Atonement With the Father (First Blog Post)

  In Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, Siddhartha’s version of the step atonement with the father takes part in three steps, where at the last step of atonement he reaches the ultimate boon. Through the drawing out the atonement stage and combining it with the ultimate boon, the author is able to emphasize the importance of unity and accepting all things good and bad as the path to peace, Siddhartha’s ultimate goal. 

Atonement with the father as described by Wikipedia is the step in which “the hero must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in their life”. The thing which holds the “ultimate power” in Siddhartha’s life is his wound, which is a representation of this desire to be with his son. In Siddhartha’s step of atonement with the father he goes through three stages of confrontation. Each step he comes closer to unity, the ultimate boon, which brings him closer to confronting and embracing his pain. 

The first stage of atonement with the father is when Siddhartha reflects on the similarity of his and his father's pains at the river. At this moment he is beginning to understand the unity of the world and starts embracing his wound through understanding it as the wound of his father. He realizes he is not the only one that has had to experience this pain. At the end of his reflection “There was still no serenity and conquest of his suffering. Yet he was hopeful and…he was filled with an unconquerable desire to confess to Vasudeva” (132). He still has not learned to embrace the wound, but his shared experience with his father gives him strength to continue along and seek further connections. 

The second stage is when he has his therapy with Vasudeva. In this stage he has moved from keeping the wound to himself to then sharing it with another person. After his session with Vasudeva, he says “Disclosing the wound to this listener was the same as bathing it in the river, until it became cool” (133).  The wound no longer is such a painful part of himself since he is beginning to see it as another piece of the whole as represented in the quote by the wound becoming a part of the river. He has strengthened sense of unity by sharing his pains with Vasudeva, but he has not yet fully come to love it. 

The last stage is his meeting with the river when he finally hears the word om from the river, the accumulation of all things good and bad. When he is explaining the enlightenment he received from the river to Govinda he says, “Everything is good, everything is perfect” (144). Through understanding the unity of all things, he has come to embrace his pain instead of suffering it. 

Through each step of atonement, the author builds up the feeling of connection until the point full connection to everything, giving him his peace. In this build up Herman Hesse is able to drive home the message of unity of the world. When he finally reaches the point where he can see himself as a part of the world’s unity and accomplishes his journey reaching the ultimate boon by finally confronting all parts of himself good and bad.