Cities and Sons | Temptation in Hermann Hesse's _Siddhartha_

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Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha is a prime example of a hero's journey narrative; it's a novel where the titular character, Siddhartha, leaves the familiarity of his Brahmin lifestyle in search of Enlightenment and ultimately, himself. What's particularly notable about Siddhartha as a hero's journey narrative, however, is that there are a lot of ways you could divide and interpret the steps along Siddhartha's journey; among which, the most interesting to examine is undoubtedly the temptation stage. 

Temptation is an indispensable part of any hero's journey narrative. During this stage, the hero is led astray by their naïvety and moral imperfections. Material and physical desire—often manifesting into human form as a female "temptress"—distract the hero from their path. And in many iterations of the hero's journey, this stage of worldly temptation is very clearly shown to be counterproductive, actively hindering the hero in their quest to reach the ultimate goal (take Circe in The Odyssey, for example). 

As I mentioned earlier, temptation in Siddhartha can be read in many ways—the most straightforward being one where Siddhartha's descent into "ordinary" life and material greed is the temptation which leads him away from his path. Hesse (or at least, Hilda Rosner) definitely seems to go out of his way to make us assume that pleasure is incompatible with spiritual enlightenment by definition, as does Campbell's via his definition of temptations as "material desires." So, there's definitely an argument to be made for Siddhartha's city life being analogous to the temptation stage.

That said, there's another reading which I personally think fits a little nicer: Siddhartha's son as the temptation. 

The premise behind enlightenment, according to Siddhartha—and by association, Hesse—is experience. In the final chapter, Siddhartha emphasizes the value of his experiences as a Brahmin, Samana, wealthy businessman, and ferryman. He believes that the richness of his combined lived experiences is what helps him reach enlightenment. Because of this central idea, I find it difficult to call Siddhartha's time in the city "temptation," since it doesn't actually stray him from the path to enlightenment as Joseph Campbell describes in his hero's journey template. Rather, Siddhartha seems to explicitly state that his time in the city directly helps him on his journey later on, stating on page 144 that it was "necessary to sin," that he "needed lust," and had to "strive for property and experience nausea in order to learn not to resist them." Basically, what I'm getting at is the idea of Amor Fati (love of fate). As long as Siddhartha unquestioningly loves and follows his inner voice, he remains on the path to enlightenment.

Siddhartha's son, however, represents Siddhartha's desire to resist destiny. Vasudeva, the enlightened elder ferryman, tells Siddhartha on page 121 that his son's departure is simply inevitable. And yet, Siddhartha shows an aversion to what is destined; in this instance, he doesn't love the path. Notably, Siddhartha's son evokes the last of Siddhartha's worldly love and devotion, which stray him further from enlightenment. In this way, I think that Siddhartha's son represents a fitting candidate for the temptation stage in this novel. Naturally, I'm leaving out a good amount of nuance and more developed thinking for the sake of brevity, though I hope the general idea is still clear enough.

Now, Ben and many others would probably tell you that my argument is far-fetched, and they're not wrong. After all, Siddhartha is a book that's meant to be interpreted differently by each individual. I mean, the book itself is centered around the fact that wisdom can't be taught and that all of reality is subjective; wouldn't it be ironic for such a book to have just one true reading?

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