The Alchemist

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is an ironic sort of book.

Ironic not in anything it says, but in its very purpose.

Basically, it is one of those old-fashioned stories that actually attempts to impart on the reader a lesson. This particular lesson is one about how we should live our individual lives. The problem is, and Coelho points this out in the book, one can not learn how to live from a book or from another person, they have to figure it out for themselves.

What comes of this (and I like to think that I have figured out a little bit of what life is about) is that a few people will read it and think, "Well...yeah..." but the vast majority of people will completely misunderstand it, as demonstrated by the blurbs in the first pages of the book.

So what is the role of the book if it either isn't telling its readers anything new, or isn't telling its readers anything at all? I think the book is playing the same role as the king does (a character in the book,) it is trying to affirm that we are on the right path and will help us along when we most doubt ourselves.