Traces of Buddhism in Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha

You have to read a ‘Buddhist novel’ and write an essay on it of some 1000-1500
words. Key question should be a quest for ‘Traces of Buddhism’. ‘Traces of Buddhism’
may be the title of the essay, but you may also think of a title yourself. Traces can
consist of an obvious mentioning of Buddhist concepts or quotes from Buddhist texts
for instance, but there can also be more implicit Buddhist ideas. It is your task to look
for these traces and analyze them. You can ask yourself: is this book truly ‘Buddhist’,
should I call it ‘Buddhist’ if this choice was up to me (if so and if not why?). Does the
book have a Buddhist message? Is Buddhism central in the book or just mentioned in
short.