...“A man sets out on a journey, dreaming of a beautiful or magical place, in pursuit of some unknown treasure”. The Alchemist is about how Santiago is having a recurring dream of his personal legend. Then it talks about how he got there and what he went through. In the novel, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho the hero's journey reveals that there are many steps and obstacles to pass or get through before reaching your personal legend. There are so many steps and obstacles, you need to prepare for before going to find your personal legend. One of the steps Santiago went through was to leave his home and prepare himself to find his personal legend. He also had to talk to talk to his father before leaving to see if he can get money for his journey....
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...Plot The Alchemist follows the journey of an Andalusian (southern Spanish) shepherd boy named Santiago. Believing a recurring dream to be prophetic, Santiago decides to travel to a Romani fortune-teller in a nearby town to discover its meaning. The gypsy woman interprets the dream as a prophecy telling the boy that there is a treasure in the pyramids in Egypt. Early into his journey, he meets an old king, whose name was Melchizedek, who tells him to sell his sheep to travel to Egypt and introduces the idea of a Personal Legend (which is always capitalized in the book). Your Personal Legend "is what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is."[3] He adds that "when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." This is the core theme of the book. Along the way, Santiago meets an Englishman who has come in search of an Alchemist and continues his travels with him. They travel through the Sahara desert and during his journey, Santiago meets and falls in love with a beautiful Arabian woman named Fatima, who resides with her clan near around the desert Oasis. He asks Fatima to marry him, but she says she will only marry him after he completes his journey and finds his treasures. He is perplexed by this, but later learns that true love will not stop nor plead to sacrifice one's Personal Legend, and if it does, it is not true love. Santiago then encounters a lone alchemist who also teaches...
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...The Alchemist The Alchemist is a novel first published in 1988 by Brazilian-born author Paulo Coehlo. It has sold more than 65 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best selling books of all time, and has been translated in over 60 languages. The book follows an adventurous shepherd boy named Santiago who has recurring dream leads him on a journey to find hidden treasure. The book begins Santiago has the same troubling recurring dream, when sleeping under a sycamore that grows out of the ruins of a church, of a child telling him to seek treasure at the base of the Egyptian pyramids. After a gypsy tells him to go to Egypt once hearing his dream, a strange old man appears, claiming to be the King of Salem, tells him it is his Personal Journey to go to Egypt. After selling his flock, Santiago travels to Tangier but immediately gets robbed of all his money, forcing him to work for a crystal merchant. There he transforms the humble store into a thriving business making him rich, but ultimately he decides to continue on his Personal Journey. He joins a caravan crossing the Sahara dessert towards Egypt, and meets an Englishman who is studying to be an Alchemist. The Englishman teaches Santiago a great deal about Alchemy, and tells him he is going to Al-Fayoum to meet a powerful 200-year-old Alchemist. After the caravan is forced to stay in Al-Fayyoum because of tribal wars in the area, Santiago meets a girl named Fatima and both fall in love. When on a walk Santiago sees...
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...In The Alchemist, Santiago constantly finds himself at a crossroads, contemplating returning to his easy, predictable old life as a shepherd. Throughout the novel, at times such as when a thief steals Santiago’s money, when Santiago has to make the decision on how to move forward after making sufficient money at the crystal shop, and when Santiago has to leave Fatima, the love of his life at the oasis, Santiago is faced with the constant reminder of his old, simplistic life and has to persevere through his comforting thoughts and aching soul in order to pursue his personal legend. When Santiago first arrives at the port in Tangier, he meets a fellow Spaniard. While the two are in the restaurant, the owner begins to shout and try to warn Santiago...
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...In Paul Coelho’s novel, The Alchemist, following ones dreams and being able to recognize signs and omens that come across ones path dominated the main purpose of the story. In the novel, a young shepherd named Santiago goes on a journey to find a treasure beyond his craziest dream. Along his way, Santiago learns to listen to his heart and defeat his fears. Through character, conflict, and form, the author suggests that when one really wants something, the entire universe conspires in helping them achieve it. To begin with, on his journey to pursuing his dreams, Santiago meets many characters that help him. Santiago is a shepherd from a small Andalusia town. He chose to work as a shepherd so he can travel the country. Santiago goes to a woman...
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...Character Development In The Alchemist The novel The Alchemist written by Paulo Coelho is about a boy that is on a journey to find his personal legend. Throughout his journey he is helped by many people he meets, but he also has to overcome many obstacles that try to prevent him from finding his personal legend. In The Alchemist the main character Santiago shows a lot of character development through the ongoing knowledge he gains throughout his journey. At the start of the book Santiago shows immaturity with having a careless job as a shepherd and when he gives up on his journey to find his personal legend. Santiago begins to develop when he is given a job as a crystal merchant's assistant and he learns a lot of knowledge to help him through his journey. Santiago really shows a lot of development when the Alchemist teaches him that he needs to listen to his heart and when Santiago learns how to turn himself into the wind. At the beginning of the novel the character Santiago is a shepherd boy who is still young and immature. Santiago makes this impression when he is talking about his job as a shepherd, and how there are many "joys of carefree wandering." (pg 7) His job is fairly relaxed, he does not have to worry about much and he gets to travel to different places which he likes to do. The job does not have many responsibilities which is not good for Santiago because he is not learning much and it is the same repetitive tasks he does every day. Santiago also shows immaturity...
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...the main character goes through. The Alchemist is a story about a young young shepherd who leaves his home in Spain to search for treasure in the Pyramids of Egypt. The main character, Santiago, leaves everything he has, including his flock of sheep, to follow his heart and love for travel and search for treasure that he has been dreaming about. This quest takes Santiago to places he did not set out for, and teaches him lessons that he was unknowingly hungry for. By the end of this book, Santiago uncovers real treasure, himself. Through this novel, I understood...
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...01:090:101:50 index 14579 First-Year Byrne Seminar Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist: A contemporary quest of self-fulfillment and joy HCK 131 Tuesdays 2:15-3:35 Dr. Dámaris M. Otero-Torres Department of Spanish and Portuguese 104A Carpender Hall DC Office hours: by appointment e-mail: dotero@spanport.rutgers.edu phone: 732. 848.6874 seminar description: Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist is as a modern classic. Originally published in Portuguese in 1988, this novel has since been translated into 67 languages, becoming one of the best-selling books in history. Inspired by the teachings of ancient alchemy, the story narrates the adventures of a shepherd named Santiago, as he travels through the African desert in the pursuit of his dream: to see the pyramids in Egypt. As he journeys through the desert, Santiago becomes the ultimate alchemist when he learns to transform his life by tapping into the language of the soul. Our first goal in the seminar will be two-fold: to explore the contemplative principles of ancient alchemy as the foundation for this allegorical text and to delve into the “messy” stages of a hero’s journey. In medieval times, alchemy was considered a science, aimed specifically to transmute base metals into gold, to discover a universal cure for disease, and to prolong life. In our days, “alchemy” is basically understood as a metaphor for personal transformation. Indeed, the poetic connotations of the word “alchemy” underscore its lack of substantive...
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...Characters: Santiago Shepherd boy, the protagonist of The Alchemist. He travels from Andalusia in southern Spain to the Egyptian pyramids in search of hidden treasure, learning life lessons along the way. Santiago is a dreamer and a seeker, and he stands for the dreamer and seeker in all of us. Old Woman A fortune teller, and possibly a gypsy, she interprets Santiago's recurring dream, but in a manner so straightforward that he finds it suspect and disappointing. Melchizedek/King of Salem An anonymous old man who is in fact a powerful figure from the Old Testament, he explains to Santiago what a Personal Legend is and urges the shepherd boy to follow his dream. Aside from Santiago himself, Melchizedek is the most important character in The Alchemist. Crystal Merchant A middle-aged resident of Tangier, he hires Santiago to work in his shop. The crystal merchant's Personal Legend is to make a pilgrimage (or haj) to Mecca, but he knows he will never fulfill this dream. He is Santiago's foil, a character who characterizes another by contrast. Englishman A bookish pedant obsessed with alchemy who hopes to learn the fabled craft from a famous alchemist rumored to live at the Al-Fayoum oasis that lies between Tangier and the pyramids. In The Alchemist, the Englishman stands for the limits of book learning. Camel Herder Once a prosperous farmer, his valuable orchards were wiped out by a flood, forcing him into a new line of work. He teaches Santiago the importance of living in the...
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...In The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, a boy named Santiago travels through the desert in search of treasure. Along the way he meets many people who help him, like the crystal merchant and the Alchemist. He also learns many things about himself and the world. Some of these things would be the Soul and Language of the World, Language of God, and how to read omens, but the most important thing he learned on his journey was how personal legends play into people's everyday lives. Through the contrasting views of the crystal merchant and the Alchemist, Coelho introduces two characters who present Santiago with opposite ways of handling the obstacles that come along with personal legend. The merchant believes dreams should motivate and push people, while...
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...The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is a story of a boy, Santiago who gains insight and knowledge in different settings on how to find his Personal Legend. The boy’s journey begins in Andalusian, Spain, then takes him to Tarifa, the crystal shop in Tangier, the Saharan desert and oasis, then the pyramids before returning to where he began. The theme of this story is that a person must persevere through good and bad to fulfill their dream. The beginning of the story finds Santiago leaving his home to travel as the life of a shepherd. He goes to the town of Tarifa and meets the King of Salem who describes to Santiago what Santiago is truly searching for. “It’s what you always wanted to accomplish. Everyone when they are young knows what their...
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...every grain of sand. Soul doesn’t only keep us alive but it supports our existence as well. Soul gives meaning and purpose to our existence. God created every soul in a different way, no soul resembles to one another, soul is an 'inner identity'. As you age, your body gets older, weak, tired, but spiritually you don't feel it. You hear people say, " I don't feel 50 years old!" That's because you are feeling your soul. Your soul never ages, get sick, or dies. The 'soul of the world' is according to various systems of thoughts, an essential connection between all living things on the planet. 'Soul of the world' is related to our world in much the same way as the soul is connected to human body. According to “Alchemist” In "The Alchemist", Santiago goes on a journey for his own personal treasure. He comes to know about this treasure by soul of the world. "The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s...
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...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 hero fulfills all four: First one must discover that our lives are dictated by custom, family, law and tradition and we must be willing to overcome these in order to seek our own unique Personal Legend. If we get to this first stage we may well run up against love as an obstacle, particularly in believing that in order to have the love of some other we must give up our own Personal Legend and live in a way that the other needs for us. On the author’s view this is a mistaken notion of love. “You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend. If he abandons that pursuit its because it wasn’t true love .. the love that speaks the Language of the World.” Supposing one gets past that second stage and realizes love...
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...challenges, how you overcome these things are up to you. Your reaction to these hardships could in fact make it or break it. This process of achieving your dreams is shown in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Coelho’s novel was written to show the importance of dreams and having something to live for. In an interview with a magazine, Coelho explained, “The Alchemist is about -- well, it is a fable about the necessity we have to follow our dreams.” Coelho also added, “They will lose their jobs, they will start having problems, but it is the only choice because in any case, you have to pay a price for your dreams,” when he was asked about the problems that may evoke when people would start chasing their dreams. To Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist was written to show the self sacrifice that needed to be made to follow your dreams. The Alchemist outlines the adventures of Santiago, as young shepherd, as he travels from his homeland in Spain to Egypt in search of a treasure that appears in his dreams. During this journey he meets many people such as a wise king, a merchant in fear to live out his dreams, his true love and the Alchemist. On the way to the pyramids, he comes across numerous difficulties and temptations but moves on undeterred to fulfill his dreams. Santiago must go on a journey alone, sacrificing his sheep, his love, and comfort of his...
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...An Exchange of Dreams A book review of “The Alchemist” Czarina Nadine M. Sanchez Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it” -Melchizedek Have you experienced holding on to a dream, a dream that serves as your passageway to achieving your Personal Legend? Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist focused on the concatenation of a boy’s journey in life that began as an unfinished dream which led shepherd Santiago, the boy, to his own Personal Legend. However in the first part of the story, it somehow did not correlate with the novel’s title. For it was only focused on the boys travel together with his flock of sheep. But then on the latter part of the novel, the essence of the title was revealed, for it introduced an important character in the novel who is the Alchemist. Aside from the title the author also used several instruments to abdicate the boy’s personal legend. And the most important instrument that he used is the boy’s dream. The boy’s dream inside an abandoned church where there was an enormous sycamore that grew where the sacristy was. The boy’s revelation of his dream to the interpreter goes like this: “I had the same dream twice; I was in the field with my sheep, when a child appeared and began to play with the animals. I don’t like people to do that, because the sheep are afraid of strangers. But children always seem to be able to play without frightening them. The child continued...
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