Compare/ contrast the role of “love” in Siddhartha and in The Bridge of San Louis Rey. As love is such a broad concept, it will be necessary to narrow your topic down. For example, you might consider how both books explore parental love in particular ways, or how they explore sensual love, etc.
Siddhartha is one of the best works of Hermann Hesse, which legitimized the principles of postmodern literature in the culture of the last century. This work is the pearl of prose, with unprecedented depth insight on Eastern philosophy. This is a story of a boy, of austerity and maximalism of the youth, of hedonism of man-child, becoming a man and, finally, a simple awareness of the true meaning of life and the eternal search. The protagonist of this small German-Buddhist parable passes a long way of self-consciousness and self-determination, during which he indicates how much a person can change his outlook on life and death, while remaining himself. Moreover, even the awareness of this fact, this simple everyday truth comes to him not at once. After all, not everyone can afford to be honest in all aspects of their nature. At that time, aware of his lost knowledge, for a moment, a sharp idea to put an end to his body pierces to him. But he comes to the realization, that the most important thing is the time to come to the point, the culmination knowledge, that the most important thing in this world is love. The most important thing is the ability to love themselves, the people, the world and all beings in it under any circumstances. To feel and understand the life is possible only through a complete detachment from life and, at the same time, through a deep penetration in this life. One learns to live while patiently watching and listening to the life. According to the Hesse’s principle, love fills the existence with bright colors and allows everyone to experience the fullness of life. Love cannot be taught, but it can be acquired by everyone, it can be seen or felt (Siddhartha, 1993, p. 117).
Siddhartha’s principle says, that love is more important than anything else, it is the most important thing, it is an essence of being. To meet the world, to know, to explain it, to despise it - all this was manifested by a great thinker for the ordinary people. Only one thing is important for the hero - to learn to love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and himself, but and gaze upon the world, himself and all beings with love, with joy and respect. Siddhartha to leave the wheel of Samsara, first, had to be a whirl of this wheel. The study, the asceticism, the mundane life, with all its temptations and pleasures, finally, the test of love led Siddhartha to the spiritual enlightenment. Thus, he learned to understand the world and himself as a part of this world. When he managed to understand himself he became the Buddha. Within each of us lies the nature of the Buddha, the problem is that not everyone can display it. Siddhartha comes to the conclusion, that the meaning of love in the search for love itself. One cannot learn wisdom of love from anyone, he can obtain the knowledge from the outside, but he can understand it and put it in a logical system only be himself, whether it is an insight or a long road to enlightenment – all this is very individual. The main thing is to understand and accept your Atman as your alter ego and to give up all the excess. But how all this works knows only person himself.
The Bridge of San Louis Rey is the best adventure-philosophical novel by Thornton Wilder. It is the story of five pilgrims who died due to the collapse of the bridge in Peru in the 18th century. Wilder was trying to see the hand of Providence in the fate of these five people. Five fascinating and profound stories are woven together in one. It turned out to be a very beautiful and sad story about love. This is not a story about passion, but about the strong emotional attachment, which is above the sexes, the age and any social roles. The story is thin, light, and polyphonic as a gossamer, sometimes so delicate and beautiful in its verbal tangles, which take the breath away, and sometimes it is quite gray and evokes nostalgia. Glancing over the shoulder of a monk, who decided to create a science of religion and to reveal the hidden motives of Divine Providence, the reader discovers the story of the power of love, which is inflexible in her strength, which gives hope, which is overcoming, devastating and often deadly. We can remember that God is Love – although, I am not sure, if the author had implied this meaning, the implications of this statement are far from clear.
There is a lot of love, which could not fully incarnate in this book. There is a lot of love, that was not conveyed, explained and shown. If God is love, here again, we have a lot of questions. But if we cannot deal with God’s dispensation, then we can deal with love, loving is within our power. Thereafter, anybody cannot force anyone to convert to their faith, as anybody cannot make anyone to love by force. One of the Wilder’s heroes believes that the deprived of the ability to love (or rather, to suffer from love) cannot be called living, and, in any case, they cannot live once again after death. What is death truly is, the author does not know, no one knows. But Wilder knows, that life without love is priceless and meaningless. The author believes, that we will be loved as much as we will be forgotten. But even the memory is not necessary for true love. There is the land of the living and the land of the dead, and the bridge between them is love, the only meaning, the only salvation. The only thing that is left for us is only to love, because it is the only fragile bridge between life and death, man and another man, man and God (The Bridge Of San Luis Rey & Other Novels, 1926-1948, p. 107). Thus, we can say that the concept of love in the works of Hesse and Wilder at some point intersects, and in some differs. In both cases, the perfect love resembles the Lord’s love as the supreme value of the human world. According to them, the true love is the end point of the spiritual enlightenment. But if Hesse shows love as something highly spiritual, then Wilder’s love is shown from the perspective of the homeliness. In the first case we are dealing with a high and enlightened love, in the second - with the secular and mundane forms of love.
Works Cited
Hesse, Hermann. “Siddhartha”. Barcelona: Plaza & Janés, 1993. Print.
Wilder, Thornton. “The Bridge Of San Luis Rey & Other Novels”, 1926-1948. New York: Literary classics of the United States, 2009. Print.
