When I started reading The Fifth Mountain, I expected a religious undertone. I expected a novel similar, but inferior, to The Alchemist. I expected an entertaining tale. What I got was an experience.
On the surface, Coelho constructs a story of inner struggle in the story of the Prophet Elijah. But boiling underneath is a profound, heartfelt lamentation of man. A tear jerker to its core, The Fifth Mountain instills a sense of meaning in one's life. Through the loss of his home, his name, his freedom, and the one he loves, Elijah teaches us several lessons to be lived.
The first one being; there are only two things: the temporary and the lasting. The temporary is the unavoidable. The lasting is in the lessons we learn from the unavoidable.
The second is about tragedy. He teaches us that tragedy is not a punishment for the lives we had lived, but a challenge to change them into what we have desired them to be. Tragedy exists to teach us to go onward, however difficult it may appear.
The last lesson we learn from Elijah is that sometimes it is necessary to struggle with God. Man must choose, not accept, his fate. And that God is blinded to those who do not choose. If you simply trust in God because you have been told to, do you truly trust in God? No, the choice must be yours. Only then will you know yourself and can then rename yourself.
Elijah fought God because he did not want to be Chosen. He renamed himself Liberation, meaning he chose his path. And it led him to God.
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