The book “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho is about a little shepherd boy name Santiago wants to travel the world instead of become a priest like his parents want him to be. One day, he sleeps under a sycamore tree that grows in a church, and he has a dream about a child telling him to seek for treasure at the bottom of the Egyptian pyramids. After that, Santiago went to a gypsy woman to interpret the dream, and she tells him to go to Egypt. Then Santiago runs into a mysterious old man named Melchizedek, and he tells Santiago that he must listen to omens in order to seek his treasure. On the way to Egypt, a thief robs him, and so he has to work with a local crystal merchant. The merchant teaches Santiago some lessons and Santiago encourages the …show more content…
During his journey to Egypt, he meets an Englishman who is studying to become an alchemist. Santiago learns a lot from the Englishman, like the secret of alchemy is written on a stone called the Emerald tablet, and the wisdom about the Soul of the World. Finally, Santiago arrives and starts digging for the treasure at the bottom of the pyramids, but suddenly two men approach and beat him. Santiago tells them about his dream, and they decide to let him live, but take all his money. And then one of men tells Santiago about his dream of treasure buried in an abandoned church in Spain where a sycamore tree grows. The book ends with Santiago digging up the treasure in the church where the story began. Santiago’s real treasure is not under the tree, but everything he learns during his journey. He learns how to connect with the Soul of the World, and how to read and communicate with the world around him. After reading this book, I realized that my goal is not a diploma and a decent job after that. I want to learn from my experiences and the people around me. Explore new things, come across new people and with all the learning from them I want to follow footstep of my mother as a successful business …show more content…
Almost every person I talked to had goals or dreams about his or her future. My friends want to become doctors, architectures, writers. And then there’s me. I started to think about my dream, and what I want to become after I graduate. I want to become like my mother, a successful business woman, a wonderful mother, and a good person. In the story, “Santiago had worked for an entire year to make a dream come true, and that dream, minute by minute, was becoming less important. Maybe because that wasn 't really his dream” (66). Like Santiago, to fulfill my dream, I need to work really hard; I try to have good attendances, and good grades. However college is hard. Sometimes I spend a lot of time studying for my test, but I still got a D. And this make me feel despondent. This led me to the point I feel scared to follow my dream which is
In The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Santiago is a poor Shepard. He travels across Spain and the middle east selling wool from his sheep. For some time, Santiago has been having the same dream about treasure by pyramids in Egypt. While selling wool in a small town, Santiago meets a gypsy. The gypsy who lives in Tarifa and interprets dreams. She reads palms and uses black magic iconography although she keeps images of Christ present. Santiago does not initially believe the gypsy. Until the king from Salem, King Mechizedek explains what a personal legend is to Santiago and that his personal legend is to find this treasure. Melchizedek convinces Santiago to sell his flock and set off to Tangier. Santiago decides to take the kings advices Santiago to sell his flock and travel to Tangier. Santiago decides to do just that. Until, that is. he is robbed in Tarifa. He was inside a bar, but didn't know Arabic. A person who spoke Spanish like him agreed to take him across the desert. Santiago gave him all of his money and followed him through a crowded market place. An ornate sword distracted him and the thief slipped away in the crowd. Santiago then gets a job with the crystal merchant. Santiago is there for about a year. In that time, he helps make the merchant rich. After a year, he travels to the pyramids to find his treasure. Santiago leaves and meets He joins a caravan traveling to Egypt.
Santiago is a shepherd trying to pursue his personal legend. His personal legend is the recurring dream about the hidden treasure at the foot of the Egyptian pyramids. In his dream he starts playing in a field with his sheep, when a child appeared and began to play with the animals. This was strange to him because sheep are afraid of strangers, but the sheep and children play along just fine. Then a child grabbed his hands and took him to the foot of the Egyptian pyramids. He begins his journey locally trying to find answers from a gypsy and a man named
Curious, courageous, young, adventurous: these are all words to describe Santiago, the protagonist in the novel The Alchemist. In this novel, Paulo Coelho develops Santiago’s character as a young boy who goes on an adventure to find his life’s purpose. Through the hero’s journey, Paulo Coelho insists that both internal and external struggles often cannot stop people from achieving their goals, ultimately encouraging people to fulfill self discovery and understand who they truly are.
No one is born without a reason or purpose. While it differs from person to person, there is no greater journey than the quest to fulfill it. From a shepherd searching for the treasure of his dreams, to the son of Indian immigrants who must discover the value in the treasure of accepting in his own identity, following a Personal Legend is a significant part of one’s life. Santiago and Gogol, from the novel The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and the film adaptation The Namesake respectively, encounter obstacles as they embark on the life altering journey to discover and fulfill their destiny. Both protagonists are faced with the challenge of realizing the importance of their Personal Legend and the quest to reach
The knowledge and universal understanding derivative from a journey can leave the traveller positively enlightened. In Coelho’s story, Santiago is faced with recurring dreams which lead him to ‘’traverse the unknown’’ in search of a treasure buried in Egypt, the metaphor for universal connection, and in doing so, comes to the unrelenting realisation of spiritual transcendence. After arriving at the assumed geographical location of the treasure ‘’several figures approached him’’. They demand the boy keep searching for this treasure as they are poor refugees and in need of money, but as Santiago does, he finds nothing. Then, after relentless digging through the night ‘’as the sun rose, the men began to beat the boy’’ , finally relenting with the truth, Santiago reveals his dreams to the travellers. In doing so, Santiago finds out that these men had also been faced with recurring dreams measured around the place where the boy had undergone his own, both relative to hidden treasure. However the leader was ‘’not so stupid as to cross an entire desert just because of a recurrent dream’’. It is with this fact, tha...
First of all, the author shows that through persevering through adversity anyone can achieve their dreams. During the book Santiago continuously faces problems that he will have to overcome to achieve his Personal Legend. In this scenario, Santiago is in the city of Tangier when he is suddenly robbed of all of his money, by a thief who promised to take him to Egypt. However instead of thinking of himself as a victim of a thief he decides that “I’m an adventurer, looking for treasure” (34). Santiago was able to persevere through a situation that many people would not have been able to overcome and not able to continue their journey. Being able to persevere through
Santiago guides his flock throughout the fields of Andalusia. He finds an old abandoned church and churchyard where he and his flock can spend the night. He sleeps on the stone floor using his book as a pillow. He anticipates his approach the Andalusian village where, one year prior, he met a merchant's daughter. Santiago and his flock approach the town. He has been herding this flock for two years. He often reflects about what he has learned from his sheep and what they have learned from him. He observes that the sheep depend fully on him to lead them to food and water. Not having to forage food for themselves, they have forgotten their instincts.
“Even if he never got to the Pyramids, he had already traveled farther than any shepherd he knew. Oh, if they only knew how different things are just two hours by ship from where they are, he thought. Although his new world at the moment was just an empty marketplace, he had already seen it when it was teeming with life, and he would never forget it. He remembered the sword. It hurt him a bit to think about it, but he had never seen one like it before. As he mused about these things, he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure. "I'm an adventurer, looking for treasure," he said to himself.” Santiago believes that he is an adventurer, looking for treasure, but he may not believe in himself still. Santiago is stuck between looking for the treasure or staying home thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief. It does not matter how many people believe in him if Santiago does not believe in
The conflict in the novel that most intrigued me was between Santiago and himself. Throughout the novel he almost gave up hope of ever finding his treasure. When he was robbed in the market place...
In The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho continuously shows how Santiago conquers fear and is greatly rewarded for it. In order to get his treasure and achieve his personal legend he must first travel through the well-known dangers of the desert. It is an extremely expensive trip that many do...
The Price of Success Paulo Coelho's argument does have merit. Yes, everyone has a personal calling, but not all of us are able to achieve it due to our lack of courage. In most cases such as mine, fear is the root of all my problems; it shackles me. However, this is not the case for Santiago, in the novel The Alchemist, and with that I found exaltation. In the novel, Santiago manages to overcome all the obstacles that he happens upon whether it be internally or externally. The dilemma's that he encounters, I strongly identify with because I contend with them daily: the fear of responsibility, suffering and most of all the fear of failure.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho tells the story of a young boy named Santiago on his journey to find his Personal Legend (the ultimate goal in one’s life). During this journey, Santiago spends time with a merchant who owns a crystal shop. This crystal merchant helps Santiago by giving him a job and allowing him lodging, and Santiago helps the crystal merchant as well. Santiago exposes the crystal merchant to the idea that change can be beneficial in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist through his initial idea of improving the shop, his open mind toward the crystal merchant’s views on change, and his final improvement upon the shop.
The gypsy women said, “Dreams are a language of god.” Exploring your personal legend will lead you on your path to self-discovery. The novel “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho is a story where an Andalusian shepherd Santiago sets off on a great journey to find treasure. Santiago’s journey lead him to discover about himself that the only way of learning is through action, you will regret following your dreams, and love can wait.
They then find themselves in a war torn area. They somehow make their way out, and the alchemist tells that the rest of the trip of the trip he will have to be by himself. Santiago starts listening to the voice of the desert and the sun guiding him to the treasure hidden in the pyramids as he had already known what the Soul of the World was. He starts digging as he reached his destination,but he couldn´t find any treasure there. Shortly after, thieves appear and proceed to beat the kid up for his money.
He has met the king, the merchant, the Englishman, Fatima, and the alchemist, and the last to meet is a refugee that leads him to the gold. Beaten, weak, and nearly unconscious, Santiago hopes the refugees are done, but one returns with the greatest news by telling Santiago, “’You’re not going to die. You’ll live, and you’ll learn that a man shouldn’t be so stupid. Two years ago, right here on this spot, I had a recurrent dream, too. I dream that I should travel to the fields of Spain and look for a ruined church where shepherds and their sheep slept…if I dug at the root of the sycamore, I would find a hidden treasure.