The basic theme of Siddhartha is relatively easy: In the end, you have to find your own path, but getting there is the hard part and no one can tell you how to do it. That sounds like the theme of a lot of books and movies these days, right? Your angst-suffering teens should dig right into that.

The challenge comes with understanding the distinct Eastern flavor of Siddhartha's spiritual quest. Students will need a lot of background knowledge to make sense of all this and not just find it weird. For the most part, Eastern religion is a non-cognitive tradition; it's not something one reads about and truly understands, but something one is supposed to intuit and infer (ah, the tricky inference). Students may not immediately understand the point of the novel, but with a little research and cultural context, we're confident you can help them connect.