Theme Dispersion

Now that the themes have been properly defined, it is possible to follow them across the story, which is quite valuable in the light of finding out how the story develops, and what themes and aspects of these themes play a part in Siddhartha’s philosophy over time. This is a technique that was explained in chapter 2 of this thesis as well, as used by Rockwell and Sinclair in their interpretation of Hume’s Dialogues. In this case, to follow the dispersion of each theme across the story, firstly a bar plot of the use of each theme divided by chapter was created, using the contents of the table in the previous section.84 _{The y-axis shows the relative frequency of words associated with each theme per}

chapter.

83 _{These variations were found by running a code that orders the words used in Siddhartha, both alphabetically}

and per chapter. Code by M.J. Jockers, Text Analysis with R for Students of Literature (Switzerland: Springer, 2014), p. 22.

84 _{The bar plot was created with the help of an edited version of code by Jockers, Text Analysis with R, pp.36-}

39 Figure 8. Relative word frequencies of words associated with the four themes

From these bar charts, a few valuable observations can be made. Firstly, of course, Lehre is a very present theme in the first few chapters, during which Siddhartha is still on the path of trying to reach salvation through a Lehre. What is more noteworthy about the plot portraying the use of Lehre however, is that not a single word associated with this theme is used in chapter 11, ‘Om’, in which Siddhartha reaches enlightenment. Throughout the novel it is made very clear that Lehre will not bring one closer to enlightenment, but clearly, this is not only implied by the dialogue and

Siddhartha’s thoughts across the story. Judging from this plot, it is literally shown in Hesse’s choice of words, as he does not associate the theme Lehre with the moment during which Siddhartha finally

40 reaches enlightenment at all. In chapter 12 the theme is picked up again, as Govinda and Siddhartha meet one last time and Govinda asks Siddhartha if he has a Lehre people can follow.

Secondly, ‘time’ and ‘love’ – two themes that are both better represented in the second half of the novel than in the first half – seem to correlate negatively with the graph showing the use of

Lehre. When Lehre takes up a significant portion of the words in a chapter, love and time are not as

well represented by far, and vice versa. This is all the more visible in the three dispersion plots below, showing how the three themes are dispersed across the novel.85 _{The plots show the presence and}

absence of words associated with each theme per word for the entire novel (novel time).

Figure 9. Dispersion plots for Lehre, love and time

From these plots, it can be concluded that a striking theme development is that the more Lehre disappears, the more significant love gets. As it is love that Hesse takes as what is most important, and what will lead to enlightenment, it is interesting to see how the representation of this particular theme increases towards the end of the story, where Siddhartha does indeed finally reach

41 enlightenment. Thus, Hesse’s vocabulary, which encompasses more words that are associated with love around the time that Siddhartha reaches enlightenment, does indeed show how love is considered vital to reaching said enlightenment.

Additionally, it is obvious from both the bar plot as well as the dispersion plot that time gets increasingly important throughout the novel. Of course, there is the process where Siddhartha starts realising that the world is an infinite cycle, to where he is freed from said cycle by reaching

enlightenment. A prominent aspect of the dispersion plots is how love ceases to be used for a while when words associated with time pick up, around the 20.000 word mark. When zooming in on this portion of the text, it gets clear that this is the part of the text where Siddhartha reflects on his life amongst the Kindermenschen, saying how he has always looked upon them and living a life like theirs with scorn. It is not that surprising, then, that time is very significant here, whereas love is not.

Figure 10. Words arounds the 20.000 word mark

Lastly, the searching theme seems to barely make an appearance at all, as can be seen from the bar plot in figure 8. Of course, as was mentioned, this is a theme that is more implicit than it is pervasive, like Lehre, love and time are. Of course, the entire novel thematises Siddhartha’s search for salvation; the words connected to this theme however are clearly not used often. They appear most often in chapters 3, 4 and 12. This is an instance where data acquired by computational techniques prompted me to return to the original text, to see why the theme turns up here most often. Chapter 3 very

42 clearly thematises ‘Suchen’. It mentions searching for oneself and searching for an adequate Lehre to follow, amongst others. From this chapter, it becomes very clear that Siddhartha’s mindset at this point is worlds apart from the one he has at the end of the story, as he tells Buddha that he truly believes that Buddha has reached enlightenment, that he has found salvation from death, and that he has found all this via his own search for it (‘Du hast die Erlösung vom Tode gefunden. Sie ist dir geworden aus deinem eigenen Suchen.’86_{). In chapter 4 Siddhartha reflects on this notion,}

emphasising that searching for enlightenment is not in fact a way to get there:

Atman suchte ich, Brahman suchte ich, ich war gewillt, mein Ich zu zerstücken und auseinander zu schälen, um in seinem unbekannten Innersten den Kern aller Schalen zu finden, den Atman, das Leben, das Göttliche, das Letzte. Ich selbst aber ging mir dabei verloren.87

These chapters are the phase in the novel when the notion of having to search for enlightenment is very heavily thematised. According to the bar plot, these chapters are indeed where the theme is featured most heavily and when looking back at the text, we can see that this is the part in his life where Siddhartha is searching for something to hold onto, above all. The spike of this theme in the last chapter can be explained by the speech Siddhartha gives to Govinda, saying that one should not in fact search for enlightenment.