The readings "Letter to a Young Poet" by Ranier Maria Rilke and Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha," do much to advance their readers' understanding of the question "What is the Good Life?" Taken together, they suggest a certain path to attaining the Good Life that is centered around the physical and spiritual journey in which every individual embarks, but key differences exist between them as Letter to a Young Poet focuses on the individual living life's questions while Siddhartha proclaims that the individual must renounce the worldly pursuit of such questions in order to fully understand and obtain the "Good Life."
             The works of Ranier Maria Rilke and Hermann Hesse are united on several ideas regarding achieving the "Good Life," beginning with the central concept of a journey that is both physical and spiritual in nature. The destination of this journey is the "Good Life," which is reached through the attainment of knowledge. This notion of the attainment of knowledge emerges in Letter to a Young Poet with the advice given by the speaker that people should live life's questions, and perhaps in doing so, they may live into their answers (Rilke). Siddhartha's transformations from a Brahmin to an aesthetic to a rich man and finally to the Buddha demonstrate this notion (Hesse). Furthermore, both readings emphasize a cessation of the pursuit of knowledge to obtain the Enlightenment experienced by Siddhartha. As a result, a paradox develops within the readings: each depicts an Enlightenment as the final destination of the individual's journey but insists on the abandonment of the search for this Enlightenment as a means of achieving it.
             Similar to this paradox, which represents a contradiction within each reading, there are also differences between the readings themselves. The speaker in Letter to a Young Poet urges the poet to love the questions life poses and ...