“Your soul is the whole world” (Hesse 7). Although the value of a soul is something that cannot be underestimated, the belief that it is the entire world leaves no room for many more people. In Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha the main character spends his life searching for answers from the world, only to discover that the answers were within him all along. But when Siddhartha comes to this conclusion, he has abandoned everyone who has ever loved him, and he has done so in what he calls the justifiable name of the soul. Siddhartha finds his happiness, peace of body, mind and soul, but at a cost that is certainly not his alone. He abandons his parents in favor of the Samanas; he abandons the Samanas and his best friend Govinda for city life; he abandons city life and the relationships he has formed in it in favor of the unknown, only to then rediscover what he considers to be his place in the world, a life as a ferryman. Siddhartha throws away his family every time he is struck by a fit of restlessness and, in doing so, makes family seem irrelevant, unimportant, and ultimately unnecessary. Siddhartha is immensely selfish and does not deserve the contentment he finds living as a ferryman; rather, he deserves to suffer eternally the agony of abandonment that he inflicted on his mother and father, on his friend Govinda, but above all on his son and the woman who brought him into the world. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In his first act of desertion, Siddhartha leaves behind his mother and father to find the path to fulfillment through the Samana ascetics. With this departure from his idyllic village life, he sets a precedent that he will continue to follow throughout his life. While leaving his parents is not incomprehensible, as he truly believes there is more to the world than ritual mantras and Brahmin meditation, it is the fact that it was done in vain that makes it terrible to see. "When someone searches... then it easily happens that his eyes only see what he is looking for, and he is unable to find anything, not to welcome anything because he always thinks only of what he is looking for, because he has a purpose, because he is obsessed with his goal”' (140). Siddhartha sees only his own desire for answers, which concerns his soul and the world as a whole, but he never stops seeing what he does as a result from it what he wants, but as Samana he only learns to be disgusted by it. This is why he leaves his family: to become bitter and empty of any real self, because this is what he and his fellow Samanas believe to be the path to "enlightenment". detesting the same world from which he asks for maximum privileges, to guarantee him wisdom and understanding, he recognizes that in the end he achieved little. However, Siddhartha never stops thinking that perhaps he was wrong, that perhaps abandoning his mother and father was not the way towards enlightenment. Siddhartha is unable to grasp the unequivocal value of a family that loves him without reservations, just as he is unable to fully appreciate the value of the same love of his friend Govinda. Govinda, who also leaves behind his home and family, his entire life, out of loyalty to Siddhartha, is also left behind by the ungrateful narcissist, once again a fugitive. In an act that seems to come naturally to him, Siddhartha leaves Govinda when he chooses to follow the Buddha, the so-called “illustrious” one, because he finds what he considers a flaw in the Buddha's preaching, demonstrating both Siddhartha's attitude as unrivaled arrogance and his inability to reciprocate his love and devotion.