What kind of Reader Was I Supposed to be?

As I read through “A Rhetoric of Reading,” by James Seitz, I found that I was asking myself a central question: was I being a submissive reader? Or was I rebelling against what Paulo Coelho was trying to relay to me as a reader through his novel, The Alchemist? I thought back to the plot, trying to construct a map of my understanding of the novel’s progression. The narrative recounts the journey of someone seeking their personal legend, which perhaps is precisely what a rhetoric of reading guides us to do: what is the narrative I am submissive to in my life.  Santiago is submissive to a narrative called: seeking the narrative he is to become submissive to, that is, his personal legend. After considering the fact that I read Coelho’s novel as some type of reader, my thoughts progressed further down a figurative rabbit hole to divulge to myself exactly what type of reader I was being. 

When taken at face value, The Alchemist seems like a book that can be understood by just about anyone who knows how to read. After skimming through the book a second time, and reading my many scribbled notes in the margins, I found that maybe this book isn’t easily read in a submissive way. For one, Coehlo weaves at least three (from my previously mentioned scribbled notes) different religions into the plot. These religions, which include, Christianity, Hinduism, and the Islamic faith are both hinted at in subtle ways and blatantly spoken to the reader. It was this realization that steered me away from my understanding of my supposed submissiveness as a reader. Did I actually read this the way Coehlo wanted me to?

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

I got down to thinking and thankfully, came to some sort of conclusion. In a short and concise summary, it’s possible that I read this book the way it was intended to be read. To determine this, I thought about what I would normally read. I tend to spend a lot of my time delving into gothic literature. I thought, this had to have had some effect on my understanding and interpretation of this book, right? Spoiler alert, I wasn’t wrong. Upon a second look, I found underlined words and sentences, all leading to one defeating conclusion; I read this book for any hint of the macabre that I could find. And really, I think this is why I made so many (I really mean uncountable) notes on the religious elements involved in the text. When it comes to gothic literature, religion plays a giant role in the plot, and usually serves as some sort of end-all-be-all theme for the story. 

I think this book was really easy for me personally, to confuse as some sort of mystical gothic tale, when in fact, it wasn’t meant to be read this way at all. I know, I was shocked, too! But more on this later…

The narrator addresses the audience as if they were their students, which I found to be peculiar, often speaking to the readers as if what they were saying was known fact. According to Seitz, “the implied author of each novel is someone with whose beliefs on all subjects I must largely agree if I am to enjoy his work,” (Seitz). With this quote in mind, I thought of how I read this novel; even if it read to me like an opinion, I tried to take it as it was stated. For example when the narrator says, “When someone sees the same people everyday, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person’s life,” (Coelho 18). The narrator wishes for their readers to take this exactly as it was said, in order to fully understand the story they are telling. This happens numerous times throughout the text. To tie in my previous understanding that maybe I was supposed to be finding my own personal legend as Santiago finds his, I think it makes a whole lot of sense now that the narrator spoke as if the readers were its students. The reader is meant to learn while Santiago learns. They are meant to explore their own life and come to what seems like the end, just to realize they had been doing what they were meant to be doing all along. 

That being said, I wanted to talk more about how I wrongfully thought that I misread this book the first time around. As someone who primarily reads gothic literature, I subconsciously read this book as such. For example, any time that the narrator spoke of the moon or the stars, I made a note regarding the hints of the macabre. When the narrator spoke of crystals (urim and thummim) and kings (Melchizedek), I thought back to other gothic tales peopled with royalty and the importance of stones. I also found that I compared every sight of religion within the novel to some happening in a gothic story I read previously. Upon this realization, it became apparent to me that I had been reading submissively, but was strayed from the true understanding the book wished to bestow upon me. 

This book is meant to be read as reality. The narrator, in this case, an all knowing third person narrator, wanted the reader to become so immersed within the unfolding story, that he would forget his life outside of the book. He was meant to live within the pages of the book, sit with the sheppard as he dreamed of treasure, hover in the room as the gypsy told Santiago of his treasure hidden at the Pyramids, stand in anger as Santiago is robbed of all he owns, and laugh with him as he finally makes it to Egypt, has literally turned himself into the wind, only to find out that his treasure was exactly where his journey had begun.

“And he saw that the Soul of God was his own soul. And that he, a boy, could perform miracles.”

The narrator wants the readers to be patient and grow more and more in touch with the world around us as Santiago does. I think it’s important to note that while the reader is becoming immersed in Santiago’s story and his journey to discover his personal legend (along with Santiago realizing that he is meant to seek out the narrative he is meant to be submissive to), the reader is doing this in real time. What I mean by this is that the narrator wants the reader to mirror Santiago as he searches for his own submissiveness to the narrative. 

This wonderful whirlwind of a book, may be one of my all time favorite reads. I have to say that reading it with the rhetoric of narrative in mind made it significantly more difficult to unravel, but even as I looked back at the passages and reread them, I found that they could have been taken in any way by a number of different kinds of readers. This made me think of a part of Seitz’s text where he says, “I am contending that reading provokes an internal dialogue that might best be described as polyphony – derived from the Greek polyphonos, having many voices,” (Seitz). To read this novel, and to follow Santiago on his journey, is to read the book ‘the way it was meant to be read.’