Siddhartha

Please read the first three pages of Chapter 5 for tomorrow.

Today we will review Chapter Four, The Awakening, and read and discuss Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.  For Friday, please prepare a one to two page essay which compares Chapter 4 with the poem.  Some questions to ponder:

• Do Whitman and Hesse share common goals?
• How does the tone of each work compare with the other?
• What ultimate conclusions do these two works reach?

You will need to cite and quote passages from the works as evidence of your generalizations.

Walt Whitman

Song of Myself

1
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.