ShodhPatra: International Journal of Science and Humanities

Interconnectedness of Humans, Nature, and God: An Eco-Critical Study of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Interconnectedness of Humans, Nature, and God: An Eco-Critical Study of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho Dr. Dipti Shukla Assistant Professor, Department of English Dayanand Girls PG College, Kanpur drdiptridbs@gmail.com Abstract This paper undertakes an eco-critical examination of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist (1988), focusing on the triadic relationship between human consciousness, the natural world, and the divine. Drawing upon foundational frameworks in ecocritical theory—including the insights of Glotfelty and Fromm (1996), Garrard (2004), and Love (2003)—the study argues that Coelho's narrative radically departs from anthropocentric literary traditions by elevating nature to the status of a sentient, communicative co-participant in human destiny. Through the protagonist Santiago's transformative desert pilgrimage, the novel articulates a coherent eco-spiritual philosophy in which ecological attentiveness, spiritual evolution, and divine revelation are experienced not as discrete phenomena but as dimensions of a single, unified reality. The paper further contends that Coelho's portrayal of the 'Soul of the World' constitutes a literary enactment of what deep ecology theorist Arne Naess (1973) terms 'biocentric equality'—a recognition of intrinsic worth in all forms of life. By situating The Alchemist within both literary-ecological and contemporary environmental discourse, this study offers an original argument: that the novel functions as a veiled manifesto for ecological consciousness, urging readers to reconceive the human subject not as sovereign over nature but as embedded within and answerable to its unfolding logic. Keywords: ecocriticism, The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho, eco-spirituality, Soul of the World, deep ecology, anthropocentrism, nature and divinity