance of the river. several times within the text the river occurs, in both symbolic and literal occurance. At the beggining of the first chapter of part two of the book, the river first makes it's main appearance. "When Siddhartha awoke, the pale river shimmered past the door of the hut, and in the forest the cry of an owl rang out, deep and clear" (Pg.48). The first thing he visits after his parting from Govinda is a river, where he meets a kind ferryman. His crossing the river was like a metaphor for his crossing the "boundary" from his life of spirituality to his new life of material. It symbolizes a transfer of himself from a knowing "adult" in his eyes to a normal person, or a "child" in his eyes. The river then appears again when he realizes his material life is not providing him adaquete happiness and that he is not coming close to achiving true knowledge. He wanders to the river, and there he  "reached the long river in the wood, the same river across which a ferryman had once taken him when he was still a young man..." (Pg. 88). It is at this river, before which he wishes for seperation from his material life, that he falls into a deep sleep muttering the word Om. His sleep is like a purgery of his senses and material life, and returning him to a life of potential spirituality. It seemed to him as if he had become a different person completely, and had now returned to the correct path, as if a child, learning spirituality anew. after his great revelation, he decides "I will remain by this river... A friendly ferryman took me across... my path once led from his hut to a new life which is now old and dead. May my present path, my new life, start from there." (Pg 101). Siddharthat sees that his life is beginning new, and just as it did so long ago for him at that river, he would like annother rebirth to occur at the river metaphoricly.