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c_serpent 's review for:
The Alchemist
by Paulo Coelho
I am a deeply spiritual person. I believe very close to my heart that if we are not reverent, what are we doing? Why are we here?
So when people paraded this book around as a paragon of spiritual thought and enlightenment, I thought, okay. I like to listen to monks. I think that being reflective is incredibly important. Give me some mysticism. I want to know what you have to say, Coelho, if it resonates with people.
But the message in this book is this: everyone has his own personal legend that he needs to accomplish. Things will happen to you that push you down this path to your personal legend. If you are reflective and look inward, good things will happen to you, and you will end up exactly where you need to be. Everything is simple and can be understood.
I have many issues with all of these concepts. Sometimes, people don't have a clear path in life. Sometimes, we can't figure out what we need to do by looking inward. Sometimes, we end up doing something that is completely different from what we "ought" to be doing, and treating that as lost time because it didn't push you down the path to your personal legend fosters shame and guilt. Sometimes, bad and terrible things happen. These bad and terrible things will happen to you regardless; it does not matter if you know exactly what your personal legend is. If you are reflective and look inward, sometimes you are just sad. Good things don't always simply happen to you. You will end up exactly where you need to be because God is engaged in His world and He takes you there, but you sure can screw up things during that process, and you will be sad, and sometimes things that you see as your "personal legend" will not work out. Everything is definitely not simple, and we cannot possibly understand all of life.
This book encourages a simple-minded, narcissistic, passive outlook on life. My personal legend is what matters. If your good is involved in my personal legend, great. If it's not, sorry-- this is all about MY journey.
Life is hard and complicated and nuanced. People experience pain. We are created as creatures of community, and we rely on one another and need one another. Any book that denies these things and spews false platitudes instead is a damaging piece of work, and I think this book does more harm than good.
Moreover, the only female character in the book has no personal legend. She literally just waits for her boy to come back-- her boy who discovers that his soul is the same soul as the soul of God, that everything is connected, the boy who sees the pyramids and gets a great deal of treasure and also gets her, because she is his treasure.
Please can we treat women like people and not ideals ("woman as welcoming presence, woman as sense of belonging") or objects ("woman as treasure, woman as home")?
This book is written like a parable. This, I think, is the best thing about it. It sustains the story. But the story itself isn't worth much.
A star has been removed for the fact that women don't get personal legends. A star has been removed for harmful philosophies. A star has been removed because those harmful philosophies read like they were conceived by a (white) freshman philosophy major doing peyote in his dorm bathtub.
Two stars remain because I did find the voice interesting, and I didn't like want to kill Coelho at the end or anything.
Total score: 2/5 stars
So when people paraded this book around as a paragon of spiritual thought and enlightenment, I thought, okay. I like to listen to monks. I think that being reflective is incredibly important. Give me some mysticism. I want to know what you have to say, Coelho, if it resonates with people.
But the message in this book is this: everyone has his own personal legend that he needs to accomplish. Things will happen to you that push you down this path to your personal legend. If you are reflective and look inward, good things will happen to you, and you will end up exactly where you need to be. Everything is simple and can be understood.
I have many issues with all of these concepts. Sometimes, people don't have a clear path in life. Sometimes, we can't figure out what we need to do by looking inward. Sometimes, we end up doing something that is completely different from what we "ought" to be doing, and treating that as lost time because it didn't push you down the path to your personal legend fosters shame and guilt. Sometimes, bad and terrible things happen. These bad and terrible things will happen to you regardless; it does not matter if you know exactly what your personal legend is. If you are reflective and look inward, sometimes you are just sad. Good things don't always simply happen to you. You will end up exactly where you need to be because God is engaged in His world and He takes you there, but you sure can screw up things during that process, and you will be sad, and sometimes things that you see as your "personal legend" will not work out. Everything is definitely not simple, and we cannot possibly understand all of life.
This book encourages a simple-minded, narcissistic, passive outlook on life. My personal legend is what matters. If your good is involved in my personal legend, great. If it's not, sorry-- this is all about MY journey.
Life is hard and complicated and nuanced. People experience pain. We are created as creatures of community, and we rely on one another and need one another. Any book that denies these things and spews false platitudes instead is a damaging piece of work, and I think this book does more harm than good.
Moreover, the only female character in the book has no personal legend. She literally just waits for her boy to come back-- her boy who discovers that his soul is the same soul as the soul of God, that everything is connected, the boy who sees the pyramids and gets a great deal of treasure and also gets her, because she is his treasure.
Please can we treat women like people and not ideals ("woman as welcoming presence, woman as sense of belonging") or objects ("woman as treasure, woman as home")?
This book is written like a parable. This, I think, is the best thing about it. It sustains the story. But the story itself isn't worth much.
A star has been removed for the fact that women don't get personal legends. A star has been removed for harmful philosophies. A star has been removed because those harmful philosophies read like they were conceived by a (white) freshman philosophy major doing peyote in his dorm bathtub.
Two stars remain because I did find the voice interesting, and I didn't like want to kill Coelho at the end or anything.
Total score: 2/5 stars