The Flexibility of Siddhartha's Call to Adventure

    While reading Siddhartha, I noticed that while as of now it does still seem to follow the main points of Joseph Campbell’s 17-step template of the hero’s journey, it was hard at times to pinpoint exactly which step fit which scene. But, the further along I got in the novel, the easier it became to determine how the story of Siddhartha fit along the baseline of the hero’s journey template. However, for this blog post I wanted to compare and contrast how some different scenes could apply to the same major point in the template for the Hero’s Journey: The Call to Adventure. By taking these two scenes that could fit the same spot in the template and comparing them, my goal is to show how the Hero’s Journey template is more flexible than it initially appears, as multiple scenes could fit with the same step. 

    While we’re sure to have read more by the time this post is actually completed and posted on the blog, the chapters that we’ve read as a class up to the point where I first started to write this post had completed up through the first section of the Hero’s Journey: the “Known” world–in my opinion at least. There are a couple of scenes within the first couple of chapters that could align with the “Call to Adventure” step, some of which could overlap in a way with the eventual following step “The Crossing of the Threshold”. The first of which that could apply to the Call to Adventure is basically the first chapter of the book. In this first chapter Siddhartha is described as a young man who everybody loves and admires, but Siddhartha himself is deeply dissatisfied with his place in life. One could say that the call is when Siddhartha has something of a crisis about his faith, which was also related to how he believes the teachers of his father and other Brahmin aren’t working to help him read enlightenment. It’s after this crisis that he tells his friend Govinda that he has plans to join a group of wanderers called the Samana. Siddhartha then confronts his father about his decision to leave, he isn’t let go easily, but he eventually gets his fathers permission and proceeds on his way. It’s obvious that this could qualify as part of the Call to adventure, especially considering how it left to Siddhartha leaving what could very well be considered his “known world”, but there is another chapter that follows during Siddhartha’s time as a Samana that could also fit the Call to Adventure parameters. 

    While what described in the paragraph above could very well fit what the parameters of the “Call to Adventure” step entail, it’s because it was practically the first chapter of the novel that there were differing opinions on where that actually was what was meant to be considered the call. The second moment came not much later while Siddhartha and Govinda had been with the Samanas for some time. It had been a couple years, and Siddhartha was once again doubting if the Samana’s were going to be able to teach him anything when there had been talk around the town that the Samanas were staying at the time that the Buddha, or at least a very Buddha-like man had come into the same town as well. Govinda suggests that he and Siddhartha should go and meet this Buddha, and Siddhartha, while doubtful if the Buddhe is actually who he says he is, agrees, saying that he might as well considering that he wasn’t able to achieve his goal with the Samanas anyway. The two then go to meet the Buddha, where from there they listen to the Buddha’s teaching, Govinda decides to become a follower, and Siddhartha leaves to continue his journey on his own. 

    These two aforementioned scenes have the similarity of being scenes that could apply to the first step of the 17 step template that we were shown at the beginning of the semester, however the different times that they appear in the novel itself allow for different interpretations of which scene really fits the “Call to Adventure” step. I think what this does is show how one could take the Hero’s Journey template and make it more flexible than it originally appears. These two scenes both have their place in the narrative, even if it can be argued where exactly that place is.