Siddhartha Quotes

Burroughs talks about how the sea is contradictory on its own, in its immensity. It mocks its victims “with the most horrible thirst”, and it smites everything like a hammer, while sometimes caressing like the hand of a lady. The breaking of its waves is violent, yet as it reaches the sands it reminds us of the rustle of a child's

Tim Winton’s short story, ‘The Water Was Dark and it Went Forever Down’, depicts a nameless, adolescent girl who is battling the voices inside her head along with the powerful punishments at the hands of her inebriated mother. The key concerns of life and death are portrayed through the girl’s viewpoint as she compares her life with her sad, depressed mother. Anonymous as she is, the girl constantly makes an attempt to escape the outbursts, that come as a result to her mother’s drinking, by submerging herself into the water. An extended metaphor is used when expressing the girl as a machine and her will to continue surviving in her sombre life.

Initially Mai holds a negative perspective in “Mai closed her eyes and tried to recall her father's stories— but they rang shallow against the dense roaring slabs of water she'd just seen.” The hydrographia personifies the natural elements creating a pathetic fallacy, which reflects Mai’s initially pessimistic attitude as her hope is crushed by the harsh reality of her experiences on the boat. However, this provocative experience catalyses a transformed perception, as upon reaching the shore she thinks: “The boat would land - they would all land.” The epistrophe of “land” and high modality of “would” shows her renewed hopeful perspective, which would not have been possible without physically experiencing the harshness of being on the boat. Thus, the ability for discoveries to be far-reaching and transformative is seen through these provocative and confronting external experiences that transform individual perceptions.

In addition to adding a sense of insecurity to the story, the water, as Judd is “staring down”, symbolizes him taking a reflective look into both his life, and the idea of life(2). Furthermore, the rushing of water signifies life itself, and how it can be smooth, rocky, and even sometimes unstable. In addition to this new insight Judd gains, he also obtains a sense of adulthood as a result of this newfound knowledge. This understanding that “they would lose me” is an idea that very scarcely seen, in which not many people make at all in their

For this essay, I am going to be discussing the short story “Swimming” found on the New Yorker, and written by T. Cooper. I have chosen this story for many reasons, and among those reasons is the personal sadness I felt when I first read the story, almost as if the universe was placing a certain theme in my life, that only the main character could possibly understand. I am talking about running, the god given instinct felt by all men, inherent in the nature of fear, and brought out in all who feel sadness in its full intensity. Though in my short life I can not compare the sadness I have felt with that of losing a child at my own hand, but if I had been placed in that situation, if fate had tempted my soul with such a sequence of events, I would like to think I could find the strength to endure and the courage to not abandon all I had previously known. Yet I am able to reconcile the themes of grief, the mode of recovery, and the longing to escape such a terrible tale. I think in this piece, as I will discuss in later parts, the author was able to put into words a transformation we rarely get to observe in closeness, the kind of transformation that turns a kind man into a “just man” the kind of death that turns this world from a beautiful and happy place into a world that is closing in on our main character, that is forcing him to surface temporarily and gasp for air, much like he does when he finds peace in the water, wading breath after air, after sea. I firmly believe that

have to point out the changes, appearance of autodrive machine like the Capsule is the only knew thing.

river looked at him with a thousand eyes-green, white, crystal, sky blue. How he loved this rover, hoe it enchanted him, how grateful he was to it!

Though written in a very light and simple manner, the poem comes across as something very profound, laden with meaning through its incongruities. The persona, wanting to see something, often goes to the well and looks down at the water to see it. This certain search below the water's surface can be compared to man's search beneath the human experience for meaning, for certainty.

Evocative and visceral, Irving Layton’s “The Swimmer” follows the impassioned swim of a man as a metaphor for man’s relation to nature. The poem begins with the titular swimmer breaking away from his vessel and into the sea. Layton elaborates upon the swimmer’s journey underwater, as a mystical intercourse between man and Earth. In the final stanza, the man is expelled by the sea and returned to land. In “The Swimmer”, through the description of an incestuous relationship communicated through erotic imagery, Layton expounds on the theme of the connected, yet ultimately detached, relationship between man and nature.

inside a body, to dwell on earth and live righteously to the belief of God and all of what the bible says. If one does this they will be granted to live in heaven, or suffer for eternity in hell. It is this idea of hell that acts as a catalyst for invoking fear of dying at a pre-ripe age. Kids are often daunted when they partake in a questionable act with hell being explained as a horrible place to ultimately end up. People fear of dying, and how they will die, because they may have not lived a holy life.

The structure of a novel enables it to embody, integrate and communicate its content by revealing its role in the creation and perception of it. A complex structure such as that of Robert Drewe’s work The Drowner, published in 1996, refers to the interrelation or arrangement of parts in a complex entity1. Drewe’s novel is a multi-faceted epic love story presenting a fable of European ambitions in an alien landscape, and a magnificently sustained metaphor of water as the life and death force2. The main concerns of the novel include concerns about love, life, death and human frailty. These concerns are explored through the complex structure of the novel. That is, through its symbolic title, prologues, and division into sections. The

The book “A River Runs Through It” was written by Norman Maclean, who used many literary devices throughout his writing. The story follows a representation of Norman Maclean’s life, in which he recalls memories of his brother, Paul, and their fishing adventures. While the story itself is fun and intriguing, it is Maclean’s use of figurative language that grabs the reader’s attention. One can almost relive the moments mentioned as if he/she were there when it happened. The three particular literary devices that stood out were simile, personification, and tone.

In the work of African descended writers’, water is used as a common symbol. In Edwidge Danticat's Krik? Krak!, Jacques Roumain’s Masters of the Dew, and Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow, tears, rivers, the sea and other forms of water are used to symbolize change. More specifically, it symbolizes the change between life and death; freedom and confinement. The three writers use water as an ironic symbol, representing life, liberty, and their contradictions.

With Vasudeva, Siddhartha begins spiritually as a child. By destroying his old Self, Siddhartha is no longer hindered by "too much knowledge...too much doing and striving." (99) Thus, as a child Siddhartha begins to hear the river, and learn from it. In his education, the concept of time repeatedly arises. The river is seen as always flowing and changing, just as the world does. Siddhartha comes to understand that life is transitory, a cycle that is eternally repeating. Looking at the river, it is made of water, water from the rains. Before that, the water was in the clouds, the air, evaporated from the river. Travelling from sky to earth, brook to river, the river is always present. The only change is how it is reflected in the ephemeral life. The continual flow from one to another illustrates the principle of timelessness.

The opening line “I’ve Known Rivers” (1) describes the narrator of the way a grandpa tells a grandchild a story. This gives the impressions he has lived a long life and spent quality time on the river and is about to share his story. One could argue that he has grown wise and intelligent because of his age and known what life had to offer. The narrator uses a simile to compare the age of the river to the age of the earth “ancient as the world” (2). This comparison establishes the river being as old as the planet. Next, there is a metaphor that tells the reader that the world and rivers are older than human beings “flow of blood in human veins” (3). The reader can make the correlation that we are the same as rivers. Human veins have the same look as rivers and blood flow through the veins just like water flowing down a river. The narrator compares the depth of his soul with the depth of water with “My soul has grown deep like the rivers” (4). We can refer to the depths of African Americans history and their overall existence on the earth. Rivers take years to erode the soil below and is always becoming deeper and deeper. The narrator is telling the reader that after all the racism he has seen has taken something out of him mentally and physically. His thoughts become mentally exhausted and just keeps flowing just like rivers. The idea of