"Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache."

Though it has a very high overall rating, it's clear from reading 1 and 5 star reviews of 'The Prophet' that it can be fairly divisive. Not, interestingly, because the people who dislike it disagree with what it says, but largely because they find it overly sentimental and trite and shallow.

Shallow is, it seems, a fairly common critique of self-help books. A reviewer calling themself 'S' described their disdain for 'The Prophet' thusly: '[It] combines the content of your 65-year-old aunt's Facebook shares of pictures of sunrises overlaid with silly feel-good quotations with the writing style of a 13-year-old emo kid."

Setting aside the discussion of the level of talent 13-year-old emo writers may or may not have, the type of shallowness that left many readers rolling their eyes seems to be fairly agreed upon by detractors.

And to be honest, I get it. I have definitely shaken my head at the 'live, love, laugh' crowd, but it is pretty ironic to look down your nose at people who enjoy tying trite truisms up in pretty words to adorn their walls because you think the book they got the words from is trying (and in your opinion failing) to be deep.

As with any self-help book, some of it is going to resonate strongly with some people and not at all with others. I'm a non-religious person, and when Gibran would get on his 'God and the afterlife and the beyond' soapbox I did skim. I also had issues with certain sections, just because I didn't really jive with what he had to say. But then there were others that I thought were wonderfully rendered -- in large part because he was saying things I agreed with, and saying them in a beautiful way using beautiful imagery.

In particular, I liked his section on crime and punishment, and how he went out of his way to paint crime as a largely systemic societal failing rather than a personal one; a sentiment that we're only just starting to see take root in our institutions here in the US and Canada as discussions of restorative justice become a more serious consideration.

You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked, for they stand together before the face of the sun even as the black thread and the white are woven together [...] And when the black thread breaks, the weaver shall look into the whole cloth, and he shall examine the loom also.(p.41-42)

Does he go on with any actionable advice about how to do this? No.

And that's the other main critique of this book it seems. It offers up ideas that in isolation the average person would agree with: be generous, teamwork makes the dream work, a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.' That kind of thing. And you do, you see these kinds of quotes shared generally by older people on Facebook and you're not meant to think too hard about it, just give it a like to say: 'yes, I do indeed meet the bar of being a good person, and I'm glad you do too.'

Inane? A little bit, but also not bad touchstones for those who want to go a little deeper.
"Thought is a bird of space that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly" is a lovely turn of phrase, but do you agree with it? Do you agree that a person's inner voice can never really be translated outside of their own mind? This is actually a pretty interesting question. Gibran didn't seem interested in doing more than raising it, but that doesn't mean a reader can't do some of their own legwork to form their own opinion.

A lot of this book boiled down to that for me: Gibran is throwing tennis balls at you and you can either catch them or throw them back.

This is true of any type of creative work that seeks to impart some clearcut message or point of view, but in the self-help genre in particular I'm happier to engage with the ideas when they're put together in a more pleasing way than straight prose usually accomplishes, even if they both say the same types of things.

And finally, and perhaps more importantly, especially to anyone who (myself included) has a problem with works like this, not because they disagree with the ideas but because the ideas aren't new to them or didn't spark some inner dialogue or self-exploration, does it really matter that much?

When I was 13, the idea that you shouldn't live your life just to please other people and that it's ok to experiment with self-expression was a revelation, as I think it is to many teenagers. And that idea can come from anywhere. It can come from the lyrics to a pop song, from a film, from your mom, from a billboard on the side of the road, or from 'The Prophet.' Like, let's all just calm down and be happy that the interest in introspection has been sparked at all. Or not. Maybe your 65-year-old aunt just liked the picture of the rainbow and it made her feel good to share it with her fifty-three friends on Facebook from her knitting circle. As long as it's not overtly harmful, let people just enjoy things.

I liked some of what The Prophet had to offer, I disagreed with some of it, I thought some of it was cringe, but that most of it was written in a pleasing way without committing the cardinal sin of being both trite in idea and imagery. Like, I'm sorry, but who is so dead inside that they read a line like: "forget not that the Earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair" and get angry that someone embroidered that onto a doily? Because it's 'shallow?'

I promise it'll be ok. And so does Gibran, but only if you remember that "reason, ruling alone, is a force confining."

Lindsay Ellis, of Youtube fame, has done several video essay analyses of what about popular things brings up such hatred in certain people. I'm oversimplyfying here, but one of her conclusions implies that part of where it comes from is a discomfort with being ordinary in any way. 'How can I form a unique identity that makes me special,' one might think, 'if I like something that millions of other people like too?' She also points out that it's kind of curious that this discussion so often arises around 'shallow' art that centers on emotion, and especially emotions and sentiments that are typically coded as female: romance, compassion, joy. But that this same level of lip-curling is rarely levied at 'shallow' art that centers on male-coded emotions and sentiments: stoicism, aggression, anger. Like, just look at the type of backlash Barbie (2023) got versus The Fast and the Furious X(Ten! There are Ten of these movies! Isn't Vin Diesel tired?).

Finally, maybe the reason so many people quote this at weddings is because it's whimsical and lyrical and the advice is so universal, and wedding receptions aren't really known for being a battleground of ideas, but a place to celebrate sentimentality and beauty. Something to think about.