Eleven Minutes

Paulo Coelho is one of the most inspiring author I’ve ever encounter. He wanted to be a writer so much that his parents thought that he was retarded. His parents brought him into a mental institution when he decided to be a journalist. But this didn’t stop him in being the writer he could be. So I chose this book because I was very curious of the title “Eleven Minutes”. I enjoyed reading the novel not because of the malicious content but how Maria’s point of view is. Maria is a prostitute, period. From the beginning of the novel, Paulo Coelho pointed out that Maria is indeed a prostitute. So I’m going to start how she ended up a as prostitute. Maria was an innocent girl and a virgin and she dreamed her whole life waiting for her prince to come, not to mention, rich, handsome, intelligent and having a beautiful family of her own. All she could is dream for the arrival of her prince and sweep off her feet and take her away with him so they could live happily ever after. Maria’s father was a travelling salesman, her mother a seamstress. They lived in a little town in Brazil. Maria however didn’t have a happy life, she experienced her first heart break when she was eleven years old because she didn’t talk to her crush until her crush moved places away from their town and never saw the boy again. She was heartbroken. She learned that certain things are lost forever. She also learned that there’s a place called “somewhere far away”. She wanted to follow the boy’s footsteps and leave her little town someday. At the age of fifteen, Maria had her first boyfriend. She thought to herself she is already mature and ready to challenge herself with these kinds of experiences. She again was heartbroken with this guy because he cheated on her with her friend simply because Maria didn’t open her mouth when he kissed her. Maria didn’t know that. She was devasted again for the second time. The 15^th year of her life taught her not only the discovery that you were supposed to kiss with your mouth open, and that love is, above all, a cause of suffering. After all the relationships she been through, she came to the conclusion that men brought only pain, frustration, suffering and a sense of time dragging. She still wanted a happy life and a beautiful place to live in but she would never fall in love again because love spoiled everything.  After the adolescent years of Maria passed, she grew prettier and still had the promise to herself to never fall in love again. She lost her virginity to one of her boyfriend and she used that boy as a way of learning, trying in every way she could to understand what sex feels. But all she can understand is that it is painful. And she didn’t agree with all the sources she listened to like the television, her girlfriends, everything that the man was essential in making love. Maria’s aim was to understand love. Quoted from Maria’s diary: “I suffer to think of the people to whom I gave my heart, I see that those who touched my heart failed to arouse my body, and that those who aroused my body failed to touch my heart.” When she turned nineteen, she got a job in a draper’s shop. Her boss fell in love with her. Maria knew how to use a man, without being used by him. After two years of working, she saved enough money to go and spend a week’s holiday in the city if her dreams, Rio de Janeiro. Maria travelled for forty-eight hours by bus, checked into a cheap hotel in Copacabana. She quickly changed into her bikini and went in for the beach despite of the cloudy weather.  Maria met someone who can’t speak Portuguese but wanted her to be a star in Switzerland. She didn’t know where Switzerland was located she didn’t even know it was a country. She was offered some work in a night club and Maria thought she was going to be an actress. She was promised to earn three hundred dollars a night. It was a fortune! And so she signed the contract and let the Swiss man, take her first into Maria’s parents for approval and let them know that they’re daughter will be working as a star in another country. And after that she was now in the night club the Swiss man owned and she started to miss her country, Brazil. She enrolled in a French course, fell in love with her classmate, the Arab guy but only lasted for three weeks. Quoted from Maria’s diary: “I can choose either to be a victim of the world or adventurer in search of treasure. It’s all a question of how I view my life.” Maria then read lots of books in order to gain knowledge. Many nights passed, a rich Arab guy offered her one thousand francs for a night. She is now aware what her job is all about, a prostitute. She made visits to the library more often and still does her job every night. Soon she felt like it was her daily ritual to open her legs and give pleasures to the men out there. Six months passed and she learned all the things to be learned in her job.  She went to bed with many men. The funny thing is she gets paid a lot of money in just a blink of eleven minutes. That’s just how the sex spent time with her. Eleven minutes, the world revolved around something that only took eleven minutes. Quoted from Maria’s diary: “That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.” After months passed she met a painter in a café. He was said to be a very well known artist. The painter named Ralf Hart saw the light he needed to be inspired to do a painting. So the story revolved on how Ralf Hart sweep Maria off her feet. He showed her things she can’t explain before and can’t understand. They would talk about their plans, dreams and of course, sex. He showed her that you can feel the pleasure of making love with a person whom you really give your heart with. That was Maria’s struggle, for every man she went with, she didn’t felt the pleasure she needed. And she felt this only to one person, with Ralf Hart. She saw the passion she needed to complete her dreams. Quoted from Maria’s diary: “Passion, can be used to describe the beauty of an earth-shaking meeting between two people, but isn’t just that. It’s there in the excitement of the unexpected, in the desire to do something with real fervor, in the certainty that one is going to realize a dream. Passion sends us signals that guide us through our lives and it’s up to me to interpret those signs.” But when Maria had enough money to go back to Brazil, she and Ralf Hart made love for the first time before the day she will leave. It was magical because she felt what was missing in her whole life. When the next morning comes, Ralf Hart was still sleeping so Maria went on to her dream to go home and she secretly waiting for Ralf Hart to stop her but he didn’t. She went on the plane going to Paris then Brazil. After the plane landed in Paris, she saw Ralf Hart holding with a bouquet of roses. Cheesy as it sounds, she can’t believe her eyes. The world was so perfect, and the fact that it happened in the most romantic cities in the world. She did found love, in a very hopeless place. The theme I would find in this novel is that love revolves in all kinds of people, whether you are a prostitute or a respected, well known artist. I would also like to focus on how this novel is real and bold when it comes to making love. It’s not just about sex, but how you and your partner share the same passion you do in order to make the perfect love. Quoted from the book: “The strongest love is the love that can demonstrate its fragility.” I’ve gained a lot of insights from reading this book. One of it is I have the art of dreaming. I just need to pursue all the dreams I can despite of all obstacles in my way. Maria dreamed to have a happy ending in her life and she did, even though she felt like the world is on her shoulders. She felt that no one will love her truly because of her profession. Another insight is, no matter how different you can be, if you felt it, you felt it. You can deny it but you can’t hide it. And lastly, you are the author of your own book. Maria chose all the things that happened to her life and there’s this time she wanted to write about it. As a student, I need to focus myself in reading and learning new ideas and knowledge to get ready in the real world. By reading this novel, I set my mind to do some things passionately like studying and taking extra credit. I should set my goals straight and stay focus. I learned a lot of point of view of love from Maria. In one of her entry to her diary she wrote: “Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves: we simply awaken it. But in order to do that we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.” I also learned many things about life. Quoted all from Maria’s diary: “Life moves very fast. It rushes us from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.” “Each day I choose the truth by which I try to live. I try to be practical, efficient, and professional.” “Everything is important. If you live your life intensely, you experience pleasure all the time and don’t feel the need of sex.” And my favorite of all, “When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself. When I experienced humiliation and total submission, I was free. I don’t know if I’m ill, if it was all a dream, or if it only happens once. I know that I can perfectly well live without it, but I would like to do it again, to repeat the experience, to go still further.”

Chen Cobarrubias

202C