AP PREP POST 1: SIDDHARTHA

1) If you were the river, would you be enlightenment or would you know enlightenment? In other words, what’s up with the river? What is it’s relation to enlightenment?

- (http://www.shmoop.com/siddhartha/questions.html)

- This question tells me that the AP test will require a lot of critical thinking, and deep understanding of a text.

- If I was the river I would know enlightenment. The river seems to symbolize the way enlightenment is, serene and flowing in one direction, "going with the flow."

2) What does enlightenment look like in Siddhartha? Is it a feeling? An attitude?

- (http://www.shmoop.com/siddhartha/questions.html)

- This question tells me that you don't only need to understand text, but you also need to be able to understand the main point of a main character, and make connections between the character, his/her meaning, and its relationship.

- Enlightenment in Siddhartha looks more like a goal or a personality. It appears to me that the whole book he seems to be trying to compare himself to being enlightened, and he tries to better himself to get him enlightened. Like when someone has a tendency to act a certain way, but wants to act a different way so they work hard to act the way they want.

3) Siddhartha features substantial activity and narrative action. At the same time, it is about one man’s largely internal spiritual quest. What is the relationship between the internal and exterior worlds of Siddhartha? How does Siddhartha negotiate these worlds?

- (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/siddhartha/)

-This question shows me that it is important to know what makes a character, that character. When analyzing a character there is several things that make a character act, and appear a certain ways. The author will give you several different clues that will help depict the character, and you need to be able to recognize them, and make connections.

- The relationship between the two worlds is one world shows where his in the mind, the external, and the other shows where he wants to be, enlightenment, the internal. Siddhartha negotiates these two worlds by comparing where he is in the external world as compared to his internal world.

4) Discuss this quote: “One must find the source within one’s own Self, one must

possess it. Everything else was seeking—a detour, error.”

- (http://mrsvernonsapclass.blogspot.com/2011/09/siddhartha.html)

- This question shows me that it will be important to be able to take i short excerpt, and make connection to a given.

- This quote is saying that one must find there own reason for doing something, and own that, make it personal and meaningful to them. Every other reason was going to lead you down the wrong path or toward a false answer.

5) Why does he fear that he will not find it in prescribed religious teachings?

-http://www.studymode.com/essays/Siddhartha-Reading-Questions-641015.html

- The question shows i will need to be able to identify meaningful passages in a text, and write about them in an effective way to show understanding.

- He doesn't think he will find what he is looking for in other religious views because he thinks that they have done what they were intended to do for him, and still needs help finding enlightenment.