This book makes a boast on
the front; ‘65 MILLION COPIES SOLD’. Inside, Coelho himself states that, since
originally published in his native Brazil at the end of the ‘80s, it has since
been translated into 74 languages. Impressive statistics by anyone’s standards,
but what actually is this little book?
The story is very basic. A boy called Santiago – for the
entirety of the novel known only as ‘the boy’ – is a shepherd in southern
Spain. He suffers from recurring dreams (i.e. he’s had the same dream twice),
about supposed treasure beneath the Pyramids of Giza, and wonders what to do
about it. He is swiftly browbeaten, by a Gypsy soothsayer and a mysterious old
man who claims to be a king, into finally upping sticks and embarking on the
journey, and sets out to cross North Africa to get to the goal. Along the way
he meets a number of other characters, a shopkeeper, an Englishman, and the
alchemist who gave his title to the book, a couple of whom convince him to
believe in their crackpot ideas about life, and he eventually achieves his
dreams.
It’s a book with the central theme of spirituality. The
author is trying to pass on his ideas to the reader, and the story, the
characters, the events, are all in service of that aim. I’m sure it’s all well and
good if you want to convert to that way of thinking, but that should not
detract from the fact that it’s a work of fiction, and thus it shall be
reviewed as such.
As
a work of fiction, The Alchemist is
terrible. The story is basic, the characters are un-engaging, and the prose is
dull and flaccid. Its simplicity as a novel is surely designed to present as
small a barrier as possible between the reader and the ideas held within, but it
only ends up feeling demeaning. ‘Here are my ideas,’ says the book; ‘and here’s
a parable so that people like you can
understand them.’ That’s what it is; a parable, a simplified and unambiguous
allegory designed to teach others, as seen many times in the Christian gospels.
There is a serious problem with parables; they enforce a distinct divide
between a speaker and a listener. The teacher, who claims to have higher
knowledge about something, imparts their knowledge onto the student by
deliberately simplifying it for them into a story. It’s a common technique for those
who try to impart ideas relating to intangible concepts, because there’s
nothing solid for them to actually use in order to convince an audience. While
there’s nothing wrong with the method in itself, that it’s the most effective
tool for imparting superstitions and unqualified ideas makes them naturally
dubious in my eyes.
The
ideas themselves are the meat of the story – the plot only being the potatoes –
and so they therefore need a slightly closer inspection. In the first section
of the book, the boy meets a man claiming to be a king, who reveals the truth
of the world to him in a few key phrases, which the boy repeats to himself at
pertinent moments throughout:
“That’s
the way it always is,” said the old man. “It’s called the principle of favorability.
When you play cards for the first time, you are almost sure to win. Beginner’s
luck.” [...]
“In
order to find the treasure, you will have to follow the omens. God has prepared
a path for everyone to follow. You just have to read the omens that he left for
you.” [...]
“People
learn, early in their lives, what is their reason for being,” said the old man,
with a certain bitterness. “Maybe that’s why they give up on it so early, too.
But that’s the way it is.” [Excerpts, pp. 20-31]
There
is no ambiguity; no scepticism is allowed here. Here we have a character
outlining his interpretation of life as though it were fact, which the boy –
and by extension the reader – is supposed to hold as absolute truth for the
rest of his life, without question. You will not have the chance of forgetting,
as they are repeated throughout the story in repeated bite-sized phrases,
squashing the concepts in even if you don’t want them – after all, why would you not want them, considering they’re all true! It’s ridiculous;
abstract superstitions like beginner’s luck, destiny, and omens – both good and
bad – are presented with all the certitude and reasonability as if they were
the laws of physics.
And
on that note, there’s a serious glaring problem with the whole premise of the
story. The book is about freedom essentially; the freedom to follow your
dreams, to ignore other people when they are denying you what you want – but in
the book this only ends up being completely negated by the concept of
‘destiny;’ that is, what you’re ‘meant’ to be doing. In that case, the path is
predetermined – someone or something else has already decided what you should
be doing, and you should be following that rather than following what other
humans are telling you to do. The protagonist is able to serve his own
interests, but those interests are actually the interests of other characters –
the old man/king person essentially forces him down this path, as too does the
alchemist we meet later. They outline that there is a choice, but the
incentives are definitely weighted in favour of a one ‘correct’ path –
following the path will end in a reward, while failing to do so will result in
punishment; the punishment of not being rewarded. To go against the more
powerful beings would only result in failure, in the removal of their favour,
and in that case there’s no real freedom; only the freedom to obey, the freedom to
choose a different set of chains.
One
last thing that annoys me about the book; the ambiguous time period. The book
knows where it is all right; in Andalusia, southern Spain, embarking across
North Africa towards Egypt. But as to when
this is taking place, there is no real certainty. The whole book is sparse
on actual details, so that the places only really end up as names in which the
story takes place. We’ve got a shepherd, a country called Spain, and references
to a Moorish invasion a long, long time ago, at first making me think it late Mediaeval
or early Modern period, but then the concept of ‘tickets to Africa’ are
introduced. No indication of how he actually crosses the Straits of Gibraltar;
no indication of whether it’s a sailing ship, a steam-belching iron contraption
or a modern petrol-glugging monster. Guns are certainly a thing, and then
there’s a reference to Esperanto, a constructed language devised fairly
recently. But, as the novel is painfully lacking in actual details, there’s no
way to know for sure – it must be modern, but if so then the modern world has
been almost totally banished from the narrative. People use ‘gold-pieces’ as
currency, swords see frequent use in a world that has developed firearms,
Esperanto is a language in a world without any sign of border security at
international crossings, and yet a boy wishing to get from Spain to Egypt
doesn’t think of just booking passage on a boat heading straight there?
It
really, really bugs me.
Maybe
I am being a bit unnecessarily harsh on The
Alchemist, and what it’s trying to do. In the end it’s just a simple,
unambiguous story about encouraging people to better themselves, to work
through adversity, and to not have to give up what they truly want out of life.
I don’t even mind that it’s just a reworked version of a classic folk tale;
after all, the same story can be presented numerous times if new angles can be
found – and The Alchemist does at
least find a slightly different angle. All the same though, my rational mind
found Coelho’s wishy-washy story a bit too violent a breach of reason, and
hence it impaired my enjoyment of the thing. I would certainly not recommend
it, but then it can easily just brandish its impressive statistics as a defence
against my criticism, considering that that’s the only firm basis it has for purporting
to tell the truth.
The Biblioist
Coelho, Paulo. The Alchemist. Harper Collins: St. Ives.
(2012 [First published 1988])
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