Theme Of Fear In 'By The River Piedra I Sat Down And Wept'

“Everything you want is on the other side of fear” (Jack Canfield). Throughout the novel By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept by Paulo Coelho, the theme of fear is illustrated through the main character, Pilar. The novel, which is narrated in first person, follows Pilar through her journey towards accepting love, letting go of fear/the Other, and not allowing it to control her life and keep her from doing the things she desires. Pilar is a cautious girl, she lets fear rule her live and in doing so she denies the things that she wants. When she and her childhood friend were younger, he wanted to confess to her that he loved her, but she out of fear for her feelings, his, and being left behind, she cut him off and distracted him by asking if he had seen a medal that she lost. Pilar then thinks back thinks back to the first time she saw her friend in 10 years, and thinks, “For four days I had ignored my heart’s voice… the Other had become desperate. In the furthest corner of my soul, my true self existed, and I still believed in my dreams” (Coelho 46). Pilar knows she loves her friend, she had known since they were younger,
According the tale told within the book by Pilar’s childhood friend, “The Other is the one who taught me what I should be like, but not what I am… It’s just that the Other, afraid from disappointment, kept me from taking action” (Coelho 34). Pilar realizes that the story of the Other was told to her so she could learn from it, and that she herself should expel the Other from her body, so that she no longer lives in fear of doing what she wants to do. The next day, she does the exercise of the Other, the one her friend had told her the previous night, and lets the Other leave her body. She then, she reflects on who she had been up until the moment before —someone who controlled and denied her