I re-read "The Alchemist" and I’m disappointed.

The first time I listened to the audiobook, I was satisfied. I didn’t give it much thought and I liked the message it delivered, being a person who fails to take off her rose-tinted glasses more often than not. The heavy, dreamy voice of the narrator helped too.
This book can be accurately called a fairytale.
Now, after reading it a second time I noticed some messages the book also delivers which are untrue and detrimental to our belief system, at worst. Which is what this review is all about.
1) It’s brazenly anti-feminist: Paulo Coelho’s views on feminism and women are something like this:
“In the end, what we have to share are our opposites…If you are just one – if you think like a man or behave like a man, if you try to go for the same rights – you lose this beauty of the feminine soul.”
“Feminism was a nightmare… Women lost this feminine side by trying to be feminists. I’m totally against this. I think that we are different genders, so we have to get the best of ourselves.”

https://thefword.org.uk/2007/04/paul_coelhos_an/
I have always had to face this problem of dealing with authors who I generally like but then I discover their views on women ~magical moment~ I don’t like them that much anymore. Dickens, for example, his female characters are so flat, it’s easier to imagine them as dead than alive.
According to Coelho, women don’t have Personal Legends even when animals and minerals and everything else in the universe have Personal Legends. Women can be part of a man’s Personal Legend. Or maybe Coelho is saying that women’s “Personal Legends” are to do chores and limit themselves to the domestic and material spheres. Sounds like Patriarchy 101 to me.
“The women competed with one another for access to the cloth and precious stones brought by the merchants.”
Sorry women, spirituality is too hard for you to understand! Just like science was a few decades ago. It’s interesting how he tries to deal with the question of possession and love and simultaneously doesn’t even consider in the whole course of writing the book that he might be considering women as possessions - of men. By the way he refers to his female characters as “the merchant’s daughter” and the likes and emphasises the fact that Fatima is “a woman of the desert” and more importantly, she is “a woman”, it’s ironical that I related more with Santiago’s journey than Fatima’s pining as I assume many other women did. So maybe the line between masculine and feminine is fluid. The words of the book also left a bitter taste on my tongue now that I realize that I was not the target audience to be inspired by Santiago’s journey because I’m “a woman”.
2) Seems like Coelho has got rose-tinted glasses too: Another thing which is as pervasive in life as Coelho blatantly ignored it, is inequality. Caste, race, religion, sexuality, disability, uneven economic distribution, systematic and political suppression, etc. makes it so that people can’t always follow their personal legends or dreams to its end. I’m a firm believer of strange unbelievable (unseen) stuff, omens, fate and all included. But believing things are meant to be doesn’t mean that everything is sunshine and rainbows, that we don’t have to make things better. Coelho says it in the book himself, “each thing has to transform itself into something better, and to acquire a new Personal Legend”. Now, it’s apparent that the book is the novel form of a self-help book. With mystical and religious references. And the genre of self-help is mostly marketed to atleast somewhat privileged people. But he is also writing a story. And as it turns out, it’s a story about the Soul of The World which is part of the Soul of God. And to Coelho, the Soul of God only consists of the kind of people who are privileged enough to be able to pursue their dreams to the end. Who is courageous enough, irrespective of past trauma that might be an obstacle. The rest is background noise. I completely understand that this is just one story of one boy following his dreams. Other people have their own Personal Legends which are unique to them. But the way Coelho portrays the characters of the crystal merchant and Santiago’s father, there’s an underlying suggestion of cowardice and fear in them that inhibits them from realising their Personal Legends and quite frankly those are not the only obstacles in people’s lives and most often than not it’s external obstacles that are quite hard to overcome. Like patriarchal values of family members. Ironical? And I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t try to overcome them and give up. But Coelho is actively downgrading the characters who do not follow their Personal Legends and the only reason he gives is fear. And that is ignorance at its worst.

I also wanted to include the representation of the Orient and Islam but my own lack of knowledge in that aspect is warning me not to. I did find that it portrayed a western view of the Orient but I’m not sure to what extent. So I will leave it at that.
After this (complete or incomplete) dissection of the book, the things that I still like in the book are the imagery of the desert, the description of the elementary forces, the all is one concept, the dialogue with the wind and the sun towards the end of the book are fantastic. In my second reading, the desert scenes were what I was looking forward to. The fact that the book is short and the language straight helps too.