Book Report and Review: The Valkyries by Paulo Coelho

Book Report and Review of

The Valkyries by Paulo Coelho

Author: Paulo Coelho

Publisher: HarperCollins

Release date: 1992

Pages count: 114 pages

Main Characters:

·         Paulo

·         Chris

·         Valhalla

·         Gene

·         J

·         Valkyries

Author and Novel’s Brief

Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on August 24th, 1947, is a Brazilian novelist. He is one of the writers with the most read work in the world today. Paulo has received a number of international awards for his works, including the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum. The Alchemist, his most famous novel, has been translated into 67 languages. The author has sold 150 million copies of his book worldwide.

The Valkyries is a novel written by Paulo Coelho in 1992. HarperCollins published it. The genre is love, mystery, and spiritual. It uses third-person point of view. Paulo makes himself as the main character, a protagonist one. The other characters are J (Paulo’s master), Christina (Paulo’s wife), The Valkyries, and Valhalla. This story is like a biography, but I feel like it is fictionalized a bit. This book is exposing Paulo’s private life, such as his marriage, his religion, his relationship with others, and most importantly, his weaknesses.

Summary

J and Paulo met at a restaurant in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Paulo admired him as his master. Paulo was given a task from J. It was to break the curse of ‘people always kill the things they love’. He wrote a poem about it and let Paulo read the poem, then he left Paulo to do the mission. One of Paulo’s flaws was that he killed the things he loved. The crumbling of Paulo and Christina’s marriage was one example of it. So, J gave a task to Paulo to break the curse and to save his marriage with Christina. The task required him to travel to Mojave Desert in United States. He brought Christina along in the journey. It was a spiritual journey, a forty-day journey to meet and speak to his guardian angel. Paulo’s religion was called “The Tradition.” Paulo and his wife were looking for their angels. They walked around Mojave Desert but found none. They had met Gene, a person who had seen his angel, but from him they learned about ‘second mind’ instead. He also seek for the Valkyries, were guide helping people to meet angel. They met the Valkyries by chance at a diner. There were three conditions for conversing with one’s angel: break a pact, accept forgiveness, and make a bet. The Valkyries, Paulo, and Christina arranged to meet again. They had a ritual and used medallion from Valhalla, the leader of the Valkyries, as a mediator. It brought darkness to Paulo’s mind and took him to a vision of his past event. It was a moment when he felt like dying. Paulo knew he had been in contact with demons, so he made a pact to trade his dreams for his life. With the help of Valhalla, Paulo was able to break the pact that destroyed his life. Later he learned how to make contact with his angel and discovered his feelings for Chris, his wife.

Analysis

By presenting Paulo and Christina as the main characters of the story, readers can see the story from 2 points of view, for Paulo and Christina do not share the same belief. The husband, Paulo, has a religion called “The Tradition” that does some kind of black magic for the rituals. Meanwhile the wife, Christina, is just an ordinary Christianity believer. When they lived together, Paulo did his rituals, exercises, and practices. Christina saw what her husband did as ‘very strange’ thing, but she just let him be. She even called Paulo’s religion as “Conspiracy.” She did not show a single look of interest on it. They can be a husband and wife to each other despite the different idealism they have. When Paulo was given a task from his master to talk to his angel, she commented “what a strange way to live.” It clearly shows how different the perspective Christina has with her husband.

Using deconstructive analysis, Paulo’s problem, which is the pact he made with a demon, can be seen from different perspective by questioning the center meaning. Paulo was willing to abandon his dreams and exchanged it for a chance of life. After that, his life was destroyed. He always lose something or someone he loved. Every time he felt he had a hope, he would lose it in a short amount of time. He blamed the pact he had made with the demon for the destruction of his quality of life. By questioning, is it true that the cause of his ruined life is because of the pact? Actually, this is just a mind game. Because he believed that, then it really ended up with him completely destroying his life. If only he believed that his life would be fine by trying to do his best every day and by thinking positively, maybe it wouldn't end up him ruining his life. He was the one who destroyed his own life by thinking such way, that everything would end badly. His ruined life is not the result of the pact he made with the devil. However, he blamed that pact for it.

Comment and Recommendation

Paulo, the story’s main character, was finding the solution to “the pact” problem by doing rituals after another rituals with guidance of Valhalla, another character in the story. And Valhalla shared the same belief as Paulo. He did successfully break the pact eventually. The solution that the author makes for the main character is, in fact, confusing for common readers. Is there no other solution? Instead of emphasizing on The Tradition belief or the magic, there is a solution which is more reasonable. It is to alter Paulo’s way of thinking, from negative into a positive way. Mind power is proved to be unexpectedly strong to change one’s life.

Reading Paulo mentioned about angels, heaven, paradise, darkness, spell, and ritual sounds strange for me. I know it is because we have different religion, so we have different vision and way of thinking based on what we believe. I know very well that I have no right to judge someone’s spiritual life and religion when on the other hand, this whole story is all about it. So, I tried analyzing another aspects from this novel. I do feel curious when I first start reading the beginning of the story, but I cannot help myself feeling weirder as I read pages to pages.

Still, every story has a moral value. It is about forgiveness, the complexity of the human condition, and the ability to overcome your biggest fears and your most destructive flaws. This book could broaden your knowledge, your perspective, and your way of thinking. It teaches you to have confidence in your own abilities and thoughts. Paulo Coelho is famous for his philosophical books, and The Valkyries is one of it indeed.

I would recommend this book for those who need enlightenment in religion. This book inspires me to do spiritual journey later in the future. By doing spiritual journey, Paulo found himself a peaceful mind at the end. Spiritual journey can also broaden your knowledge about other religions so that you won’t be a narrow-minded person. This is a great book despite the magic stuffs.

Author:

Arum Ratnaning Ratri

2211416050

English Literature 2016

Universitas Negeri Semarang

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