Veronika Decides To Die Exemplification

"Veronika Decides to Die," is a novel by Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian writer with many inspirational works such as The Pilgrimage and The Alchemist. This novel begins in the city of Ljubljana; capital of Slovenia, its main character is Veronika, a young and beautiful girl of 24 years of age to whom the monotony of her life has led to suicide. Veronika was certain that at her age, she had achieved everything she wanted. She believed that the only thing that could be missing to live was the bad things of life. Veronika decided the best way to do it; it was by taking four packs of sleeping pills which after 5 minutes made her unconscious. Veronika woke up in Villete, an asylum established in 1991, in a former barracks abandoned by the maintenance costs. This Villete became a sanatorium where were the real mental patients transferred from other clinics together with persons who were accused of insanity, or were made to go through insane. Once awake in the hospital after a long time, Veronika woke a saw Dr. Igor, Director of the institution and a young intern. It was this young man who lets her know her state, informed her that they managed to a stomach wash, which prevented her death, but the excessive dose of sleeping pills caused her an irreversible damage to her heart and told her that she will die in less than a week. Even after this Veronika was sure of the decision which had been taken but was not willing to wait that death came and it is then when she met Zedka, a woman who was finishing her "treatment" and who had entered Villete because of depression; Veronika, asked for help to get more pills to achieve its objective and that's when Zedka, spoke about “Fraternity”, a group of people completely sane that could be out of Villete...

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I would recommend this book to everyone because it is interesting and it made me reflect about whom I am, and what I am doing with my life. It made me think about all the risk that I did not take because I was afraid of what others think. It made me realize that sometimes I need to be selfish with what I want. It gave me the pleasured to rethink about all the things that I did not say because I thought that it did not worth it. Sometimes it is difficult to understand all those things without being close to death. This book teaches me how can I be happy and be crazy because sometimes what we really thing is insane could be the most normal thing for others. It thought me to not be like everyone else if not to be different because that is only thing that could make us happy.

Works Cited

Coehlo, Paulo. Veronika Decides To Die. HarperCollins Publisher Inc, 1998.