Veronika decides to Die – Summary and Review
Veronika decides to die …Less a story of suicide, more an introspective convention of man’s innermost problems and approach towards life.
My Review: It’s an excellent book by Paolo Coelho for those who question the meaning of life, who feel conflicted between their ambitions and the expectations of the society and family, who hide the inner turmoil of mind and the void of heart.
Everyone struggles with these things in life sooner or later. Majority of us lets the things be and a regular course of action continues. But in this novel, Veronica, is a depiction of the other side who does not find sense in such mediocre flow of things. She, and the like-minded people, isolated from the outside world in a mental asylum, question every such thing concerned with their ways of living life, making choices and dealing with constant frustration when confronted with the outside forces which influence them. One who reads the story will be simple amazed at how the ‘mentally unstable’ people in the asylum share logical insights about the life in the asylum and how is it different from the ‘normal world’ outside. The story helps us change our perception about life as the most valuable treasure of God rather than a repetitive cycle of days.
Novel Summary
The story dates back to year 1911.
Veronica, a 24-year-old girl who lives in the capital city of Slovenia consumes sleeping pills to end her life. She is neither depressed nor sad. She wants to kill herself for two reasons – first to escape the monotony of life which would settle upon her in the future and second is the powerlessness to change things – the social issues, crimes, agony, war. So, her reason to die is more practical than emotional.
But she finds herself regaining consciousness in the ICU of a mental asylum, named Villette. This is the place where rest of the story takes place and the story of her self-discovery begins.
The doctors at the asylum tell her that the side-effects of the sleeping pills have resulted in an irreversible damage to her heart. So, she would naturally die by the end of the week.
In Villette, Veronika meets other patients and these encounters are worth mentioning.
First, she comes across a girl named Zedka who is 10 years older to her. Veronika asks what it means to be crazy. She replies that someone who lives in their own world is crazy. All the people who did extremely different things or gave different notions were crazy like Einstein, Columbus, Edmund Hillary, Beatles.
She tells her a story of ancient time when a powerful wizard wanted to destroy the entire kingdom. He spilled some poison in the well. And hence, all inhabitants became mad after drinking the water except the king’s family. When he tried to restore the order they rather thought it was the king who was crazy. Hence in the end, the king decided to drink the poisoned water to be the same as them and restore harmony. Zedka reflects that all those people outside the asylum are the ones who have drunk from the same well and they think they are normal only because they do the same things.
Veronika still determined to die, asks Zedka for the sleeping pills. She guides her to take help from a group in the asylum called Fraternity. On approaching them, Veronika is mocked & humiliated. In response, she slaps one man in the group which makes her feel so relieved and liberated, that she wants to give up ending her life. But, her reasoning of upcoming gloominess in life is so strongly etched that she avoids the idea.
The next morning, she witnesses doctors injecting Zedka with a strong dose of insulin as a cure for depression. It’s an ancient treatment which makes her go on astral journey during which her soul can travel anywhere at will clinging by tiny thread with her body purely under her control. This means she can travel anywhere anytime at will under this dose.
This time, she travels to the doctor’s cabin and overhears that she will be released shortly.
But, she is used to the pros of the place such as freedom from responsibilities, from doing repetitive mundane things, of being yourself. Everything is acceptable here. Now, she was cured to be able to go back to normal life. But she doesn’t want to experience the same depression which brought her here in first place.
Few years ago, she had lost her love. After a year, she moved on. Got a job, got married to a handsome man. They loved each other a lot and had children. Life would keep going with the same pace of one day she had not stopped by the statue of a poet who wrote all his poems in a hope to get the impossible love. This made her ask herself if she tried enough for her first lover. She felt consistent sadness and her current life became hell. So, she escaped and tried all means to reach her lost lover. But couldn’t find him. To her surprise, her husband feigned indifferent to everything as if he didn’t know what’s going on. Her depression was so strong that she became bedridden with memories of her lover.
The insulin session ends, and so does her astral journey. She greets Veronica. This time she tells her the meaning of insanity: ‘not being able to express oneself’.
On the same night, Veronika expresses an urge to the nurse to play piano. The nurse agrees. But at this, Veronika breaks into tears. Nurse consoles her comparing with her own daughter. She says, why do certain people choose to die instead of living. Veronika confesses that she wanted to die because she hated herself but she didn’t know there were other versions of her which she loved.
She reflects on her life again. She has not been a major achiever in life yet she showed off as if she never needed anyone, ending up alone. With this, she feels a sense of hatred for herself and everyone. And since only 2-3 days remain before death, she decides to live her feelings. She realizes she feels hatred for her mom because she sacrificed her own life for her betterment. So, she was over protective towards her. Then she hated her father because though he was charming, he didn’t show the affection to her mother which he should have.
Thinking all these messy thoughts full of hatred, she plays the piano in a crazy way. After which she feels relieved to have risen above those feelings.
Now, she plays the perfect music when love filled the void left by hatred. Then, a person named Eduard appears who is a schizophrenic.
Meanwhile, Veronika’s mother visits Dr. Igor to see her daughter. She has no idea why her daughter did that despite a good upbringing and everything so perfect in her life. But, Veronika refuses to see her mother.
The next moment, she gets a near death experience that she feels sharp pain in her heart and she can’t breathe, followed by vomiting. She thought she would get eternal peace after death, but she doesn’t die. This makes her go furious. She sits on the floor, cries and shouts miserably.
She is so uncontrollable that the doctor injects her with sedatives. She wakes up after few hours and talks to the doctor during which she realizes that despite being loved and protected all her life, there was one element missing – She should have allowed herself to be a little crazy. So, she could support her dreams. One such was to become a pianist but she ended up working as a librarian.
Suddenly, Eduard, who is now fond of listening to her piano music grabs her by the arm and takes her towards the living room to play the piano. She is worried about him getting so used to her and reminds that she is going to die and leaves.
But after attending a meditation session with the inmate Mari, she feels like stretching and expanding herself beyond her set boundaries. This time, she plays the piano while Eduard is sitting by.
Eduard is very good looking but he remains in his own zone. What drives Veronika towards him is the fact that he recognizes her as an artist. She wanted to live a long life with him. Since, she has a very limited time, and despite he could not understand anything she would say, she confesses her feelings to him. She wishes if he could like her the way she likes him and regrets that he won’t miss her after her death.
Although she had known many men, she had not experienced the most hidden part of her desires. She was never crazy enough to live her life fully.
The next morning, she visits Dr. Igor to ask how much time she got left. “24 hours”, he replies. But ironically, it’s now she wants to live to the fullest. So, she wants to make the best of this time, do all the things she kept postponing. So, requests him to get released so she could live her last day to the fullest.
To Veronika’s surprise Eduard, too is driven towards her through her music. Even though he couldn’t utter a word, his eyes conveyed that he understood her music. Though escape from the asylum has always been easy, he had so far not opted that option. But now, he feels the urge to leave Villete and start a normal life in the world outside. He realizes that in a mental hospital, people lock themselves up and discuss there ideas as if they were the saviors of the world. But it is of no use if those ideas cannot be put into practice.
He talks to Mari about his thoughts. When they talk, Mari confesses that after finding reason to live, she doesn’t want to stay here any longer. Life is really beautiful outside. Though, we need to pay a certain cost to lead a normal life and our reasons, but the price is very less in comparison to what he has to pay for not recognizing the joy behind these little things. She says to him that it has always been their fault to choose an escape route during difficulties. She says she wants to return to her former life and make mistakes she never did before to be wiser in life.
(So by this time, every one is certain that the life of the normal world outside is better than the monotonous and meaningless life of metal asylum.)
Eduard visits the library and reads a poem after which he is so determined to leave that he says that aloud alerting the librarian. The person rings the bell. Two nurses come. Eduard requests them to take him to Dr. Igor so he could release him, since he is normal. For the first time, Eduard takes her name out loud, ‘Veronika, I think you are important to me’.
But the nurses take him for electric shock treatment. Instead of choosing to spend her last moments outside, she is driven by love to accompany him in this situation. He is fearful but assures her that in some time, everything will calm down.
After the session, Eduard returns to a state of normalcy that the new feelings of love for Veronika had left because the therapy erases the short-term memory. He lays on bed sleeping. While Veronika is watching him peacefully.
This time Zedka visits her before leaving. She witnesses how Veronika is caressing Eduard’s hair so patiently despite enjoying her last day outside and admires their love.
Veronika tells her that she had always thought that she could play piano only when she was in love and last night she gave herself to the piano, to this man, who had not touched a hair on her head. On this Zedka remarks that a lot of people die living long but without discovering what did they love. So even if she dies now, she can with a heart full of love.
Next, Mari visits the doctor and asks if she can leave too. The doctor explains her that she is not cured because she is different from other people, but she wants to be like them, which is a serious illness. God has created everyone different. So going against the nature causes distortion. She tells that her soul has been in the past. But now, it is in her body vibrating with enthusiasm after witnessing the young girl play piano with such love and enthusiasm. Is was as if the impending death of Veronika made her realize about her own life. He asked her what would she do outside. She said she would take care of poor children. He filled her form and released her from the asylum.
So ultimately, it’s Veronika whose story influences the life of the inmates who so far were satisfied with the regular boring life of asylum and now they all want to go back to their former lifestyle.
Meanwhile, Eduard wakes up. He too wants to look outside the walls of Villette.
Two years ago, his father was posted to the Brazilian capital as Yugoslavian ambassador. But he did not like living in a place like that. There would be parties with lot of alcohol and drugs around, he tried all of that but ended up losing complete interest. He loved studies, art, languages and politics. But he could not talk to others.
Soon, he develops liking for a girl named Maria. Eduard’s parents now relieved to find their son mingle up with a girl. Though they do not plan to get them married, since his father would get another posting after 2 years. But Eduard develops many changes like bringing strange books home (with cover images of witches, bonfire, crosses, etc., burnt incense with Maria every night, and spent hours staring at strange design on the wall. One day, Eduard demands a by-cycle from his father to go on a 10-day trip with Maria to go to a place with huge crystal deposits for positive energy. This time, the father turns down the idea and persuades him to become a diplomat.
Eduard leaves the home during the same night. But he returns the next day, tired and sleepy. Father gifts him the bicycle. He set out on his trip towards Maria’s place. But on the way, he meets an accident. He is hospitalized with his arms and legs fractured. Maria would visit him. But the visits became infrequent with time.
In the hospital, a nurse gives him a book which became a reason for him to come to Villette. The book was about visionaries and their ideas such as Freud, Einstein, Darwin, Christ, Columbus and Marx. The book told that they were all ordinary people with same doubts and anxiety as others. But there was a single magical moment which made them set off in search of their own vision of paradise. So influenced by the book, he decides to paint and show his visions to the world.
He enrolls in an art course, making his parents worried again. He makes paintings of untidy people with disheveled hair, and strange symbols. Also, the parents get a call from the school that his grades are below average and he seems to be involved in drugs. His father requests the doctors to conduct a blood test to check for drugs. The results were negative. After this, his father sat down with him for a talk. He tries to convince him for career as a diplomat. But Eduard emphasizes on being a painter. In the coming time, Eduard is expelled from school, and he continues doing strange things, and making strange friends, listening to strange music. His dad almost begs him to not ruin his dream of making his son an ambassador one day like him.
But, mentally, Eduard could not get any better. He was stuck in that dream of his to paint. He was subjected to treatment during which the doctor discovers a rare form of schizophrenia, which might have occurred since the bicycle accident. After this, his parents decided to admit him in the mental hospital.
Veronika confesses to him that she had taken the permission from the doctor to leave and spend her last moments as she desired but when the nurses were taking him for treatment, she realized the last thing she wanted to keep looking at during her death was his face. She wants to play the piano one last time for him.
Eduard says that he could accompany her outside in case she wants to leave and they could spend the time together.
That evening, during the supper in asylum, four people were missing-Zedka, who had been released. Mari, who had left Villette by herself, Eduard, who people thought might have not recovered from the shock treatment and Veronika, who people knew would not survive the week. When people thought, she might have died by now, they remained silent. Some cried thinking that the person once so full of life would now be lying the small mortuary behind the asylum.
On the other hand, Eduard and Veronika visit the most expensive restaurant of the place, order finest of dishes and get drunk on three bottles of wine. They pass nonsensical remarks, and talk so loud and inappropriate that the owner gets them out of the restaurant. Then they head towards a bar and continue to drink. Next, they visit the castle on top of the hill, cursing and laughing. As her last wish, she urges Eduard to start painting gain, to remember her face in his soul so he can reproduce it as he paints. She discovers that the reason of her coming to this world was to get Eduard back on his path.
Both confess their love to each other. Veronika puts her arms around him and prays to god to take her that very moment. Then she goes into long dreamless sleep. Death was so sweet.
The next morning, Eduard is woken up by a policeman. Eduard screams, she is dead. But Veronika is alive. They think she got another day of life.
Meanwhile, in Villette, doctor Igor is informed about the duo’s escape by the nurse. Initially, he reacts angrily, disappointed by the incompetence of the hospital staff in keeping the security. But, soon, he gives up writing about the case, smiling.
Here comes the big suspense in the story.
Actually, Dr. Igor was writing a thesis on Vitriol -the poison which Dr. Igor believed to be the cause of insanity. Vitriol is released by the human organism whenever a person found him or herself in a frightening situation. All humans carry vitriol in their organism but the poison effects when the person becomes afraid of so-called reality. Just as what happened with Veronika. it was only that substance, which according to Dr. Igor provoked her to commit suicide.
He concludes that the only cure for vitriol is awareness of life. The medication he gave his patients was awareness of death. Everything about his thesis only depended on one thing – the girl’s capacity to survive.
So he lied to her about the heart failure and practically used her as Guinea pig to see if he could eliminate vitriol from her organism through awareness of death. For this, he would simulate the heart attacks in her using a drug named Fenotal.
Now since she had escaped herself, he needed not tell her another lie so he was happy. The cure also influenced other people, and urged them to go on living a normal life.
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