Reading the Omens
The Alchemist: A Book Review
“Maktub,” the merchant said, finally.
“What does that mean?”
“You would have to have been born an Arab to understand,” he answered, “ But in your language it would be something like ‘It is written.’”
For as long as I have dipped my feet into the literary sphere, there is one book that has consistently popped up as the general populace’s ‘must read’ item: Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. A practical modern classic in all sense of the term, The Alchemist has reached the pinnacle of contemporary literature popularity, having been featured for 315 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers as well as becoming the most-translated book in the world.
So, despite the plethora of Goodreads reviews admonishing it as an underwhelmingly preachy tale (I’ll address this later), when I spotted it at the beginning of the month (with lotsa cash and less lengthy financial decision-making), I nabbed it without much thought. And so the tale of a boy searching for his destiny from Spain to Egypt befriended me throughout my weekend of perusing Jakarta’s public transport.
For me, in short, The Alchemist was exactly like I expected it would be. Coelho’s style is deceptively simple, bringing an honest, folkore-y feeling that can’t help but remind one of the stories you’d hear in childhood. It tells the story of a self-made shepherd boy who has long mastered the pastures of Andalusia, who decides to journey for a treasure at the Egyptian pyramids based on a dream and a ‘chance’ meeting with Melchizedek, King of Salem. It is through this journey from Andalusia to Morocco to the Sahara to Egypt, that the boy learns much of the world and our place in it.
The following sections will detail some large themes that stuck out to me as I read this book, alongside my personal takes on how these themes were addressed. I’ll try to keep it spoiler-free and I’d love for y’all to come up and discuss if you’ve got this book read through already.
The Journey
And, when you can’t go back, you have to worry only about the best way of moving forward. - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
I’ve always been a huge fan of Spain and Morocco. At one point in high school, I even studied their histories very intensely (until I forgot lol) and planned hypothetical trips there (I’ll get there someday believe me). So a story set in those two places was bound to attract me. I also finished a good portion of the book on commute, so I’m a bit biased to really hammer in the ‘journey’ theme.
Our main character, the shepherd boy, has quite a comfortable status quo in the beginning. Albeit being a simple shepherd, he becomes so in the first place to leave his original trajectory of becoming a preacher, due to a dream of travelling (hence becoming a shepherd instead). And so he lives his days in relative comfort and routinity throughout the fields and pastures of the Andalusian peninsula. Until he doesn’t — when destiny knocks on his door.
This kind of Leap of Faith is a recurring motif throughout the story. The boy goes through multiple cycles of it, beginning to taste the comforts of stability but then finally listening to his heart (or the interventions of side characters) to give up all of that and leap for what’s truly important. Though it may seem rather repititive to keep this up, Coelho has managed to make each circumstance feel a little different, with different stakes and different contexts that help to hammer in the message of taking that Leap of Faith. The alternative, which Coelho seems to argue is most people’s default, is languishing forever and giving up on said dream.
The immediate follow-through of the Leap of Faith is a journey. And while the journey smilingly invites the naive through beginner’s luck, it is bound to become difficult throughout. Journeys entail suffering, risk, and loss. Oh, and there is treachery and love involved.
Here, I feel the book somewhat lacks. Coelho seems to gloss over the ‘hard parts’ of the journey, mentioning them as a side detail that isn’t given so much as a secondhand glance. The stakes, while real to the characters in the story, don’t feel real. They seem to be little more than rather annoying circumstances instead. Hence, I do not truly empathize nor relate to the hardships of the journey, or even the looming departure from a loved one.
And here I think many readers also protest, because the journey feels oversimplified. It is fair, however, to understand these in the context of Coelho’s motivations for writing this book: something to get people off their asses. And it may very well be designed to glorify the gifts of the journey, and whisper when it comes to the full package — hardships included.
Nevertheless, I very much enjoy how much the protagonist muses about learning throughout the journey, and that there are many things that the sheep wouldn’t have taught him (even though there are also many things that he has learned from said sheep). As he ventures into the livelihoods of many different people in many different worlds, I can’t help but totally relate to his awe and stupification.
Oh, if only they knew how different things are just two hours by ship from where they are
Theory alone can only go so far, as Nolan drills down multiple times in Oppenheimer, and I feel that the same works out for travel. Having had a quite lost episode within my own life, involving a lot of hyper-aware solo-traveling throughout the United States, I’ve summed that there is much to be learned simply from walking different streets. Putting on the traveler’s sunglasses (not the tourist’s), immersing one’s self into somebody’s day-to-day brings upon realizations about the world and one’s self that are shocking. And it is shockingly simple to do so.
Take Jakarta for example. Visiting as a tourist and seeing Monas and Istiqlal and the malls and whatnot is fun, for sure. But putting yourself into Manggarai’s rush hour KRLs and crossing pedestrian bridges while sweating in a suit at 35 degrees and being stuck in the rain waiting for a Jaklingko and queuing for the tower lift at the end of the workday with total awareness of the world around is something else. Jakarta is something else.
And everywhere is something else, if you have enough of that journey mentality. The boy’s journey in The Alchemist has portrayed that well. This theme also ties in a lot with the theme of reading omens. And we’ll get to that — after the desert.
The Desert
Maybe God created the desert so that man could appreciate the date trees. - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
The desert and its ruthlessness represents a fundamental part of humanity: our smallness in the grandeur of the universe.
And that’s why we’re always so drawn to it: depicting it as the setting of stories from Star Wars to Dune to Western epics. There’s just something about the desert. And I contend that that something has a very spiritual root.
The boy in The Alchemist learns a lot from the desert throughout his journey, even eventually conversing with it. Heck, even the alchemist in The Alchemist lives in the desert as a conscious choice. There is something about its vastness, its silence, its danger, that brings about contemplation.
I’ve once written here that my heart has always turned to the call of the ocean. The desert was once an ocean in its own right, and I think it has retained the same might. They are seemingly endless behemoths that challenge all notion’s of one’s self-efficacy. And it turns hearts to appreciate the Language of the World and the Hand that has written it.
I need to go visit the desert.
The Hand
Disaster taught me to understand the word of Allah: people need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want. We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it’s our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand. -Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
At the end of the day, I think the most important theme within this book lies in a very basic tenet that is core to many of our religions: fate. And I very much enjoy the book’s ability to coax out our innate sense of fate as if it were something lying within us the entire time. A part of our fitra, as us Muslims would be inclined to believe.
Instead of feeding upon the existential despair many people have when they succumb to the helpless notion of predestination, The Alchemist touts an optimistic (and strangely quite Islamic) interpretation of fate, portraying its characters as active characters within God’s written story. Maktub, the book’s beautiful key reccurring word, encourages an acceptance of the good and bad of life, entrusting that our own story will be as beautiful and majestic as nature’s beauty and the history of the worlds: because their Creator is one and the same.
It reminds me of Said Nursi’s several “Is it at all possible”-s throughout his Risale-i Nur, in which he challenges people to understand their own stories and the holy harmony that keeps the universe together through empirically observing the world. Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore and Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning also echo complementary chords, urging one to acceptance yet also active pursuit.
These are basically the concepts of tawakkal and ikhtiar, understood through consciousness and conscientiousness in excellence, ihsan and taqwa. In short, it is the journey and its many signs that should continuously instill and reinstill our acceptance of fate and our pursuit of destiny. Here comes the concept of omens, a point I absolutely love.
In The Alchemist, omens refer to signs or symbols along our protagonist’s journey that seemingly guide him towards a path: traces of a Higher Being’s Mercy. These omens can manifest in various forms, such as recurring dreams, specific encounters, or chance occurrences that seem significant. Along the way, our main character learns to interpret these omens, written in the language of the universe, along his quest to find his treasure (i.e. destiny).
As I read it, these omens represent the interconnectedness of all things as well as the idea that there is a higher power at work in the universe. It is the consciousness of this that puts people seemingly in tune with the universe’s harmony and with their own fate. And that makes complete sense because they all have the same Maker!
Is it at all possible that the Being that has created the infinitely intricate universe and all its vastness (symbolized by the desert) has not also strewn in perfectly personal signs throughout our journeys to nudge us towards our destiny with His Hand? (Aha! I tied the themes together!)
Overall, omens in The Alchemist symbolize that there are details throughout our existence that we must be conscious of. They are signs of universal forces that shape our lives, containing personal messages for me and you. These omens remind us to listen to our intuition, trust in the journey, and have faith that there are machinations that are conspiring to help us fulfill our destinies — if only we have faith. And if only we know how to read them.
The world is a book; Iqra! :)
The Verdict
Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life — Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
The Alchemist is a pure little read, and manages to pack in an impressive amount within the less-than-200-pages metaphorical journey of our protagonist. Though sometimes repetitive and rather hippie, I feel it adds to the overall folklore vibe that I think Coelho was deliberately going for.
Explaining its mixed reception is quite simple. Having already expected a charmingly simple story, I got exactly what I paid for, and I enjoy that. This contrasts with those who opened it up expecting to have their lives changed and their minds blown, especially those who aren’t totally onboard with anything particularly spiritual-flavored. So yeah, overall, I feel that most of this book’s failures to reach many readers’ expectations is mainly because of the expectations themselves. Its popularity has bloated up these expectations to an impossible standard that our shepherd boy and alchemist just can’t meet.
As for me? I liked it! It was a wholesome little stroll-through-the-desert fit for a weekend read. And I’ll definitely be employing its sea of cute little quotes for ages to come. But in my opinion it also wasn’t the life-changing, spirit-strengthening, path-enlightening behemoth that many people portray it as. And that’s all fine since everyone’s reception to this thing has all been written.
Guess what else has been written? This book. And I think it’s been written pretty darn well. Bravo, Coelho!
