Another Paulo Coelho's book review. You must be getting sick of Paulo Coelho at this juncture. I hope not. Well, when it comes to reading, I guess sometimes I also have the 'flavour of the month' when it comes to reading 'flavours'. As you may have already guessed it correctly, the 'flavour of the month' is Paulo Coelho's works.
The Devil and My Prym themed around the struggle between angels and devils. Actually, angels and devils exist within all men. Each man can be either an angel or a devil depending on what he or she is going through the moment.
One of the most impressionable stories to illustrate this point included the Da Vinci's painting of The Last Supper. When Da Vinci wanted to find a model for Jesus, he spotted a young artist with an angelic and serene face. The painting took a few years to complete. He painted Judas - the one who betrayed Jesus last. It took Leonardo ages to find the perfect model to exhibit the malicious expression of Judas in that of a beggar. When the beggar took a look at the completed works for Judas was the last to be painted, he exclaimed that he had seen the picture many years ago for he was asked to model for Jesus many years ago. Both Jesus and Judas were the same person but one epitomised the good and the other the evil solely because of the circumstances and experience of the person.
The plot of the story was a simple. A man who met with great tragedy in life. His wife and daughter were kidnapped and killed by arms dealers who wanted to extort the man to help them to get arms because the man held a high position in a weapon company. His wife and daughter were killed by the kidnappers with the weapons made from his company. He decided to prove to himself that all men were fundamentally evil, so he chose a small hunting village of Viscos as the test ground.
The villagers all knew each other very well. Most of them were elderies as the young had left for more opportunities in the city. There was only an orphaned girl - Chantal who worked in the bar. The man struck a deal with Chantal. If she could help him to talk to the villagers so that they conspired to have a villager killed within 3 days, she would get a gold bar. If the villagers killed someone, they would collectively share 10 gold bars. It was a test og greed against morale - a test of good against evil because 'Thou shalt not kill' was one of the ten commandments.
There was inner struggle within Chantal for she longed to have the money to move out of the village to pursue her dreams. There was inner struggle within the man for wanting to carry on with his test. There was inner struggle within the villagers for living wealthily with the guilt of killing someone or poorly with a clear conscience. How would they choose? Which would prevail, angels or devils?
The most important lesson was that everyone had both the good and evil within them. The good and evil struggled each day through all our actions and decisions. There was no difference between a saint and a murderer. The only difference was that the saint could control the evil better and he chose to keep evil in remission.
What is your choice?
No comments:
Post a Comment