Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist

“I want to stay at the oasis,” the boy answered. “I’ve found Fatima and as far as I am concerned, she’s worth more than treasure.” Everyone knows what they want to do, but they are afraid of hurting those around them by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream. Some do not realize that love is something to impel us, not something that will prevent us to go further. Those that genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey. After hearing the Alchemist’s predictions and Fatima saying that he should go, Santiago decided to accompany the Alchemist and pursue his personal legend. Santiago overcame his problem when his father told him he can not travel, and he also perused his personal legend and did not hurt Fatima.

14) Earlier in the story, the alchemist told Santiago "when you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed." At the end of the story, how does this simple lesson change Santiago’s life? How does it lead him back to the treasure he was looking for?

     After teaching the boy a lot about the journey he will go through, the king gave him omens to follow. Santiago sells his sheep, and travels to a town on his way to Egypt. He finds a man that could take him past the desert to Egypt. So the boy gives him the money that he got for the sheep. When the man shows Santiago the town for a little Santiago loses him in a crowd of hundreds shopping in the markets, and loses all his money. The boy learns not to trust anyone, and is told that there are many thieves in that town.

: Paulo Coelho’s fantasy novel The Alchemist describes Santiago’s journey through the desert and through the prime of his existence. A chief and his following threaten the lives of Santiago and the Alchemist because they believe them to be spies. This causes the Alchemist to give them all their belongings. After that he promises that in three days time his companion will turn himself into the wind. Initially, Santiago is perplexed to why the Alchemist wagered both their lives on an ability he doesn’t have. Slowly he comes to understand that his friend has faith in him and trust he will be able to save himself. Finally, when the three days pass Santiago must talk to the wind by following his heart, ”The boy and his heart had become friends, and neither was capable now of betraying the other,” (138).

Throughout the book “The Alchemist”, Santiago faces many trials on his journey to Egypt to find the treasure. He is able to follow all the steps of the Hero’s Journey, starting with the call to adventure and finishing with the status quo. Santiago may have started his journey in Spain and made his way to Egypt but key points through this book include the status quo, threshold, and the abyss.

The alchemist is a well written book that accurately describes every concept about life and explains it through a story. The Alchemist is a book about a shepherd named Santiago, who discovers his personal legend and receives help from others to help achieve his Personal Legend and learns many major life lessons along the way. Santiago gets advice that when life puts him down, keep getting back up and to focus on the task at hand, which is Santiago’s own personal legend. Along the the journey, Santiago receives help from many different characters but only three characters who helped him the most throughout his quest for his Personal legend is the alchemist, the Old King and the Englishman. The best advice a reader is able to gain from this story is the advice the the Old King taught Santiago, which is” there is only one thing that makes achieving a dream impossible to achieve, the fear of failure” which means is to never be afraid of failures and to follow your own path God has laid out for you because if you are too afraid to pursue your personal legend, meaning if people are too afraid to take risks to make their own life better than it already is now, then they will not have the opportunity to accomplish their own goals. In Coelho's The Alchemist, Santiago learns the Soul of the World through experience, patience, time and help from the Old King, the Englishman and the alchemist.

Santiago starts his journey relying on his good luck, but when he arrives in Tangier, he is stolen from. The alchemist tells him

This incident is what foreshadows a war that later breaks out in the oasis. The world wants him to realize that danger is approaching and desires that Santiago be the saviour of the oasis. This would be the reason for him continuing his journey towards his personal legend rather than having his life risked when the army attacked. Santiago develops a sense of observation in him; he understands the world in a way he never has before. Santiago matures to the point where he can now connect everything he experiences with the events taking place around him.

Going in a caravan to Egypt, Santiago met an English man who was searching for an Alchemist for helping him to convert any metal into gold. Santiago saw the determination and the courage of the English man, and he admired that from him. Eventually, the leader of the caravan announce that was a tribal wars and people who was traveling with Santiago, had to keep safe in the oasis of the desert. During the time that Santiago was in the Oasis, he met Fatima and the Alchemist. Fatima was his love, the person who change his manner to see the life because Santiago though that she was his personal legend.

Despite this knowledge he knows that the outcome is worth the risk. After taking this journey he soon reaches the oasis. After traveling through the desert for many days and nights, this place is a paradise for Santiago. He fits in well with the society at the oasis and begins to create a life for himself there. He meets a girl, gets a job interpreting omens, and becomes a wealthy man. When it comes time to leave he experiences a new kind of fear. Not a fear of danger or death, but a fear of loss. He fears that if he leaves he may not return to his life that he loves so much and holds so dearly. When he gets the option to leave he confronts the difficult decision with something his tour guide told him. The guide said, “Because I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man” (88). This allowed Santiago to continue with his journey knowing that he is responsible for fulfilling his personal legend and not staying out of fear of loss. The Arab tribal camp is Santiago’s next stop in his journey. He is captured along with the alchemist, who promises them that in three days Santiago will become the wind and destroy the camp. This causes him to panic out of fear for another time, even with all he has learned. He is now experiencing the most crippling fear yet, the fear of failure. This type of fear is so bad because it causes people to not

Here we see the importance of Fatima’s character, and the challenges Santiago encounters in the oasis. Santiago is willing to leave everything he has overcome, and the challenges ahead of him for Fatima. We see that Fatima advises Santiago to continue his journey throughout the desert because as Fatima describes it, “ I am a part of your dream, a part of your Personal Legend, as you call it. Thats why I want you to continue toward your goal”(97). Fatima continues to explain that because Santiago has told her about his past, and about the treasure in the Egyptian pyramids it is important to continue with the omens because it was the omens that brought them

The Alchemist, a novel written by Paulo Coelho teaches us about the importance of self-discovery and exploration by taking us through the journey of a young Andalusian shepherd, Santiago. Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on August 24th 1947, to Pedro Quiema Coelho de Souza, an engineer, and his wife, Lygia, a homemaker. Paulo early on had dreamed of an artistic career and then after his surroundings in Jesuit school, he discovered his true vocation was to be a writer (Coelho 195). Upon telling his mom, she told him that his father was an engineer, a reasonable and logical man and had a clear view of the world. At the age of 16, Paulo’s opposition against following a traditional path led to his parents committing him into a mental institution (Paulo Coelho). To satisfy his parents, he enrolled in law school. However, it led him to mental illness and failing his career. After many years, he gave a shot at his dream profession and started to write. Paulo wrote The Pilgrimage: Diary of Magus which described his experiences and his discovery that the extraordinary occurs in the lives of ordinary people. He was the recipient of numerous international awards, amongst them the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum. The Pilgrimage was published in 1987 and The Alchemist was published in 1988, a year after. Both novels appeared on the best sellers list but The Alchemist continued to sell more copies than any other book in Brazilian literary history. The Alchemist,

The book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho touches on many different points of a young shepherd’s life as he grows to learn to follow his heart and dreams. A debatable statement that was developed while reading this book is “love should never hold us back from pursuing personal dreams.” This idea is supported and brought up multiple times throughout the story, as the shepherd, Santiago gives up the things he loves most to pursue his dreams. At the beginning of the story, Santiago prepares to reunite with a girl he had met over a year ago.

The reason Santiago moving from Spain to North Africa and changing the landscape fit with the story’s running theme of change and transformation is because of how he had to adapt. In Part II of The Alchemist, the change of setting reflected change and transformation because of how the crystal shop merchant headed the words of the boy and changed the setting of his crystal shop to attract more customers. This is similar to how Santiago was pushed by his recurring dream to leave his normal environment in search of treasure in a strange and new one.

Young boy Santiago is a shepherd because he knows what he wants. In “The Alchemist” Santiago changes in many ways and learns many things from the start to the end of the book. Santiago is going to a village as a shepherd and in the meantime, he is staying in an abandoned church. When he is sleeping he keeps having a reoccurring dream, so he explains it to a gypsy woman. The woman says that he will find a treasure in the pyramids in Egypt. Later, he meets an old man that tells him that to he has to listen to omens to find his treasure. He also gives Santiago stones that will tell him what to do. Santiago sells his sheep to find his hidden treasure, however, when he is going he gets robbed, and he has to work at a glass shop to get money again. When he gets enough money to cross the desert and go to the pyramids, he meets a caravan about to cross the desert. On their way to the other side of the desert, they figure out that war is going on in the middle of the desert, so they have to stop for a long time until the war is over. Since Santiago