By the River

• physically: After leaving the city, Siddhartha journeyed into the forest to begin fresh. Although he was still dressed in his fine clothes and perfume, he was considered a wanderer once again. After a couple of days his health began to deteriorate as the hunger deprivation started. Siddhartha has nothing around him but the river. 
• mentally: Siddhartha realizes that the recent years of his life were a lie. Each thing he did was a step backwards in all of the progress that he made. Depression overwhelmed Siddhartha as he realized that he allowed greed and possessions to over take his life. These were things that he believed his whole life to be worthless. Siddartha's depression reached to its peak when he believed that there was nothing left to live for, and contemplated drowning himself in the river. 
• spiritually: Siddhartha felt dead on the inside when he first entered the forest after leaving the city. His happiness and satisfaction with life was nonexistent. Siddhartha was contemplating suicide until the phrase OM helped him remember the indestructibility of life. His encounter with Govinda also aided in Siddhartha's climb back to happiness. 
• socially: In the forest, Siddhartha was completely alone. One day sleeping under a tree, Siddhartha encounters his old childhood friend Govinda. At first Govinda does not recognize him, because both men have visibly aged. The two friends caught up on each others lives. This reencounter with Govinda positively helped Siddartha in realizing why he set out on the journey to find himself in the first place. 

*"I had to pass through so much ignorance, so much vice, such great misunderstanding, so much revulsion and disappointment and misery-just to become a child again and start over" (75).

- This quote describes Siddhartha's journey so far. After everything he had learned, it took the most negative thoughts for Siddhatha's journey to start fresh and to find himself again. It is important because it can almost be linked to reincarnation in the general sense. The religion believes that individuals go through each life, experiencing pain and hardships in hopes to achieve enlightenment. If they do not achieve enlightenment, then their whole life is swept clean as they are reincarnated into a new child and a new life. Luckily for Siddhartha, he reached the most negative point of thought and was saved by a realization, and essentially born again.