The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho has had a fascinating life, including battles with faith, mental institutions, pilgrimage, kidnapping, torture and the pursuit of alternative lifestyles. From such a rich experience came The Alchemist, a simple fable about a Shepherd boy in pursuit of his dreams. If you’re looking for an easy to read story with bite-sized (repetitive) life lessons on every page, this is for you.

Good news first: this is a fable, and supposed to be taken metaphorically - therefore the characters and obstacles met by the protagonist are representative of challenges faced in life. The general moral of these sections is that there is always something to learn, and a different perspective to find - nothing wrong with that. I think that some repeated messages in the book are by and large good ones; it’s by no means the first book to put forth the maxim of “When you want something, all the universe conspires to help you to achieve it.” It encourages the reader to hold tight to their dream, and in doing so the fates will align and you will succeed - which I can understand could be a life-changing message of self-confidence needed for some readers. Coelho is big on spirituality, and tapping into ‘the language of the world’ / ‘spirit of the world’, and especially listening to your heart.

Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there.

Here’s what I found disappointing (spoilers below):

1. Where is the responsibility? The narrative bases its morals on the importance of following your dream and your heart in order to achieve your goals, however it fails to recognise that the women in this story should have space for a dream as well. The main female character is Fatima, a ‘Desert Woman’, whose fate it seems is to sit around and pine into the wind for her beloved to return. Really? It feels like the only people allowed to employ the principles applied by the Shepherd (give up everything, freedom to start from scratch 3 times over) are those without real life responsibilities. It’s a bit hard to pursue a far-off dream when you have to put food on the table, or raise children. I’m not being cynical, I’m a feminist.
2. The dream was to seek treasure. When the treasure was found, he gave a tenth to the gypsy woman and then it’s suggested he goes off to find his desert woman. Soo… the final message is seek, find, keep for self, repeat? Does deep spirituality seems to smell exactly like the capitalist, individualist ideal to anyone else?
3. I was genuinely expecting a big reveal at the end, and I was left hanging. Sure, I get that there were plenty of nuggets of wisdom throughout the short tale, and maybe the point is that the pleasure is in the process - but the boy at least gets his treasure chest! I’m still searching.
   
   The Alchemist was hugely popular and successful, so it obviously hits the right chord with many, many people all over the world. On the other hand, I’ve read lots of review that like me, didn’t quite get the hype. I guess it’s a bit of a marmite book…