In Veronica Decides to Die, you have portrayed a young girl who tries to commit suicide…
No, it’s not a book about suicide. It is about the necessity to accept our differences, instead of trying to fulfill other people’s destiny (like the destiny that our parents choose for us, for example). When, as a young man, I insisted on being a writer, my family sent me to a mental institution—not only once, but three times. Veronica is based on this experience. We must stop following the ‘Manual of Good Behavior’, this non-written book that guides our life, and dare a little bit more. Veronica is bored, because she realizes that today is the same as yesterday, and it will be the same tomorrow.
By the way, talking about my experience in the asylum: there are some battles that kill you, and some that make you stronger. For me, it was the latter. I never saw myself as a victim of circumstances, but as an adventurer who must, from time to time, cross troubled waters.
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This was the first book I read belonging to Paulo Coelho, I’ve got to say the first 20 odd pages was really depressing to read, I do remember going to sleep that Friday night about 2months ago now, wondering what goes through people’s head, later that night I was to learn…
I got a telephone call about 6am that morning from my aunt who lives across the road screaming down the phone could I take her son aged 26 to our hospital he swallowed all their tablets in the house and when he got that funny feeling that he was floating away, he decided he didn’t want to die, so went straight to his mother and told her what he had done! That same day I was to learn the fate of my best friend in school whom I envied at times, she also tried to overdose with tablets that same night, she ended up in a mental hospital for over a month, was it a call for help, was it something each of them had to go through to learn or to grow or to change! Both are now fine, thank goodness…
But the coincidence of me starting that book the evening beforehand was to strong, to ignore! So, I started the book again and I read every single word to the very end, were I learned the plot…
So, here is my question, if Veronika knew she was going to live when she awoke in the hospital, would she have experienced everything she went through within her time there, would she even have tried too! or would her life have gone back to the way it was beforehand, because it was safer than the unknown!
To answer your question, I have to say, to me the book wasn’t about sucide, but the will to live as herself without fear and riducle of family, peers etc…
I totally agree with Paulo,
this book is about the TRUTH.
The truth that being different is much better than being “the same as everybody else” even if it cost you to be lonely, to be the outsider.
If you TRUE to yourself and you accept that,
it’ll actually make you FREE!
No matter if you part of the group called society or not.
Actually, who sets the rules?
People(?):-)
Shouldn’t we listen to the rules set by God:
“THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE!”
and the most important one -
rule of LOVE!
love
Agnieszka
That’s the spirit Sir. Sometimes I think I’m losing it but then I sit, relax and go on…
Happy 2008!!
I have been reading so many stories lately about families institutionalizing other family members to “straighten them out”. Considering that these stories have been related to lesbian and gay coming out stories that’s a pretty funny pun indeed. To be institutionalized for choosing a profession that’s a new one to my ears. I truly had no idea that you could institutionalize people for “social deviances”. It’s outrageous and appalling. It’s sad that we all can’t embrace each other’s differences, but that is something I think the world is moving towards.
I think sometimes ,troubled waters are a time when people have break through’s not break downs …..society needs a reality check …just my thoughts blessings Tania ..
Boredom is closely related to laziness. Happiness (for me) is a meaningful occupation and the absense of pain…that’s it