Paulo Coelho's the Alchemist -- An Orientalist Liquid Modern Fable
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Transcript of Paulo Coelho's the Alchemist -- An Orientalist Liquid Modern Fable
Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist
An Orientalist Liquid Modern Fable
B. C H A N D R A S
E K H A R1
Paulo Coelho’s best seller The Alchemist is a sensation in the
literary world. It was first published in 1988 in Portuguese and the
response was not promising, but its English version (1993) was soon
listed in the best seller inventory in USA. Afterward, it had been
translated into about 66 languages and found 100 million
consumers that ushered it into the Guinness Book of World Records.
Paulo Coelho (pronounced Paw-lu Co-el-o) is a Brazilian Roman
Catholic Christian. His novel pampers Christianity. In its Orientalist
perspective lurks an element of degrading and subjugating stance
towards Muslims. It articulates a penchant for individualism, and
discards community bonds in favour of self aggrandisement that has
been brought in by Modernity. It adores, to use the phrase of the
scintillating sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity. In the
backdrop of anachronistic pre-Modern setting and in the guise of
incongruent pseudo philosophical sayings, the novel deploys an
army of letters in the service of the yellow devil. He was honoured
by the highest bodies of Christianity and capitalism.
I
1 Author is a senior advocate based in Guntur, AP and Spl. Public Prosecutor in the High Court of AP. Email—[email protected]
1
There have been tensions between them (West and Islam)
since the seventh century—that is, since Islam emerged as a
political and ideological power able to challenge Christendom.
Rana Kabbani, A letter to
Christendom
Santiago, the hero of The Alchemist, was named after one of the disciples of
Jesus namely, Apostle James known as Saint Santiago Matamoras. The Saint
proselytized people in the northwestern Spain and was killed in AD 44 by a
Judaist Palestinian king. Christians believe that a few years earlier Magdalena
appeared to him at a place in the northwestern Spain. The place was later to
become Santiago de Compostela, one of the sanctimonious pilgrimage
centres. It has received, by a Papal ordinance long ago, the religious
significance that is held by Vatican and Jerusalem. In an interview to
www.lifepositive.com Coelho said, ‘My turning point was my pilgrimage (500
miles on foot) to Santiago de Compostela’. After that he could realise his
long cherished dream of writing the best-seller by publishing The Alchemist.
Earlier his life trajectory was quite different: consigned to mental asylum in
his teens by his parents, from where he escaped to become a hippie and
propagated free sex; addicted to drugs and thereafter found himself
attracted to black magic. And of course, there was some period in between
when he worked as a lyricist in a rock n’ roll band.
What kind of inspirational kick does the name Santiago offer? Saint Santiago
was not just a proselytizer. He was a warrior with undaunted courage and
was accredited with the honour of fighting beside the King Romero-I in
decisive battles against the Moors. Thus, he is celebrated as Saint Santiago-
the Moor-Slayer.
2
People of Morocco and Algeria are called Moors in the West from times
immemorial. Moors were North African tribes of Berber and of Arab descent.
They invaded Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal) and christened it as Al
Andalus and ruled it entirely or in part between 8 AD and 15 AD. After the
invasion of Christian kings from the North, the down fall of Moor Caliphate in
the region dawned slowly. It was total with the loss of Granada province in
Spain in 1492.
Saint Santiago – the Moor Slayer had been the inspirational figure in all the
blood spilling and spine chilling battles against Moors. His ferocious image of
killing the Moors riding on his white horse aroused Christian armies to kill
enemies. Though, by the time of Saint Santiago Muslim religion was yet to
come into being, in the later period as the Moors embraced Muslim religion,
he had become a metaphor for slaying Muslims. Not just that. In 17 th century
the Spaniards successfully frustrated Papal endeavor to bestow sainthood on
Sister Teresa, who proselytised people in the same region. Spaniards felt
that only Santiago should be their saint. Thus, the Moor slayer has been
associated with the Modern Spanish identity with all intensity.
The racist term ‘Moor’ was employed many a time in the novel to describe
the Arabs. Though the expression was initially applied to African Arabs by
Europeans, by the Middle ages it evolved as a synonym to all black (African)
Muslims, and later, to all Muslims. It was continued to be used pejoratively
ever since. Even in Portuguese, the mother tongue of Coelho in which the
novel was penned, Moor means tanned. It is synonymous with black person
in all Spanish speaking countries.
The hero of the novel hails from Andalusia, the hot-bed of battles between
Christians and Moors. It is the earliest place conquered by the Arabs [Moors]
in 710. After crossing Gibraltar Strait from North Africa, one has to step into
that region to enter into Iberian Peninsula. The hero crosses the Strait, in a
3
reverse order, at the Andalusian port city of Tarifa to enter into Moroccan
city of Tangier. At Tarifa, he remembers the invasion of Arabs: ‘As he walked
past the city’s castle, he interrupted his return, and climbed the stone ramp
that led to the top of the wall. From there, he could see Africa in the
distance. Someone had once told him that it was from there that the Moors
had come to occupy all of Spain’’ [p.25 – all page numbers as per
HarperCollins’ forty eighth impression of 2010].
After his hero entered Tangier, Paulo Coelho could no longer conceal his
intolerance towards Muslims. It is writ large in the reaction of the hero on
seeing the religious practices of the Muslims. In a busy street in the city ‘In
just a few hours he had seen men walking hand in hand, women with their
faces covered, and priests that climbed to the tops of towers and chanted—
as every one about him went to their knees and placed their foreheads on
the ground. ‘“A practice of infidels,” he said to himself’’ [p.32]. Here the
word ‘infidel’ has no pliable sense—person of a religion other than one’s
own, but it was used in the pejorative sense-- religious renegades, those who
breached religious trust. The term literally means one without faith and ‘it
was used by Christians to describe those who are perceived as enemies of
Christianity, especially Muslims’ [The Free Encyclopedia, Wikipedia]. With all
scorn in his mind the hero thought of the ‘infidels’ for they were immersed in
praying their God.
The rancour is more palpable afterwards. After saying to himself ‘a practice
of infidels’ Santiago remembers Saint Santiago—not as a disciple of Jesus,
nor as a pacific Apostle or non-violent proselytizer: ‘As a child in church, he
had always looked at the image of Saint Santiago Matamoras on his white
horse, his sword unsheathed, and figures such as these kneeling at his feet’
[p.32]. The novelist was comparing the Muslims who knelt down in religious
devotion with their fear-struck ancestors who stooped down before the Moor
Slayer of utmost religious importance. The author has deployed a
4
metaphorical language under the pretext of venting the memories of the
hero. That is not all. ‘The boy felt ill and terribly alone. The infidels had an
evil look about them’ [p.32]. How come the hero found evil look in the
Muslims who were immersed in religious devotion? The author has the
temerity of a hate preacher. To cull out the author’s lurking self I am
tempted to risk a reference to St. Martin Luther: ‘Who fights against the
Turks [Muslims]…should consider that he is fighting an enemy of God and a
blasphemer of Christ, indeed, the devil himself….’ (E. Grislis, ‘Luther and the
Turks’, The Muslim World, Vol.LXIV, No.3 –July 1974).
The novel exhibits racist tendencies towards even Gypsies. The hero gets
frightened on seeing the Gypsy women, a fortune-teller. ‘People said gypsies
spent their lives tricking others. It was also said that they had a pact with the
devil, and that they kidnapped children and, taking them away to their
mysterious camps, made them their slaves. As a child, the boy had always
been frightened to death that he would be captured by Gypsies, and this
childhood fear returned when the old woman took his hands in hers’ [P.11].
[Here, ‘people’ and his informants are his own people –‘The We’, and on the
other hand Gypsies, a la Muslims, are the Other, who ‘had no flocks of sheep’
but indulge in travel. They do not have fixed assets and defy sovereignties
and travel across countries and hence in the European psyche they have
always been suspect, says Zygmunt Bauman elsewhere]. What did the hero
do? Rather what was the course offered to him by the novelist to come out of
the nervousness? Santiago did what he would be later doing when he got ill
and terribly alone on seeing the Muslims offering prayer: ‘But, she has the
Sacred Heart of Jesus there, he thought, trying to reassure himself. He didn’t
want his hand to begin trembling, showing the old women that he was
fearful. He recited an Our Father silently’ [p.11]. Either it was fear of Muslims
or Gypsies the hero tries to get rid of it by invoking Christianity.
5
The hero even shows linguistic bigotry. After finding evil look in the Muslims
the novel reads thus: ‘Besides this, in the rush of his travels he had
forgotten a detail, which could keep him from his treasure for a long time:
only Arabic was spoken in this country’ [p.32]. Of late several European
juridical forums have been expressing similar irritation towards non-
European languages by holding that they are non-tariff barriers on the free
flow of capital and goods and thus to economic integration and globalization.
Paulo Coelho nurtures the linguacidal view point of the Empire as his hero’s
worry of Arabic is rooted in his treasure hunt.
The Alchemist is an example of the Orientalism which is an attitude of the
West (Occident) towards the East (Orient) expressed in looking down upon it,
and to reform and finally subjugate by overwhelming it. For Edward Said
raison d’etre of European novel is the Empire: ‘The values that enabled
empire and imperial exploitation also shaped not just the fiction writers like
Kipling, Foster and Conrad but the novels of even those figures we rarely
associate with imperialism, such as Austin, Dickens, Hardy and Henry James’.
He proved in his magnum opus Orientalism that there would be no European
novel had there been no imperialism.
The Alchemist is no exception since Paulo Coelho has internalized the values
and the culture of the Empire. The language, time and setting of the novel
and the subject-matter and its outlook are in accord with it. He has made the
colonial parlance his mother tongue. He has grudge against Arabs but no
grievance against Portugal for occupying Brazil and mutilating its indigenous
culture, and wiping out their languages and gods. With Papal blessings the
1494 Treaty of Tordesilas pacified Spain and Portugal, the rival colonial
claimants contending for the world domination, by vertically dividing
southern part of Americas and confirming right to occupy the eastern part to
Portugal and the western to Spain. The consequence was the invasion of the
eastern part of South Americas by Portugal and christening it as Brazil. These
6
had been the ruthless consequences that followed the discovery of American
continents by the Spanish sailor Columbus in 1492.
Orientalism sees its Other as culturally inferior, uncivilized, ignorant and in
the dark. More particularly it is suffocating in community bonds. The West is
its opposite --culturally superior and civilized. It meant knowledge and light.
It is the saviour of the Orient. These ideas convey hatred towards the African,
South American and Eastern peoples in general and especially Muslims in the
present global scenario. The hullabaloo of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of
Civilisations is all about precisely that.
This trend has grown in the movies of the Hollywood with Delta Force,
Indiana Jones series and in myriad TV serials this tendency has continued
this trend with much vigour. True Lies is an irrefutable instance of this. All
these depict Muslims as heinous evil doers prone to violence and this
precisely, earns for them their ability to be exterminated. Black-headed
Orientals (especially Muslims) and white heroes (especially Americans)
fighting against them is the usual trait of these ill movies with a climactic
brutal slaying of the Orientals. Coelho’s novel is no exception. But, the white
hero of European origin fights no battles but subjugates the Orientals under
his spell and continues his treasure hunt. Of course, his mission is also a
civilisational one.
The Satanic Verses of Salmon Rushdie in 1988 heralded new wave of anti-
Muslim sentiment in fiction writing, says Ismail Isa Patel. Though The
Alchemist was published in the same year it gained currency in the years to
come coinciding with the triumph of globalization and the military
subjugation of the Muslim world by the Empire. It did the job of Salmon
Rushdie quietly as well as rudely.
7
Modernity is the mother of racism of the Orientalist genre. White racism that
was very elementary at the time of Renaissance has grown up with the rise
of colonialism and spread its tentacles to the four corners of the globe. While
attributing cultural inferiority to the Muslims Orientalism never keeps in mind
their attainments -- the knowledge gained by them in astronomy and logic,
their intellectual contribution in developing medicine as a science and their
inputs in algebra. Orientalism is pure hatred. It portrays Arabs (for that
matter all the eastern peoples) as slothful and inert who spend their time in
the same place, incapacitated to develop and ahistorical and hence poised to
be uplifted by the West. Their role in the making of history is negative. A la
Santiago, the Orientalist Whites are quite aware of their potentialities. They
are optimists. They feel, says Said, that they are always capable of defining
their supremacy and the inferiority of the Arabs. Orientalism has grown in
the hatred toward those who are outside to/ opposed the Modernity. The
hero compares his parents with sheep, and in the Arab world-- ‘In that
strange land, he was applying the same lessons he had learned with his
sheep’ (p.42). Orientalism is not just the theoretical expression of the
unequal power relationship in between the Orient and the Occident, it is its
very originator.
The Alchemist runs a parallel world to Samuel Huntington’s as the Spain-
born hero passes through the North Africa in search of treasure. One is
Occident and the other Orient. Here Occident is the European Spain. Orient is
African Morocco and Egypt. One is Western, Christian, white world (white is
Coelho’s favourite colour and he started writing the novel after he found a
white feather in a shop), and the other is the Muslim world, ‘Moorish’ (black)
world. The first one, Andalusia (Spain) is green rich. There are no
troublesome people in the region except the Gypsy woman. The Second one
(Morocco, Egypt) is a sand stricken desert inhabited by ‘infidels’ who, to the
chagrin of the hero, speak only Arabic. They are tribes who fight primordial
battles without reason. Some of them are thieves and tricksters. All are
8
community-bound, and rotten with ignorance and are to be uplifted by the
white-skinned hero.
Santiago is the enlightener of the unenthusiastic crystal merchant who lives
in the same place and experiences the same days. He shows path of
development to the merchant. He is the one who whips up money-making
spree and develops his shop. He teaches him how to live. With all gratitude
the Muslim merchant says to the hero: ‘I’ll have to change my way of life’
…… “You have been a real blessing to me” [p.55]. Later, the hero
remembers his accomplishment while leaving Tangier, and ‘he felt that, just
as he had conquered this place, he could conquer the world’ [p.59]. In the
next page he once again reminds his achievement: ‘He was more confident
in himself, though, and felt as though he could conquer the world’ [p.60].
Later, he could perform miracles in the desert and astounds the Arabs under
his magic spell. ‘For generations thereafter, the Arabs recounted the legend
of the boy who had turned himself into the wind, almost destroying a military
camp, in defiance of the most powerful chief in the desert’ [pp.145-146]. At
an oasis camp he warns the Arabs of a impending danger and earns riches.
His is a cosmetic cant of mission civilisatrice and suits Rana Kabbani’s
remark in another context: ‘The image of the European colonizer had to
remain an honourable one: he did not come as exploiter, but as enlightener.’
(Imperial Fiction: Europe’s Myths of the Orient).
Fatima is the only named female character in the novel. In Arabic it means
‘the one that is shining’. She was the daughter of Prophet Mohammed.
Muslims believe that she is the mother of their Prophet and Imams. Muslim
cosmology portrays her as personification of moon goddess and epitome of
piousness. She is the counterpart of Jesus’ mother Mary in the Muslim world.
What is the significance of Santiago’s love affair with Fatima? Is it not
allegory of the dominance of the Western masculinity over the Muslim
femininity? If feminine is considered as embodiment of nature, the novel
9
ends up with the Western opulence subjugating it. Fatima assumes she was
part of Santiago. “You taught me something of the universal language and
the Soul of the World. Because of that, I have become part of you” says
Fatima to him [p.92] and adds, “And I am part of your dream, and part of
your destiny, as you call it” [p.93].
With all cleverness the novel brings in biblical characters. Through
Melchizedek, the Biblical King of Salem (Jerusalem), the novelist preaches
the hero of the philosophy required for treasure hunt. He presents him with
two precious stones –Urim, Thummim who, according to Bible, express the
will of God Jehovah. By introducing the king of Salem and the Biblical stones
and Fatima (also a Christian pilgrimage city in Portugal) and of course by the
Orientalist anti-Muslim stance Coelho has sent enough feelers to the
Christian world for their owning up the novel.
The Alchemist has had its own impact on the sales of the novel in the
Christian world. It evolved as an indispensable gift not only during Christmas
but also on every festive occasion in Europe and USA. Paulo Coelho received
special Papal honour in Vatican in 1998.
II
The sale of the sheep had left him with enough money in his pouch, and the boy knew that in money there was magic; whoever has money is never really alone. (p.33)
The Alchemist
10
This reflects the kernel of the novel and the philosophical foundation of its
hero’s gold rush. Novel itself is his treasure huntsman’s travelogue. Though
the theme is set in per-Modern era, evidently it celebrates the modern and
liquid modern values. The popularity of the novel is a testimony to the
blatant manifestation of the liquid times. Liquid modernity is the term
coined by Zygmunt Bauman to portray the phase of Modernity of the
globalisation era in contrast to the solid modernity of the earlier version
symbolized in his view by steel and concrete where as the liquid modern
metaphor is cyber space. Unlike in solid modernity mobility becomes the
hallmark of life in the liquid modernity. Like Alice in the Wonderland if you
want to be in the same place you have to run and to move forward you have
to run twice faster than you are. Uncertainty rules the roost and loneliness
and insecurity is all pervading. Life is liquid and it flows, melting all that is
solid. ‘Like all liquids they do not keep their shape for long’. It assumes any
form but can not hold it any longer. The liquid modern individual is confined
and prefers to remain in his/her shell [self] after getting out of the
communitarian bond.
11
In tune with the globalization, postmodernism declared the death of all
meta-narratives. Of course, there are two exceptions -- globalization,
postmodernism. The hero of The Alchemist has no illustrious goals. He just
dreams of a hidden treasure and never cherishes any transformation of
conditions of the world nor brings in any revolution of any kind to ameliorate
the mundane suffering. We may be wrong in finding fault with the hero or
his progenitor, but, we are at loss to understand how the progeny of this
acclaimed philosophical novel does not even think of helping even a leper
dog before or after finding the treasure. His hero is the one who has
undertaken a selfish exasperating journey. He is an atomistic individual who
defines the world for his own sake. Exalted in the novel is his expedition to
become affluent by appropriating the hidden chest of gold and jewels. It is
the readers’ turn to get beguiled by the dexterity of the author in mixing up
this fable with sham philosophical aphorisms. ‘When you want something,
all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it’ (P.21). But, the one
aspired by you should be the aim of your life. You should move towards the
destiny following your dream with all fervor and should never give up the
hope. Paulo Coelho mentioned this many a time as the leitmotif of the novel.
12
In the novel the author never says that the aspiration is a qualified one to be
successful. It need not be a noble, respectable or upright one. No moral tags
or normative taboos are attached. Melchizedek preaches to the hero that if
the aim is yours—the one chosen for you by the universe, the soul of the
universe conspires to make it happen. Don’t ask what is this soul of the
universe and why is its intention a conspiracy. The king of Salem tells
Santiago: “Whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really
want something, it is because that desire originated in the soul of the
universe. It’s your mission on earth.” The docile hero has an innocent query:
“Even when all you want to do is travel? Or marry the daughter of a textile
merchant?” The mythical king’s response is thus: “yes, or even search for
treasure. The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness. And also
by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one’s destiny is a person’s
only obligation. All things are one …..And, when you want something, all the
universe conspires in helping you to achieve it” (p.21).
13
Whether you are an atom-bomber in the World War flying in the high skies
over Japan or an Al Qaeda militant hijacking an aircraft to attack Twin Towers
or torturer in Guantanomo Bay or a NATO bomber in Afghanistan it is
immaterial for the universal soul. It ‘conspires’ to see that your mission is
accomplished. It cooperates with you in achieving your goal even if it were a
wicked one. If you vie on dollar currency and turn out to be a coolie in the
Cyber Valley leaving your motherland and parents, it is quite
unobjectionable for the soul to cooperate. You are certainly a perfect match
of the novel hero. The grate great soul will be behind you. You need not
think about the economic crises. You are the sole monarch of your destiny in
the company of the conspiring universal soul. What is to be done by you is
very simple. You should not distract from your goal. Universal self is your
insurer. You would soak in the dollar rain. If failure slaps, you must realize
that you had not pursued the aim chosen for you by it. Believe! You haven’t
dreamt your own dream. It is your personal failure. Failures are individuated
and the success is universalised in the novelist’s philosophy.
What would be the course offered by this perception if two contrary aims are
juxtaposed? Would the universal self conspire to get the opposing duo come
out with success? Paulo Coelho has no answer. If we search a way out in the
words of the leader of the caravan the whole basis of the novel would get
deconstructed. To a query as to when the tribe wars in the desert would
come to an end he replies that as Allah was on both sides the war might last
longer. If the universal self conspires to realize the opposing aims what
would happen? The author has not recognized this short coming in his
‘philosophy’.
14
The novel gives enough kick to those on either side of the Atlantic, the one
in the race of Modern life and yearning to reach the shore of the Atlantic,
and craves to be swept away in the dollar current. The selling of the novel
rose with the raise of the globalization ideology. It preaches that one should
be ready to change him/her self and reorient the self in the process of
searching for riches.
There is uninterrupted mobility in the novel. It starts with the mobile hero
driving his sheep in the Andalucian country side and ends up in his rushing
towards his beloved after finding the treasure chest at the same place from
where he started. In between he encounters several surprises. Being mobile
is a trait of the liquid modern life. ‘Interruption, incoherence, surprise are
the ordinary conditions of our life. They have become real needs for many
people, whose minds are no longer fed by anything but sudden changes and
constantly renewed stimuli. We can no longer bear anything that lasts. We
no longer know how to make boredom bear fruit,’ says Paul Valery. The
novel depicts this ideology.
The hero is ahistorical. He never feels affection for his native culture. Even if
a little bit of it is there, he needs to distance with it to pursue his goal. He is
an atom cut off from his past like his peers --modern individuals were born
during the Industrial Revolution. For them past is a nightmare, a frightening
bond. Freedom precisely begins when you chuck out of it. Father, mother,
native village and its culture and nature --- all are a liability and jinxed. The
more you are away from the past, the more modern you are. And of course
you may employ the past occasionally to serve your modern objectives.
Modernity has no past. Its very foundation is the destruction of the past.
Mobility makes one move out of the past and adapt to modernity. The hero
many a time derides village life. He comes out of his village with the initial
aim to travel for the sake of seeing various places. But, soon it is modified
into an expedition for treasure. He is mobile for yellow metal. To become rich
is the avowed object of his devout long march.
15
Santiago has no good memories of his childhood. He never feels sorry for
leaving parents and his village milieu. He thinks of his parents only in the
context of what he calls monotonous life in villages where all days are spent
in the same way. ‘His parents had wanted him to become a priest, and there
by a source of pride for a simple farm family’ (p.8). But, he refuses to be so
and opts out to travel across the country. His father says that foe the poor
Shepherd is the only means to enable travel. He purchases sheep with the
money [some coins] given by his father, and assumes mobility, leaving his
parents, village and later even his country. He gets freedom from the
community in which he was part of. Freedom presupposes the question
where from, says Bauman. For the hero, it is from community and
consanguine bonds. Afterward, everything is individuated and throughout the
novel he has never been part of any community.
The affiliation of the hero with the sheep is liquid but not solid one and it is
meant for his mobility. So also was his shepherdness. “A shepherd may like
to travel, but he should never forget about his sheep’ says the king of Salem
to him (p. 31). But, soon after he forgets the sheep and is no more a
shepherd. It appears at one point that he had some solid bonding with the
herd. He talks to them, he responds to their vows. He reads out books to
them. But his loving relationship is akin to that of a modern with consuming
goods and means of mobility like cars and motor bikes. He has only a
‘fleeting coalition and floating bond’ with the sheep. He puts them on out-
and-out sale for procuring funds to his treasure hunt. His inheritance was
initially transformed into a transport-friendly sheep and then into liquid cash.
Thus, ceases his fragile corporeal bond with his family and village. It is also
the end of his brittle bond with the nature. ‘It was as if some mysterious
energy bound his life to that of sheep’ (p.4). And hence he writes away the
account.
16
Having no solid relationship with anyone and ever ready to leave one bond to
enter into another gratifying one are the striking feature of the liquid modern
world. Whether it is friendship, love or commerce there are only, to use
Bauman’s phrase, until further notice-relationships. Not only with the village,
parents and the sheep but also with his maiden lover, anonymous daughter
of a dry fruit vendor the hero had only such a liquid relationship. He worries
that her memory might distract him from his treasure and abandons the
route to her place. Earning riches necessitates discarding his lover. He
nurtures justifications. ‘Maybe the girl had already forgotten him. Lots of
shepherds passed through, selling their wool’. “It doesn’t matter”, he said to
his sheep. “I know other girls in other places” (p.6). The author must have
felt that deserting lover is a virtuous quality of the liquid modern. The tie-up
with Fatima is also not solid than his yearning for money. He leaves Fatima
and moves forward in the treasure hunt. By then Arabs had gifted him
enough money and he can lead a comfortable life. Still he decides and
continues in his dangerous path of treasure hunt. Desert women can wait
unendingly for their men with obdurate chastity. Santiago loves it. Her
chastity is his property. Nothing is left to remain solid except with the
yearning for money. Nothing should be allowed to be a solid relationship
causing impediment to mobility. Everything is liquid that flows eluding
captivity and changing its form and course. Everyone is a mobile atomistic
being.
Village life is anathema to liquid modernity. It is better qualified to be a
holiday posture but not inhabitable for long. ‘In the village every day was like
all others’ (p.5). For the daughter of the dry fruit merchant ‘every day was
the same’ (p.26). While talking to her ‘he recognises that he was feeling
something he had never experienced: ‘The desire to live in one place’ (pp.6-
7). It is against the desire to be mobile of the liquid moderns. ‘‘His purpose in
life was to travel’ (p.7) with preparedness for change (p7), ‘seeking out a
new road to travel whenever he could’ (p.9).
17
There is no communitarian life in modernity. Society in liquid modernity is
also a zombie category. The novel symbolises this as the hero is not made
part of any community or society. This reminds the famous statement of Mrs.
Margaret Thatcher in the British parliament in late 1980s: ‘Show me where is
society? There are only individuals’. Society has been degenerated into
networking, and human relations are reduced to the status of being in
“touch”. Unlike ‘relations’, ‘kinships’, ‘partnerships’ and similar notions that
make salient the mutual engagement, in a network, connecting and
disconnecting are equally legitimate choices that are exercised by the hero.
He has no friends except one with whom he has fleeting relationship that
ends up with sale-purchase transaction (Hero keeps his sheep with him and
later sells them to him). ‘The boy knew a lot of people in the city [Tarifa].
That was what made traveling appeal to him---he always made new friends,
and he didn’t need to spend all of his time with them. When someone sees
the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they
wind up becoming a part of that person’s life’ (p.15). It is the contemporary
city-style life which denotes the flippancy of human relations. Even in Tangier
he has no in-depth relationship with anyone. The novelist designates the
Salem king and the Gypsy woman as ‘solitary individuals who no longer
believed in things, and didn’t understand that shepherds become attached to
their sheep’ [p.25]. But the same is truer in case of the hero. With everyone
the hero likes to have the same tangential rapport like the hero in the Kafka’s
short story The Metamorphosis has with lodge boys. Having such marginal
tie-ups is not a quandary to the hero unlike in Kafka’s story but depth in the
relationship is. There cannot be any blending of biographies. This reflects the
trajectory of human relations that moved from solid to liquid modernity.
Either in Andalusia or in the Tangier with people the hero has only monetary
relationship. He is in a cash nexus.
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Liquid modern society is more consumption oriented than production
oriented. The hero never comes across a farmer in his entire journey across
Andalusia. On either side of Gibraltar Strait the scenario is identical. The
novel mentions nothing about any production process. Shops, sale
transactions, the materialistic hanker of the hero are the regular features the
reader encounters in the novel. Buying the sheep and selling its wool to the
dry fruit merchant, having contractual relationship with the Gypsy fortune
teller, selling the sheep and paying money to the Salem king for his services,
purchasing ticket to cross Gibraltar Strait, purchasing drink in the Tangier
bar, shops and finding men and women indulged in buying and selling on the
busy streets of Tangier, the commerce in the crystal shop, establishing tea
kiosk and attracting consumers to the crystal shop---are the conspicuous
happenings in the travelogue of the hero. Of course, there are the Arab
betrayers, violent clashes and blood flows . All through the hero’s
impervious gold rush continues.
The hero utilizes books as pillows and thinks that voluminous ones are better
pillows. He learns more from the sheep than books, says the novel, but after
he converted the sheep into cash, he has not learnt any thing from the books
and if at all, only alchemy that is relevant to his treasure hunt. ‘He had
attended a seminary until he was sixteen’ (p.8). Seminary training left no
traces on him. His daily itinerary does not include praying the Almighty. He
never counted any pious Sunday. He uses Christianity only to get rid of fears
of the Other in his journey for riches. These are traits of the liquid moderns.
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Being mobile and readiness for change and trekking new paths is the running
thread in the novel. Change is not a natural one. It is quite achievable by the
self, the individuated ‘I’ that is the driving force of the change. This
philosophy is typical of Western individualism. Money earning is the anchor
sheet of the preaching of the Salem king. The example given by the king to
exemplify the role of determined effort without losing self confidence is also
that of a person who goes on mining to get emerald. This parable inspires
the hero more determined to pursue his goal which is again treasure hunt.
When his father had given blessing at the time of his departure, ‘the boy
could see in his father’s gaze a desire to be able, himself, to travel the world
—a desire that was still alive, despite his father’s having had to bury it, over
dozens of years, under the burden of struggling for water to drink, food to
eat, and the same place to sleep every night of his life’ (p.9). Here, the father
works as a metaphor for pre-modernity while the son for Modernity. What the
writer wanted to drive at is that the pre-moderns have modern aspirations
but they got killed as they could not venture to realize them. Pre-modern
people have animal-like craving only for food water and shelter and devoid of
any pleasure. ‘They (parents of the hero) worked hard just to have food and
water, like the sheep’ (p.8). This looking down attitude towards the villagers
is repeated time and again in the novel. ‘In the village each day was like all
others’ (p.5). Immediately he says to himself that in villages there was no
change and every day is same.
The Modern atomistic individual sees money as compensatory to the loss of
community. What the community gave earlier has now been replaced by the
market and hence money makes him secure. The hero Santiago abandons
his first lover as he felt she was a hurdle to pursue his treasure hunt. ‘The
sheep, the merchant’s daughter, and the fields of Andalucia were only steps
along the way to his destiny’ (p.27). He converts the sheep into money. Then
the novel declares: ‘The boy knew that in money there was magic; whoever
has money is never really alone’ (p.33).
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The novel reflects anthropocentrism which is one of the greatest tragedies
the Modernity had brought in. Essentially it distances humans from nature.
The latter is used as a tool to serve human ends. Nature has no other
business in the novel except to ‘conspire’ to enable the individuals realised
their desires or dreams. Coelho’s novel exposed to the danger in defining the
whole universe in terms of humankind. This perspective has enthroned the
individual self that is freed from the community in the sovereign epicenter of
the universe by dethroning the Natural/ Divine. Here community is not just
community of humans but a community in which not only humans but also
all animate and inanimate objects – all creatures, all the mountains, rivers
and the flora and fauna, and also the mythical figures and the umpteen
varieties of memories and instincts converge and co-exist. Bringing out the
human from all this cosmic community and projecting man’s self and reason
as the grand narrative is the act of Modernity. This has been eulogized as
humanism. This phenomenal movement of man from nature to ‘human’ has
been celebrated by the novel.
A former president of USA was caught reading the novel. Hollywood actress
Julia Roberts extolled the novel. Paulo Coelho wrote about these in the
foreword and he knows that the alchemy of the book selling. The Alchemist
has become a textbook in several business schools in Europe and USA.
Dreams are divine language, longing for money is fine, pursuit of money
could be one’s legitimate life goal, and capitalism is quite natural: chief
messages of the novel. Coelho is the real alchemist who could convert words
into money. He is the invariable special invitee to all the Davos summits of
World Economic Forum, the foremost organisation of the world capitalism. It
felicitated him with its prestigious Crystal Award in 1999.
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