AP PREP POST 1: SIDDHARTHA

Here's a site with plenty of questions that could easily be put down as ambiguous essay questions.
http://www.greatbooks.org/resources/guides/novels/siddhartha/

From this questions on this site, you can tell that you have to understand the characters surroundings and how it effects them. More specifically, the supporting characters they interact with.

Numbers 1, 3, 6 and are the questions that got my most attention, so I'll go with those. It's not five questions, but it's been two years since I read the book and some of the other questions are very specific. (Cool part is they direct you to pages!)

1) What does Siddhartha mean when he refers to the "path of paths" that must be found? (p. 17) Why is he so certain that neither the Brahmans nor the samanas have found it?
A: I feel Siddhartha is referring to the path of the individual. It's one thing to follow suit with everyone else and adapt and it's another to be completely  unique and yourself. The fact that the Brahmans and Samanas all follow the same old routine shows they all merely adopted that life style and it didn't come from within. The "path of paths" is not with them because they all follow the same path, there is no inner one.
3) What is the connection between Siddhartha losing his friend Govinda to Gautama and Siddhartha's "awakening"? What does it mean that "the awakening man was on the way to himself"? (p. 37)
A: In Siddhartha's "awakening" he mentions multiple times how he is now "alone". Losing Govinda was one of the first most important things he loses that leads him to this awakening. Now that he's on his way to himself, he's on his way to discovery and enlightenment of the individual.
6) After waking up by the river, why does Siddhartha say, "I have nothing, I know nothing, I can do nothing, I have learned nothing. How wondrous this is!"? (p. 84)
A: This quote makes me think back to childhood. Being naive and knowing nothing. He finds it wondrous for the same reasons being a child was wondrous. Not knowing anything means not knowing of all the bad and evil in this world, being able to view it in a new light. It also means being able to learn all over again, one of the greatest human experiences.