The great success that this book has received is not surprising. Whenever you can inspire someone or even get someone to reflect on his or her own situation, people will feel they owe you something. In this case: you finish reading the book and you are inspired (as I was, I found it to be a very inspiring tale) and you feel you must tell someone about it (then they go out and buy the book increasing the success of the novel). This book is set up for success because it speaks to almost everyone. You must reach your audience and get them to make connections to their own lives to achieve success. This is why love songs do so well: because they speak to you individually, as if the artist understands your specific situation.
Some of the “teachings” as I will refer to them as, are too far fetched in my opinion. For example, near the beginning of part two, the boy learns of intuition and the author provides a definition of this term. The passage goes like this, “The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there.” (page 74) How can this be taken seriously? If this is true (which it isn’t), then how come my intuition is often incorrect? I understand that the content of this book is fiction, but when reading it, I felt as though the author was trying to make me think it was true. As we discussed in class, this is probably me acting as a “bad reader” but I feel that I should not take the blame.
I also found this book to be too simplistic and very fairy tale-esk (Dreams, Beginners luck, Omens, Follow you heart, Treasure). The recyled “teachings” of life that Coelho threw together to create this book were entertaining to read but, to me, lacked substance. Another thing that bothered me was that the treasure Santiago was chasing throughout the book turned out to be gold. Why couldn’t his treasure be something without monetary value? This book to me seems like the inspiration behind the “get rich quick schemes” that people searching for happiness by monetary advancement attempt. If I follow these steps I will achieve happine$$.
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I thought a similar thing when I read the passage, "The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there.” (page 74) Intuition is often mistaken for 'desire' which tends to be an incorrect 'desire' or perhaps a 'wanting'. What I do find though is that it is the 'gut' feeling that typically is never wrong - at least for me. If you have a really strong sense about something deep within your stomach, and it is guiding you to one decision or path over another, it is probably the right thing. Hope this makes some sort of rational sense.
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