Summary

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Summary
Summary (Masterpieces of World Literature, Critical
Edition)
The Prophet, Gibran’s most famous work, has sold more copies and been translated into more languages than
any of his other writings. Its popularity has been attributed to its simple style, metrical beauty, and words of
wisdom. It focuses on human relationships—with others, with nature, and with God.

Almustafa, a young prophet, has lived in Orphalese for twelve years and is waiting for the ship that will take
him home. The townspeople beg him to stay, but Almustafa remains firm in his decision. Then they ask him
to speak to them one more time, to share his words of wisdom on love, marriage, children, giving, eating and
drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom,
reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure,
beauty, religion, and death. His final words are a promise that he will return to Orphalese.

While the structure is narrative, the language is very rhythmic and biblical in style, using such phrases as
“You have been told . . . but I say unto you” and “Verily I say unto you.” The repetition of such words as
“but,” “and,” and “for” helps maintain the thought and logic of the theme as Gibran moves from response to
response, as one idea suggests another. In addition, Gibran skillfully uses rhetorical questions. This can be
observed in Almustafa’s response to the question about giving. He says, “What is fear of need but need
itself?” and “Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?”

Mysticism, characteristic of all Gibran’s writings, is extensively present in The Prophet. For example,
Almustafa’s words are given to him directly by God. Furthermore, personal characteristics are attributed to
inanimate concepts; love is personified, and the ocean is able to “laugh with you.” The work reflects an
entrance into a progression through, and an emergence from, a mystical state. Also in keeping with the
characteristics of mysticism, God is treated as a principle or a force rather than as a person; God’s divinity is
in nature. Since all living creatures come from and return to God, God is present in all things, present in all
places and at all times. At the same time, Almustafa acknowledges the human traits of God when he asserts,
“God listens not to your words save when He Himself utters them through your lips.”

In interpreting this work, Mikail Naimy, a writer and friend of Gibran, suggests that Almustafa is Gibran. The
twelve years spent in Orphalese correspond to the twelve years Gibran lived in New York. “The isle of his
birth” was Lebanon, and Almitra, the seeress, represents Mary Haskell. Naimy also proposes that the promise
to return to Orphalese was an example of Gibran’s belief in reincarnation. Other critics have taken a broader
view and suggested that Orphalese symbolizes the earth, Almustafa’s twelve-year stay in Orphalese parallels
the separation of the individual spirit from the “All-Spirit” while on earth, and the “isle of birth” is the center
of Life Universal, the place where all beings are born.

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2
Characters

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Characters
Characters Discussed (Great Characters in Literature)
Almustafa

Almustafa, a prophet of God who has come down from the hill to embark on the ship that will take him to the
land of his birth. He has dwelled among the Orphalese for twelve years, has fathered children, and has known
long days of pain and long nights alone. He has acquired the love of the people, who regard him as the
“Chosen,” but he is a seafarer and traveler, and it is time to depart. In his demeanor, his language, and his
relationship to his listeners, Almustafa bears a close resemblance to Jesus of Nazareth. By using a biblical
setting, the book lends moral force to what the Prophet says. Almustafa is a mystic whose wisdom has been
gleaned from much observation. In nature, he sees a revelation of all of his truths, and he takes from nature a
rich array of imagery to convey his teaching. Whereas Christ spoke in parables, Almustafa employs
paradoxical examples to illustrate his thoughts and find understanding and acceptance, yet his simple
language makes his teachings accessible to all those who come to hear him speak. He delivers his wisdom on
more than two dozen topics. The seeress Almitra asks him to speak of love and marriage. A mother wants the
truth about children; a rich man, of giving; an innkeeper, of eating and drinking; a mason, of houses; and a
hermit, of pleasure. Other subjects include the ordinary—clothes, talking, and buying and selling—and the lofty
and timeless—freedom, good and evil, beauty, pleasure, friendship, time, and, inevitably, death. The people
who seek the wisdom of the Prophet are only names of types or occupations: a ploughman, an elder, a lawyer,
a weaver, an orator, a rich man, a scholar, a poet, and an astronomer. The subjects on which the Prophet
speaks are but individual manifestations of the great forces that drive nature and define all things. As he
speaks, he connects the everyday experiences of his audience to the powers of the Infinite, telling his listeners
that he does not bring knowledge to them; rather, he shows them what they already know and feel but do not
yet see. The Prophet drives home the principle that the best life is one in harmony with nature. The individual,
as part of nature, partakes of its boundless forces. As it endures, so will the souls of all who open themselves
to nature and understand their affinity to it. Endless is being, he tells them, and endless is their ability to see
beauty, to feel passion, and to give and receive love; endless also is their ability to receive knowledge from
nature and to understand it. He assures the people that they already possess the powers of the Infinite, but
because they see narrowly and see only the surface of things, they are out of harmony with the forces,
interfere with them, and thereby miss the great potential of their being. Each evil thought, feeling, or action is
the result of their not seeing the deeper truths. With understanding comes conversion, the Prophet implies, for
people are what they think they are, and if they think they are good, they will be. One must see the truth to
receive its benefits. The Prophet’s final act is to give the people that understanding. Once he has conveyed
this message, his mission is fulfilled, and he is ready to return to his birthplace. The implication is that he has
reached the end of his days not only in Orphalese but in this world. In the beginning, the narrator speaks of the
“deeper secret” that the Prophet “himself could not speak,” but by the end, it has been revealed in the truths
he has spoken.

Almitra

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Almitra, a seeress who comes from the temple and is the first to bid the Prophet speak his thoughts; she is also
the last to speak to him as he departs. Through her eyes, readers see the Prophet disappear into the mist.

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Source: Great Characters in Literature, ©1998 eNotes.com, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

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5
Critical Essays

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Critical Essays
Critical Evaluation
Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet comprises twenty-seven poetic essays on various aspects of life, preceded by an
introduction and followed by a farewell. In the farewell, the Prophet, newly born, promises to return to his
people after a momentary rest upon the wind. Thus, the continuity of life is implied—the circle of birth, death,
and rebirth.

The Prophet belongs to a unique group of works that include Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar
Khayyám (1859) and certain works of William Blake, to whom Gibran has been compared. FitzGerald’s
translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám appeals especially to impressionable young adults: The poem
had been bound in leather in a miniature edition and used as a prom favor at college dances.

Similarly, The Prophet owes much of its popularity to the young, who find in Gibran’s poetry the elusive
quality of sincerity. At the height of its popularity in the 1960’s, The Prophet sold about five thousand copies
per week. In large part because of personal recommendations rather than marketing, this best known of
Gibran’s seventeen published books (nine in Arabic and eight in English) has been published in more than
twenty languages and has sold tens of millions of copies, making Gibran one of the most widely published
poets, behind only William Shakespeare and Lao Tzu. The hardcover sales of this thin volume made Gibran
the best-selling Arabic author of the twentieth century, a remarkable feat considering The Prophet is a book of
poetry. The Prophet has sold more copies for publisher Alfred A. Knopf than any other book in the
publisher’s history.

Gibran intended The Prophet to be the first part of a trilogy—followed by The Garden of the Prophet and The
Death of the Prophet. The second of this series was published posthumously (in 1933) and the third title was
written by Jason Leen and released in 1979. Often compared to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Also sprach
Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen (1883-1885; Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1896), another
philosophical, prophetical work in which divine beings walk among humans and dispense wisdom, The
Prophet has been interpreted as Gibran’s longing to return to Lebanon. Penned after twelve years of living in
New York City, Gibran views his absence from his homeland as an exile. The Prophet, Almustafa, also twelve
years in exile, addresses the citizens of Orphalese, whom he has come to love and admire, much as Gibran
admired his fellow Greenwich Village neighbors. Almitra likely was inspired by Mary Haskell, head of a
Boston school who became Gibran’s muse.

To understand the power of Gibran’s words, it is necessary to know something of his life, of the agonies of
remorse that burned within him, and of the loneliness of spirit that heightened his senses. Gibran was born in
Bsharri, Lebanon (then a part of Ottoman Syria), the son of a poor shepherd family. When he was twelve
years old, his mother took the family to the United States, to the city of Boston, hoping, like many immigrants
of the day, to gain wealth quickly and then return to Lebanon. Gibran’s easygoing father had remained in
Lebanon to care for the family’s small holdings. Soon the opportunities in the United States were apparent,
and the mother decided that the sensitive Gibran must be educated. The older son and the two daughters
joined the mother at unskilled labor to earn the money with which Gibran might gain an education. Within a

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few years, the family had been decimated by tuberculosis, and only Gibran and his sister, Marianna, remained.
He never completely recovered from his grief and his sense of guilt for the deaths of his family members, who
had, in a sense, died for him.

Bolstered by the loyalty and industry of Marianna, Gibran began to write and draw. He illustrated his own
writings, as had Blake. Financial success was elusive, but Gibran gained a patron who encouraged him to go
abroad for study. He spent two years in Paris, then returned to the United States and soon set up a studio in
Greenwich Village, where he worked for the remainder of his life. He began to write and publish in the
English language in 1918 with The Madman, and in 1923 he published his masterpiece, The Prophet.

Never out of print, The Prophet has consistently found readers, but critics have been less kind, calling the
work long and tedious; it is, however, only twenty-thousand words. It is a work that seems destined to be
embraced by its youthful readers and repelled by its older critics, for it is often criticized for dispensing
simplistic wisdom in a mystical fashion that defies experience and common sense. The messages of The
Prophet ring hollow with more jaded critics when they submit the verse to closer inspection.

Gibran’s insistent subjectivity, shrouded in a religious-like mysticism, swirls the reader’s mind toward the
center of a vortex in which evil has been flung aside and in which the human soul stands revealed in all its
nobility and goodness. However, from a more practical standpoint, critics have noted, for example, that
Almustafa, an old man, stands in one spot from morning until night, delivering one sermon after another
without pausing to rest himself or his audience.

Gibran’s illustrations that accompany most of the poetry are often as striking as the words. Indeed, his works
now hang in some of America’s finest art museums. In addition to living in Boston and in New York City,
Gibran spent two years in Paris and studied at the famed École des Beaux-Arts with French sculptor Auguste
Rodin.

Always frail, Gibran was driven beyond endurance by an inner force that would not let him rest. Death from a
liver ailment caused by years of alcoholism overtook him in 1931 in the full flower of his productivity. His
body was returned to Lebanon and buried with great honors in the village of his birth.

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Source: Critical Survey of Literature for Students, ©2010 eNotes.com, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

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Analysis

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Analysis
The Poem (Critical Survey of Literature for Students)
The Prophet, an old man named Almustafa, is about to board a ship that has arrived to take him back to his
native land after twelve years among the people of the city of Orphalese. In these twelve years the people of
the city have come to love and revere the Prophet for his wisdom and gentle spirit, and they gather in the great
square before the temple and beseech him not to leave but to remain with them forever. As the multitude
weeps and pleads, Almitra, the seer who had first befriended the Prophet on his arrival in the city, comes out
of the sanctuary and asks him to speak to the people about life.

Almitra asks that he first speak of love, whereupon the Prophet admonishes the hushed audience to follow
love when he beckons, even though he might wound as he caresses, might destroy dreams as he entices. For
love, he says, demands complete commitment, a testing in the sacred fires, if one is to see into one’s own
heart and have knowledge of life’s heart. The cowardly should cover themselves and flee from love, and
those who can never be possessed by love can never know fulfillment.

The Prophet is then asked to speak of marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow,
houses, clothes, buying and selling, and crime and punishment. In response to the latter request by a judge of
the city, the Prophet speaks at length, pointing out that whereas the most righteous cannot rise above the
highest that is in all people, so the weak and wicked cannot fall below the lowest in all people; therefore,
people must condemn lightly, for they, the whole, are not entirely blameless for the evil done by one of their
parts.

Then a lawyer in the crowd asks for comment on laws, an orator asks for a talk on freedom, and a woman
priest asks for discussion on reason and passion. The Prophet compares reason to a ship’s rudder and passion
to its sails. Without both, a ship is useless. Without the rudder it will toss aimlessly, and without the sails it
will lie becalmed like a wingless bird.

The Prophet then speaks of pain, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure,
beauty—which he finds too elusive for definition—religion, death, and self-knowledge—wherein he likens the
self to a limitless, immeasurable, sea. Of death he urges mature acceptance, for, like the brook and the lake,
life and death are one.

By the time the Prophet has finished speaking, twilight has fallen. He goes straight to his ship and bids a final
farewell to his followers. As the ship lifts anchor, the sorrowful crowd disperses until only Almitra remains
upon the seawall, watching his ship recede into the dusk and remembering his promise to return in another
way at another time.

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Bibliography (Great Characters in Literature)
Gibran, Jean. Kahlil Gibran: His Life and World. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1974. General
overview of Gibran’s life and the influences that shaped his writings. General references to The Prophet are
found throughout.

Nassar, Eugene Paul. “Cultural Discontinuity in the Works of Kahlil Gibran.” MELUS 7, no. 2 (Summer,
1980): 21-36. Looks at Gibran’s experiences of cultural alienation and how these became the theme of
loneliness that recurs throughout his writings, including The Prophet. Compares this poem to writings of
William Blake, Walt Whitman, and others.

Nu’aymah, Mikha’il. Kahlil Gibran: A Biography. New York: Philosophical Library, 1973. A view of
Gibran’s life, times, and the influences that shaped his writings. Discusses Gibran’s style and the form used
in this poem; compares them to Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1892) by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Young, Barbara. This Man from Lebanon: A Study of Kahlil Gibran. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945. As a
long-time secretary and confidant to Gibran, Young provides an intimate, behind-the scenes picture of
Gibran’s life and times. The Prophet is discussed as it relates to influential events and people in Gibran’s
life.

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Source: Great Characters in Literature, ©1998 eNotes.com, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

Source: Critical Survey of Literature for Students, ©2010 eNotes.com, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means
graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information
storage retrieval systems without the written permission of the publisher.

For complete copyright information, please see the online version of this work.

11