by Pauline

Created on: March 01, 2009

In the book "Veronika Decides to Die," Paulo Coelho tackles several issues which our society still considers taboo: insanity and suicide. In particular, insanity is a topic close to Coelho's heart, having spent time in a mental institution when he was young. Coelho touches upon these subjects in a way that leaves his readers reflecting upon their own lives and pondering how fragile and short life is.

Veronika is a 24-year old woman, attractive and with the rest of her life in front of her. And yet she sees her life as meaningless. She follows her own daily routine, but does so with contempt. She values her beauty, and yet deep inside she knows that it has no tangible value. She believes that this is as good as life gets for her and will only go downhill as she grows older. And so she decides to take her own life.

She carefully plans out her own death. It is interesting to note that even in her death, she does not wish to inconvenience anyone. She considers how her parents might feel once they receive that fateful phone call informing that their daughter is dead. She carefully laid out the sleeping pills that she will use to end her own life. She went through with the plan, convinced that it is for the best.

However, she wakes up and finds herself in a mental facility, her suicide failed. To make matters worse, the pills she took brought irreparable damage to her heart. She is dying within seven days. She discovers that waiting for death is infinitely harder than taking her own life. And in a cruel twist of fate, she found the one thing that would have made her life worth living: love.

But what Veronika does not know is that she is the subject of an experiment conducted by the facility's director. He wants to prove that the cure to bitterness in an awareness of life. He postulates that an increase of a substance which he named vitriol is the cause of depression, the only cure for which is a renewed awareness of life.

Coelho is a brave man, forcing his readers to take a cold hard look at the illnesses afflicting the mind. People shy away from this topic, afraid of the awkward silence that is sure to come. Coelho presents a cruel reality, that sometimes life does not seem to be worth living. People may marry only to get divorced after a year. Every one will get old and incapable of taking care of one's self. But in spite of all of these, Coelho makes us believe that there are still small wonders in life, falling in love, stopping to smell the roses and smelling a baby's breath that make all the other heartache bearable. And even though everything in this world must come to an end, it is the journey and not the ending that counts.

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