Smile! Very few do.

Out of the several characters we meet, in Siddhartha, only three of them smile! The first to smile was Gotama; on page 27, Hesse writes, "With a secret smile, not unlike that of a healthy child, he walked along, peacefully, quietly." The second character to use his facial muscles was Vasudeva, "Vasudeva's smile was radient; it hovered brightly in all the wrinkles of his old face" (page 136). Lastly, the third character to smile was, indeed, Siddhartha. Hesse writes, "And Govinda saw that this mask-like smile, this smile of unity over the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness over the thousands of births and deaths-this smile of Siddhartha- was exactly the same as the calm, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps gracious, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he perceived it with awe a hundred times" (page 151). We see the smile used as a symbolism of enlightenment; therefore, any character that did not have a revalation of perfection or equanimity did not smile! Well Hesse did not write about it in order to bring great significance to these wise individuals.