AP Prep Post #1 Siddhartha part A

A bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel, recounts the psychological or moral development of its protagonist from youth to maturity, when this character recognizes his or her place in the world. Select a single pivotal moment in the psychological or moral development of the protagonist of a bildungsroman. Then write a well-organized essay that analyzes how that single moment shapes the meaning of the work as a whole. You may choose a work from the list below or one of comparable literary merit. Do not merely summarize the plot.

The Adventures of Augie March

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

All the Pretty Horses

Atonement

Black Boy

Breath, Eyes, Memory

Brown Girl, Brownstones

The Catcher in the Rye

Cat’s Eye

The Chosen

The Cider House Rules

The Color Purple

David Copperfield

The God of Small Things

The Grapes of Wrath

Great Expectations

The House on Mango Street

Invisible Man

Jane Eyre

Jasmine

The Joy Luck Club

The Joys of Motherhood

The Namesake

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Purple Hibiscus

The Secret Life of Bees

A Separate Peace

Siddhartha

Song of Solomon

The Sorrows of Young Werther

The Sound and the Fury

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Their Eyes Were Watching God

A Thousand Splendid Suns

To Kill a Mockingbird

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

The Woman Warrior

(http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/ap/apcentral/ap13_frq_eng_lit.pdf) 

In Siddhartha the main character reaches a pivotal moment when he find himself stopped in the middle of a road philosophically thinking about the choices he has made in his life. He finds himself "stopped in the road, frozen as if he saw a snake." He realizes that he has spent much of his life doing what others told him, what his family wanted, what his religion required of him. In my class we have a student who is a Brahmin and she shared with us how society has very high expectations of Brahmins and that if one were to venture away from their religion, then they were seen as a danger and looked down upon.

Siddhartha realizes, as he is traveling to his family, that he is trapped in those expectations. The expectations of being a priest and doing what others want him to do and not what his heart wants him to do. He realizes that there is a world for him out there and he is in charge of where he goes from there. Towards the end of the passage, he starts walking again with a new sense of purpose. His own purpose.