“No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it.”
Paulo Coelho’s allegorical adventure novel, The Alchemist, was released in 1988 and became an international bestseller. It has been read by movie stars and presidents and fits into the vague mold of spiritual/motivational/self-help books, but its thinly guised New Age philosophy is unfortunate and disconcerting. It’s didactic, cliche, and written at a junior high reading level.
The book’s narrative tries to be whimsical and enchanting. Santiago, a young Andalusian shepherd, sees a Gypsy fortune teller about his recurring dream. This encounter begins his quest from the ruins of a church to the Egyptian pyramids, where he was told he will find treasure. Soon after beginning his adventure, Santiago meets Melchizidek, the King of Salem.1 He tells Santiago of each individual’s Personal Legend. “It’s what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins t o convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend.”
After being robbed of all his money, Santiago spends about a year working for a crystal merchant in order to save enough to buy a new flock of sheep, but once he saves enough he decides to resume his trip to the pyramids. During his travels, he meets an Englishman who is seeking an alchemist. He reads the Englishman’s alchemy books but finds that he learns better from experience than books. The caravan that they travel with seeks shelter from the military skirmishes in the desert by staying within a oasis that serves as a neutral zone, where Santiago meets an Arabian girl named Fatima, and he falls in love at first sight. Though he is torn between following his Personal Legend and staying with Fatima, he learns that he must not sacrifice his destiny to love.
Santiago meets the alchemist, who teaches him many things as they travel together to the pyramids. When they are at the mercy of a tribe of militant Arabs, Santiago must commune with the wind, the sun, and “the hand that wrote all,” transforming himself into a whirlwind that demonstrates his power to the chief.
He is robbed again within sight of the pyramids. When he explains he came all this way because of his recurring dream the robber scoffs at him, and tells him that he had a recurring dream as well. The robber’s dream was that there was buried treasure beneath a ruined church, but he decided not to search for it. Santiago is filled with joy because he knows exactly where the buried treasure is—right where he started his adventure.
Despite what I think are good intentions, the message of The Alchemist is actually very distressing. Like The Celestine Prophecy, the plot is negligible, and serves only as a device to deliver Coelho’s half-baked spiritual philosophy. Throughout the book, Coelho uses several instances of the phrase: “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” The book lacks anything resembling nuance, and so the distilled message is essentially: Each of us has a Personal Legend. Recognition and pursuit of that legend results in the entire universe conspiring to aid in our goal. Those who do not recognize their legends are not happy like those who do; and those who follow but do not realize their legend are simply afraid. Those who understand but do not pursue their legend are both afraid and unhappy.
Coelho plows forward without questioning any of this. And the result is not good; it reinforces the smugness of the self-satisfied, and the narcissism of the self-absorbed (I can see why Bill Clinton liked it); it tells the poor and sickly that they simply failed to want better for themselves, and are responsible for their own bad fortunes.2 Kind of odd for a Catholic to contradict the Sermon on the Mount, but whatever.
Making oneself the arbiter of truth is incredibly destructive to our lives and to society. “Follow your heart” is often terrible advice, because our hearts are fickle. Our feelings are not continual sources of truth that is beyond the comprehension of reason. We have all had desires that in hindsight are revealed to have been unhealthy. Coelho’s encouragement to refrain from doubting one’s legend is also troublesome. Refusing to doubt blinds us, and makes us willfully ignorant. It is dishonest to never question why we believe what we do, or to consider that someone in disagreement with us may be correct. Our concern for the wants of the individual is detrimental to our communities.
Much can be lost in translation, and it may be the case that the contrived nature of this book feels artificial due to that fact. It tries to be a parable, but ends up tripping over itself too many times. For instance, why did Santiago have to become a sorcerer with the ability to teleport? Santiago learns the standard aphorism, “it’s about the journey, not the destination,” but then, he also claims the buried treasure all for himself, ending the book in a cloud of moral ambiguity. He began the book as a simple shepherd, content and fulfilled. He listened to the gypsy fortune teller and Melchizedek tell him that he was not content as a shepherd, and so had to go in search of treasure; and the proposition that finding literal gold is better than being content is never questioned. The weird mix of religious ideas comes across as condescending and pretentious—Melchizedek, Urim and Thummim, alchemy, the Philosopher’s Stone, the Elixir of Life, predestination, animism, The Koran, etc. is just an unhealthy blend.
I shudder to think how many of 150 million people who bought this book were charmed by its pseudo-philosophical platitudes and thought it was conveying some deep truth; after all, it is unfortunately considered to be one of those “life-changing” books. To be fair, there is probably a very small subsection of young people who could find courage within these pages to buck their parents restrictive career expectations, or something along those lines; but the book is perceived to be some profound text. In reality, The Alchemist makes a mockery of an earnest search for truth, meaning, and spirituality. It handwaves its shortcomings away by glossing them in simple, reassuring New Age ideas that quell the anxious mind. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” “You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say.” “Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life.”
It is not impossible to write a book like this—read Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha (or a handful of other Hesse books), Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, or even Aesop’s Fables; but The Alchemist is simply bereft of real meaning. It’s not evil, just weak, and it falls well short of its reputation.
1. Melchizedek is mentioned in the 14th chapter of Genesis, blessing Abraham and bringing bread and wine; later, in the book of Hebrews, Jesus is referred to as “a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.”
2. I strongly feel that many problems in modern society are due to a lack of personal responsibility and increased reliance on the government. But, like I said, nuance is important. It’s not that people are irresponsible regarding identifying their destiny; more like, people willfully choose to engage in destructive habits instead of practically working to better themselves.