Critique of Capitalism in Paulo Coelho’s The Winner Stands Alone

Abstract

This is the era of both the triumphalism as well as crisis of capitalism. The phony worlds of capitalist culture and obsessed passion of the modern people have produced a lot of evils in the contemporary society. Paulo Coelho’s The Winner Stands Alone depicts the dark sides of the consumerist culture through the exploration of the underbelly of celebrity culture, where people are servile to the evil influence of capitalism. The protagonist Igor is the representative character of this plight. He is obsessed to regain his lost love, his ex-wife Ewa and commits series of crimes. Even after murdering many innocent people, he gets failed to achieve his goal. While trying to return her back to home, he even kills her and her lover as well and at the end remains nothing of his own. Hence, Marx’s critique of capitalism seems more relevant at this time as Terry Eagleton claims in his latest book Why Marx Was Right.