Digital Object Identifierhttps://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n5.15
https://orcid.org/0009-0008-8126-2833This paper examines how Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and Veronika Decides to Die represent the search for meaning through contrasting experiences of hope, despair, and personal change. It uses a qualitative, comparative reading informed by literary criticism, positive psychology, and existential thought. The analysis focuses on purpose, agency, freedom, mortality, suffering, and transformation. “Inner utopia” is understood not as perfect happiness but as an imagined possibility of living with greater purpose and authenticity. “Existential despair,” by contrast, refers to a crisis in which familiar assumptions about life lose their force; it is used as a literary concept rather than a clinical diagnosis. Santiago’s journey presents purpose as something pursued through action, uncertainty, and encounters with the world. Veronika’s crisis challenges her assumptions about ordinary life and prompts her to reconsider her possibilities. Although the protagonists begin from different positions, both narratives explore how experience can unsettle established beliefs and alter a person’s relationship with the future. The comparison suggests that Coelho presents meaningful living not as constant happiness or certainty, but as an ongoing engagement with choice, vulnerability, and possibility.
Singal, Abhinav. “Between Inner Utopia and Existential Despair: A Positive-Psychological and Existential Analysis of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and Veronika Decides to Die.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 5, Oct. 2026, pp. 245-67, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n5.15.
© 2026 The Author(s). Published by the Research Centre for English Language and Literature (RCELL) under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
← Back to Vol. 17, Issue 5 · Open Access · CC BY 4.0 · the-criterion.com