The novel tells the story of Veronika, a beautiful young woman from Slovenia. She works as a librarian by day and by night carries on like many single women, dating men, occasionally sleeping with them, and returning to a single room she rents at a convent. Apparently because everything in her life was the same and once her youth was gone, it would be downhill all the way and also everything is wrong with the world and she feels powerless to make things right. Veronika had everything, a family, a job, money, etc. However, she wasn’t happy from all of this. She always felt that her life was empty of purpose and that future would be worse, that’s why she decides to suicide by taking many sleeping pills.
Instead of dying, she awakes in “Villete”, a mental hospital in Ljubljana. The nurses tell her that she has only one week to live because the pills had caused irreversible damages in her body. During her stay in “Villete”, Veronika meets Zedka who suffers from a mental depression. Zedka had a husband, children and a stable life, but she’s been obsessed by an old lover and she still thinks’ that he’s looking after her. Veronika meets also Marie who suffers from panic attacks. Mari’s husband wanted to divorce her, so even when she is cured, she prefers to lie to her doctor and pretends that the attacks have returned. Edward is also a patient who has schizophrenia who dreamed of being a painter but his parent’s didn’t let him achieve his dream, he falls in love with Veronika and also Dr. Igor as her Psychiatrist in that mental hospital. During a week, Veronika experiences a number of changes in her vision life and death, in her attitudes, beliefs and her personality. She become spontaneous and starts expressing easily her weakness, her fear, her anger and her love without worrying about other’s prejudice or about the future because she believes she will be dead soon. The presence of Veronika in the hospital has influenced all patients and incited them to think about their own life and value it more and has encouraged them to leave the hospital to achieve their dreams.
The book is amazing, though at times the main character’s actions to find the truth about her and who she is maybe a little eccentric. This book is all about what it means to be mad/crazy and how the mad view the so called insane people. I think that this book has forever changed my way of thinking and I will never forget it. A deeply moving book makes us consider why people live and why some choose to die. It also encouraged us to challenge the rules, to make our life what we want to be and think about the things we really want to do. This book has definitely inspired and/or changed the lives of many people out there. It is a book that will make us to think, and appreciate life.
There are, though, few books that I have encountered and I have read and enjoyed at different periods of my life when that meant different things to me. Particularly because I have gone through same dramatic life shifts, and because those shifts have give me some fairly fundamental changes in how I view the world, the human nature, and mostly myself as well. One of those books, which has had a great impact on me and which I have enjoyed in immensely different ways at hugely different periods of my life partly because of the way the author’s experiences are also painted into the world work.
I think the author’s purpose in writing this kind of book is in this life, we all have a mission to accomplish. The intended message is inspiring and beautiful because here we can discover the true value of life, the richness with it can be lived and the meaning of living it. We should not be apathetic and resigned to the dull norms. Instead we should savour every mad moment, every impulse we feel so long, as long as we do not cause destruction to those people around us. Laugh, dance with the joy of life living, unleash the individual within us and scream, go out and follow your dreams. It is an inspiring approach to our existence and the novel answers to a modern day malaise inflicting thousands of people worldwide and even me, who was experiencing the boredom, apathy and depression sometimes. All of us meet face-to-face with sadness and emptiness at some point in our lives, but we have to face it and accept it because we all know that God Almighty Father didn’t give us this kind of problem without any solution. We have the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter a long way. To succeed, we need a roadmap (in my case, it’s my family and my religion) that shows me the way I should follow, the places I should explore or avoid, and prevent me from being in a depressive state like the one Veronika went through.
The Author is trying to teach us several things alongside observing his own promise to reveal his personal experiences of a doctor patient relationship into a mental hospital. The author’s ideas are the cornerstones of his legion fan base. The ideas are not only visible in this book when it comes to Veronika’s rebirth but also in interesting but minor parts of the story. Through the story of her remaining days Coelho encourages to us to believe in hope and follow our dream without the fear of being seen as mad .He believes he can shock people into appreciating life and just help us realize that they can simply back up and learn to love life again.
As I compared this novel to the last novel I have read already is that at the ending part is very different to what I’ve already read. Because, at the end of the novel, I was discover that Veronika didn’t suffer from any damages. It was only an experiment of Dr. Igor who decided to shock her by death to make her value the life she had. And this experiment was fortunately successful because it helped Veronika see the world in a new light. The last book I have already read last month is the “White Oleander” by Janet Fitch. I guess what I liked most was how Ingrid and Astrid end up in the bowels of the system and go through their own hell of sorts like Veronika and Eduard. Coming out the other side in one piece is their common hope; and each finds their methods of sustaining their souls against the loneliness they must endure. They story is mainly centred on Astrid, and the difficulty she has with connecting with her mother like also with Veronika. Veronika begins to feel hatred for her mother- a woman who gave her love and asked nothing in return and that filled her with more guilt, on top of the guilt she feels for having forced her unhappy parents to remain married just to please her. She hates her father as well, recalling how she had been secretly attracted to him. What was once a simple relationship, which consisted at admiration and awe is no longer valid. The physical separation also serves to severe the ties that held them together. Astrid eventually comes to blame her situation on her mother’s selfish act of revenge, and slowly becomes more alienated from her. Despite their strength and stoicism, Fitch underlines the emotional dependence between Astrid and Ingrid that is Infuriating yet fundamental at the same time. Ingrid’s futile attempts at initiating Astrid in the ways of womanhood are thwarted, as Astrid rebels against the treat of becoming her mother, but it also seen to covet her iron-will that she so desperately needs. In time, Astrid learns how to conduct herself through the haphazard world; and even comes to appreciate her mother’s advised.
Nobody’s perfect. Veronika seems to have everything she could wish for, yet something is lacking. Killing yourself for a reason that you are having a missing piece of your life is not really a solution. And basically everything that happens in our life is our fault and our fault alone. Lots of people who are dying want to live, so we must think being awake every morning is a pure blessing.
The most exciting part of the book is in the twist in the table comes when Veronika escapes from the asylum with Eduard, without her knowing that she is healthy and has long to live. Dr. Igor finds out about her escape on the very morning when he plans to notify her about hear health; yet he relishes the fact that Veronika unaware that she is fine again, would live each day as a miracle.
One of the most interesting scenario of this book was when Mari an antagonist to Veronika, a lawyer, and a fellow patient at the Villete hospital where not of the story take place muses about how she would depend Adam in the eyes of God for the role he played in the” Fall of man”. And also the metaphor from Zedka another patient about the king and queen who rules a kingdom of mad people and how they reacted.
This novel is highly relatable. It’s about that dreads despite and despises her own routine-filled in life. She tentatively lives her life day to day consumed with overall feelings of misery and suffers from a severe case of depression. As the title avers, Veronika decides to die, however, she fails attempting to. This novel is a deeply stimulating, eye opening novel. It depicts the life of a troubled woman and how in the end she gains an immense appreciation for her life because she realizes, after all, that life is imminent.
I can say that the title is a good one, because it is a moving and uplifting song of life, one that reminds us that every moment in our lives is especial and precious. The moral lesson of the finite nature of life that inspires Veronika to follow her dreams shows who truly is and then found happiness. Love what makes her live again. In her saying she speaks as if she is going to die one day; it may not be tomorrow, in a week, or in how many years, but it will happen, and that awareness should motivate her to live exactly the way she wants. Each day is a gift, and she knows it.
I viewed this book through two very different lenses in my life, one where I was fighting my own mind, and one where I was coming to terms with myself instead; a period of self acceptance rather than self-floating. This book offers an archetypal story of hope portraying a situation in which joy challenging and limiting of circumstances. In doing so, the importance of living a genuine life, and the threats to individual identity imposed by closed communities and the rules under which the function.
Yes, a lot of ideas about me that life are worth living despite contradictions we can notice around us, we just have to change our perception of life, face the difficulties and overcome our fears in order to make sense to those contradictions. Second is death is in the hands of God. He is the only one who can decide when every mortal will die. Life is too short journey, and all its challenges are only way to ensure the eternal happiness in heaven. So, we should learn how to enjoy this life and how to take advantage of every moment, sad or happy, since it makes us closes to our ultimate goal.
Yes, there is because Mr. Coelho’s the author his development of characters and especially with his choice of dialogue. Veronika, notwithstanding her epic journey from being suicidal to becoming essentially optimistic, can seem almost two- dimensional in the sense that she seem to evolve on her own, like a self-contained universe. And events are too pat: witness Eduard, who may have been pretending to be a schizophrenic waiting for the off chance that someone like Veronika would come along.
The awareness of the finite nature of life that inspires us to follow our dreams, express who we truly are, and ultimately find happiness. We’re all going to die one day, it will happen. It obviously shows us how often we don’t know what we have until it’s too late and that awareness should motivate us to live exactly the way we want. Each day is a gift, let’s not waste it.
All human beings are condemned to die just like Veronika in this novel. We can observe that most people complain about their problems and their lives, but if they knew that the day of their death is so close, they would wish they could live eternally. That’s why If I will be the writer, I will end it up by letting Veronika die with all the knowing the true value of life. Because it will be so dramatic and so nice if someone will die with someone to hold on. And even she died, at least for the last days of her life; she finds the missing part of her life.
The narrative concludes with Veronika and Eduard celebrating their freedom and with Dr. Igor celebrating the success of his experiment.