Spiritual Awareness and Liberation in The Alchemist and Veronika Decides to Die

Abstract

The inward focus is a recurring theme in Paulo Coelho's fiction: when the known patterns of success, society's requirements, and even certainty are not the answer to recovery of meaning in life. This paper explores that concern by comparing and contrasting The Alchemist with Veronika Decides to Die. The novels have distinct plots, but both trace spiritual awakening as an evolving journey away from imposed identities and towards an understanding of a more conscious connection to the self and the life. Santiago's journey over landscape, sign and encounters is a journey to his “Personal Legend”, Veronika's psycho noted crisis her meeting with death, the quest for meaning of life. The paper is based on the existentialist ideas, humanistic psychology, and some aspects of religious and mystical experiences to suggest that Coelho envisions liberation not as leaving difficult but as changing the meaning of difficulty. The concept of freedom and responsibility (Sartre); self-realization (Maslow); and the concept of meaning arising out of suffering (Frankl) are helpful frameworks as they help to understand how the protagonists develop. Coelho's spirituality ultimately turns out to be more of a way of doing things than a doctrine, and it's one that is rooted in a level of self-awareness, authenticity, courage, and openness to meaning that goes beyond the material.