Eleven Minutes Essay

390 Words2 Pages
Eleven Minutes, By Paulo Coelho, tells the story of Maria, a young Brazilian woman whose first innocent experiences with love leave her convinced that she will never truly find it. After a chance meeting in Rio, Maria makes the decision to chase fame and fortune as a dancer in Geneva. Encouraged by a heated discussion with her manager, she realizes her life as a dancer is unsatisfying and her quest to find fast money begins. When a long, unsuccessful search leaves her low on cash, Maria grows desperate and finds herself selling her body. Delighted by the easiness of the money, Maria encounters a mindset that she no longer has control over her body. Her body belongs to the men who pay for it. After several clients, Maria meets a painter. Fascinated by his depth and interest in her, Maria falls in love, forcing her to choose between her career of mindless lust or possible life of passion and love. In the novel, Coelho vividly describes the soul of a prostitute. By elaborating on the nature of sex, Paulo shocks readers with great detail and provocative imagery. He focuses various prejudices associated with love-making and mindless sex. As Maria searches for money and adventure, Coelho digs deep into the traces of a women's deepest craving. The book embarks the story of Maria and inherits the theme of hero and heroine, attempting to figure out the true meaning of life. Unlike Coelho's usual writing style, this story takes readers to the height of their imagination and forces them to see from the prospective of a prostitute. Eleven Minutes allows us to enter the mindset of a prostitute with various diary passages, stepping into Maria's brain. In this story, Coelho challenges readers to an entirely new excitement, pressuring them to question the true definition of love and lust. The novel takes us into an alternate reality far beyond imagination. In Maria's
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