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.

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1 Author is a senior advocate based in Guntur, AP and Spl. Public Prosecutor in the High Court of AP. Email—bcsekhar@lawyer.com

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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’.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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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