THE ALCHEMIST By Paulo Coelho New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993 ISBN # 0-06-250218-2 (paper) 174 pages Comments by Bob Corbett November 2009 This is a lovely book, tender but profound. It is about the importance of seeking one’s own meaning of life and spending one’s life fulfilling it. Coelho calls it seeking one’s “Personal Legend.” It reminds me very much of what the Existentialists would have called “authenticity.” However, unlike the Existentialists who write rather darkly about this process of seeking one’s own meaning system, Coelho’s young shepherd boy is seeking his Personal Legend in something much like a fairly tale. However, Coelho at least gives us a process and set of obstacles we might well expect, and his …show more content…
Coelho writes a beautiful and moving legend of the boy’s journey and enlightenment. I did find the title rather odd. There is an alchemist in the novel whom the shepherd boy meets and who, indeed, helps him in many ways and actually sort of makes the shepherd boy into an alchemist himself. But the use of the definite article “the” in the title seems a bit confusing. It would seem, on Coelho’s account, that anyone who actually achieves his or her Personal Legend becomes “an” alchemist, changing the baser life we have from birth into the gold of our own Personal Success. But this is a journey upon which any person may embark. On the other hand Coelho seems right to me in bringing in the influential alchemist whom the boy meets in the north African desert. I think most of us who have seriously undertaken this journey meet people along the way who teach us and inspire us toward this mysterious and even occult route toward our Personal Legend. I’m 70 now and still on my journey, and like the boy, have arrived at various stages I once was almost sure were arrival points, only to discover another stage of enlightenment along the way. Everyone who is such a seeker should read this optimistic book of one who seems to have succeeded in the process of turning a potentially base life into a golden achievement, a true alchemist’s
In the Alchemist, it is revealed that you shouldn't let anything get in the way of your personal legend, just like Antigone .In my opinion, there is another message the author is trying to tell the reader, which it’s not about the destination of your journey, but it’s about the journey itself. For example, I enjoy building plastic model kits, but i don't do it for the actual model. I do it because I enjoy building the model piece by piece. It is important for you to go through the journey because you might learn something valuable, just like what Santiago learned.
Have you ever encountered problems while trying to fulfill a goal in your life? In the book The Alchemist, written by Paulo Coelho, a shepherd boy named Santiago overcomes obstacles to reach his personal legend. Throughout the book Santiago encounters many friends to help him fulfill his destiny. Santiago encounters many problems throughout the story. He overcomes them with the help of his friends and his wife-to-be. These problems shape Santiago into a dignified man of many traits.
Although a hero seems like a faraway distant character who possesses a unique ability that saves humanity, an everyday citizen in society holds the ability to impact the lives of others can become a hero. In the novel, The Alchemist, the protagonist, Santiago, travels as a shepherd but ultimately, follows The Hero’s Journey Archetype. As Santiago pursues a journey for treasure and self-knowledge, Santiago faces several difficult challenges and character-defining moments that assess his ability to succeed. Coelho depicts Santiago as following the stages of the Hero’s Journey Archetype such as The Mentor, The Abyss, and the Return to the World. Thus, Coelho employs The Hero’s Journey Archetype to demonstrate the
In the beginning, when I was reading the Alchemist, I wondered on how this novel could translate into fifty-six languages and sold over sixty-five millions of copies because the story was not appearing to me. The story begins about a shepherd, whose name is Santiago, talking to himself and his sheep all the time, and having a recurrent dream about there is a treasure at the Pyramid. It was a boring beginning. As the story continues to be dull until the old man, the king of Salem, tells the boy a that “..the world’s greatest lie [is] that at a certain point of our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate” (Coelho, page 18). His conversation with the boy catches my attention, and makes me want
In the book "How to Read Literature Like a Professor" by Thomas C. Foster, the first chapter is dedicated to explaining the aspects of a quest in literature. Using this chapter, entitled 'Every Trip is a Quest (Except When It's Not)' (page 1-6), the aspects in question can be related to the quest in "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho. The first aspect listed is 'a quester' or 'a person who goes on a quest' (page 3, HTRLLAP); within the first line of the main story, our quester is revealed. We learn that 'the boy's name [is] Santiago,' (page 3, Alchemist). The focus of the entire story is on him and his journey, so the first aspect is there. 'A place to go' (page 3, HTRLLAP) is the second aspect, a very pivotal component for the development of the story.
Some may refer to The Alchemist as a best-selling novel written by Paulo Coelho which explains the ideas of having a dream, or Personal Legend, and going through obstacles to conquer it. The book starts off like any other, introducing and describing the main characters, in this case Santiago is the first to share the interest of peers reading the story. He is said to be a small town shepherd boy who will do anything for his flock of sheep. In the opening scene of the story, Santiago takes his flock to an abandoned church and lies down under a sycamore tree hoping to get some rest. He is soon woken up from a disturbing dream which foreshadows further into the story of his own Personal Legend. Later in the book, Santiago is faced with multiple tests to be successful in finding his treasure. “Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure” (Coelho 15). Paulo continues to add characters in the book that help Santiago throughout his journey.
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’s growth was inspiring to me. He has learned a great deal from action. He learns quite a lot about the land and his sheep by being a shepherd and paying attention to the world around him. His grandfather had mentioned to him a while back of an omen. “By traveling, watching and paying attention, the world will speak to Santiago to help him find is Personal Legend.” Through action, Santiago learns how easy it is to search for one’s Personal Legend. Everyone has their own way of learning things. For example when Santiago decides to try reading the Englishman’s book and he would try and read the signs of the desert. The boy does not learn a thing from the book and the Englishman learns nothing from watching the caravan. Just as Santiago
In the novel The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, the reader will learn about a young boy whose soul purpose in life is to follow his personal legend. Yet in the book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz the reader will discover the benefits of living their life by four simple agreements. When comparing the two pieces of literature the reader will see that the boy, Santiago, lives his life vicariously through the four agreements. The Alchemist and The Four Agreements are two completely different pieces of literature that share the same ideas of following your passions and making life changing decisions. In The Alchemist Santiago makes two agreements with himself that will determine his personal legend.
When an author puts their protagonist through a physical journey, it is a central role to the plot. Why it is so significant to the story is because a journey is rarely just a physical journey. While it may start off as one, towards the end of the journey the protagonist has gained more in spiritual value than physical. Paulo Coelho exercises this theme in his novel The Alchemist where the protagonist of the novel, Santiago, travels to Egypt from Spain in search of treasure buried near the Pyramids. As simple as the plot sounds, The Alchemist proves to be more complex and thought-provoking than it lets on. It will be easier to dissect this by consulting Thomas C. Foster’s book How To Read Literature Like A Professor is about what makes a quest a quest and why it would play a central role in a book.
I would defiantly recommend this book to a friend or a family member. I fervently enjoyed “The Alchemist,” and I think that most people would enjoy reading about Santiago. The novel is universal in its ability to tell a story and
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,
A journey is a composition of music. Different instruments come together to play different strings of notes that harmoniously combine to create a symphony. Santiago, the main protagonist from The Alchemist, experiences many symphonies on his road to realize his Personal Legend. His experiences guided him to his goal and when he had finally achieved it, the story came to a close. The ending of the novel was obvious and satisfying. Paulo Coelho left his audience with a satiating end to a long story. The ending of the story fitted perfectly with the book because it enhanced the idea of the Soul of the World, the cycles of life, and overall these ideas all came with realizing his Personal Legend.
Alchemist is already explained in the story as it is the ability to purify your soul, listen to your heart and speak the language of the world. The title is, then, to show us, the readers, that anyone can achieve his/her dream by possessing the characteristics of alchemist as exactly as the shepherd boy, Santiago.
Both novels, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, can be viewed as journeys of discovery to the reader. Both journeys in both novels are a very significant part of the development of the story itself. The Alchemist is a journey of self discovery for Santiago, the young Andalusian protagonist, which is all about him fulfilling his Personal Legend which would strip him of all of his impurities. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is also journey of self discovery for Christopher, the young British protagonist. Christopher’s journey of discovering himself is about him finding out that his mother has not died and she is still alive, which he learns through his journey, he discovers a lot of new things about himself that he did not previously know or knew he had in him.