The Alchemist

So I guess I am an anomaly because it seems like I like books that other people find really bad.  I really liked the message behind The Alchemist though, albeit the language style was utterly rudimentary and it sounded like it was a children’s book.  Paul Coelho writes the tale as if it is a child’s fairy tale of some sort.  He omits most names and the thought processes of the protagonist are simple at times.  But perhaps the author is using a simple prose style in order to reflect the simple nature of the philosophies that he touches opon within the text.  It’s as if the plot spells out philosophies of life, religion, love and creation in layman’s terms, in order for everyone to understand.  After all, the text claims that these ideas should be simple yet mankind makes them complex and therefore at times impossible to comprehend.  For example, the boy wonders why the Englishman makes it so complicated to learn about things such as the language of the world and the Alchemist explains that the secret to alchemy is simple, and men with their complicated philosophies tried to understand it but made it hard to understand simple concepts.

I guess one of the reasons I like this book so much is because, unless I heard wrong the other day in class, this book is really pessimistic, and I’m pretty sure I’m somewhat of a pessimist myself.  The idea of attaining your dreams according to The Alchemist is very similar to Nietzsche’s philosophy of happiness: basically you can only reach true happiness once you have experienced utter desolation and hell.  Once you have achieved complete misery, then you will finally understand how to truly be happy, sort of like how Eugene O’Neill portrays the philosophy in his play The Iceman Cometh, where the character Hickey spouts out this philosophy and claims that he now is happy.  I actually think this philosophy works (at least for me it did), and the boy does have to undergo a lot of pain until he realizes his personal legend, and then he is truly happy.  Hey it might not work for everyone, but it works for me.