Row, Row, Row Your Boat...

Pages 82-95 of Siddhartha are made up of the chapter "The Ferryman". This is the story of how Siddhartha returns from a land of abundance and riches, and changes once again as he goes back home. He meets a ferryman called Vasudeva who takes him across the river. 

It seems as though Siddhartha (I'm going to refer to him as Sid from now on) is in love with this river. It's the same one that he crossed while traveling with the Samanas. But I'm confident that he has a good reason for this. In page 82 Sid says "How he loved this river, how it enchanted him , how gratefull he was to it." I believe that the reasin for this is that it symbolizes the change he took with the Samanas. 

But his love for the river isn't only physical. He also wants to be in it all the time, like when he asks the ferryman if he could be the new ferryman. He really wanted to be in this river the rest of his life.