In life, there can be many obstacles one faces causing them to suffer. Along with suffering, those who are dealing with obstacles have to sacrifice large parts of their lives in order to move forward and achieve their goals. Reaching or accomplishing one’s goals takes suffering or sacrifice, and more often than not, both. Santiago, in The Alchemist and Yusra Mardini, an Olympic athlete competing on the refugee team, both have to sacrifice parts of their life and suffer on their way to achieve their goals.
Suffering and sacrifice is never easy, but it is necessary for Santiago go through both in order to make his dreams come true. In The Alchemist, Santiago has to sacrifice his sheep so he can travel in search of the Pyramids. Santiago is hesitant to give up his sheep because he is afraid of leaving behind something he knows so well. “He had to choose between something he had become accustomed to and something he wanted to have” (Coelho 30). He is
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Santiago finds his treasure, “...a chest of Spanish gold coins. There were also precious stones, gold masks adorned with red and white feathers, and stone statues embedded with jewels” (Coelho 170). By finding this treasure, Santiago lives out his Personal Legend despite the sacrifices he makes and the suffering he endures. Yusra also reaches a goal, “...in the Olympic pool and won her heat in the 100 meter butterfly” (Williams). She accomplishes a dream while attempting to create a better life for her and her sister. Both Santiago and Yusra attain their goals despite the sufferings and sacrifices they have endured. As shown above, Santiago and Yusra Mardini overcome great challenges along their to attaining a dream. They both have major sacrifices to make and suffer in their own way, but they both accomplish a goal. Achieving a dream or goal will require suffering and sacrifice, no matter how big or small a dream may
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...
Nearly everyone has a dream in life that they desperately want to accomplish. Without these dreams people wouldn’t strive to accomplish what makes them happy. Sometimes happiness might be hard to reach because of obstacles faced in life. The obstacles which one faces and how they can overcome them are remarked in Anne Lauren’s Carter short story “Leaving the Iron Lung”. In order for the author to show that one must overcome faced obstacles to pursue their dreams, she uses the protagonist transformation, contrasting characters and settings.
Santiago thinks about his discussion with the old man. He is annoyed that the old man was right about his being on the verge of giving up just as he finds his destiny. Wandering around the city, he approaches a ticket seller, but he does not buy a ticket to Africa, where he knows the Egyptian pyramids are. He knows that he could buy a ticket with the money he could make from selling only one of his sheep. As he stands at the ticket window, he decides to go back to shepherding his flock. He muses that neither the old gypsy woman nor the old man understand what it means to have a flock of sheep depend on them.
Throughout the years, certain writers were able to set off a deep sympathetic resonance within readers by their usage of archetypal patterns. One of those patterns is known as the hero's journey, which Joseph Campbell gave an understandable idea of in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. According to his book, while comparing world's mythology, he found that no matter how far cultures are from each other, they will still have the same structure of hero's journey in their legends (Voytilla vii).
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.
In the beginning of the book, Santiago travels to visit a Gypsy who is said to be able interpret his recurring dream. As a child he had always heard stories about Gypsies capturing children, taking them to their camps and making them their slaves. These stories translated into one of his largest fears for Santiago as a child and that fear returned when he visited the Gypsy, “As a child, the boy had always been frightened to death that he would be captured by Gypsies, and this childhood fear returned when the old woman took his hand” (17). The Gypsy eventually tells Santiago that there is treasure located at the Egyptian Pyramids. Without being able to overcome his fears of Gypsies, Santiago may have never went on a journey to Egypt in order to achieve his personal legend. Another example in the book that shows Santiago overcoming his fears is while Santiago and the Alchemist are travelling towards the Pyramids. They are suddenly captured by a desert tribe at war, who mistakes them for spies. In order to save his life Santiago has to turn himself into the wind. Coelho states, “But the boy was too frightened to listen to words of wisdom. He had no idea how he was going to transform himself into the wind” (83). Two days later Santiago is standing in front of the tribal chieftains trying to turn himself into the wind. He is able to stay calm while his life is on the line and
In the novel, Lisa, written by Carol Matas, the main character, Lisa has become a heroic person. People become courageous after they have gone through a tragic event. Lisa becomes braver through her experience on her first mission, she learns to become adventurous through relationship with her mentors, and expanding her fearlessness through experiences with her allies. During her hero’s journey, Lisa developes by becoming a braver and stronger person, therefore she is able to help her family and friends find freedom.
The famous French playwright Moliere once said, “The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.” Throughout our lives, we often are faced with hardships that cause us to change ourselves, the people around us, and the situation itself. Because of this, it may reveal our true characteristics to show who we truly are. In the memoirs “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls and “Warriors Don't Cry” by Melba Patillo, they vividly illustrate the story of how they faced their struggles. They both prevailed because of their tenacious mind sets, but handled the situations in both different and similar ways. The characteristics of the characters Jeannette and Melba show the similarities and differences between the characters.
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
When wanting to accomplish something in life, there will be a decision that will affect the outcome of leading to the right path. It will either help in achieving the goal that was made or take it further away from being able to accomplish it. In the novel “The Alchemist” written by Paulo Coelho, is about a young boy named Santiago. He is a shepherd wanting to travel with his sheep all around in doing so he goes through the experience called "The Hero’s Journey”. The Hero’s Journey are stages taken to accomplish your Personal Legend which is a goal you want to get accomplish in life. He also goes through stages in the journey that help him overcome any challenges he faces. They also bring him closer to the end of completing
The Gift of a Lifetime: Sacrifice in a Tale of Two Cities. Some men are engraved eternally in the hearts and minds of those he inspired. It is done so in a fashion that allows his name to live eternally, long after his ephemeral existence. However, what truly sets a man apart from his lesser counterparts is his willingness to give without taking.
The fear of failure has been implemented into child-hood, as it is the most influential time in a persons life. Santiago’s society taught people from young ages, that your dreams are impossible to achieve. This thinking habit imposed by society would influence the child’s life by letting them grow up not believing in themselves or their abilities. This thinking habit was passed down to Santiago by his own father, who tried to talk him out of the one thing he truely wanted to do in life; travel. “ ‘People from all over the world have passed through this village, son,’ said his father. ‘They come in search of new things, but when they leave they are basically the same people they were when they arrived.’ ” (pg 9) Your family should support your dreams, but because society imprints false ideologies into people, Santiago’s father convinces him to give up on his dreams. Even though Santiago’s father wanted “to travel the world” (pg 9-10) too, he didn’t have the courage to do so which influenced his life by “having had to bury it, over dozens of years,”. Santiago was young and impressionable at the time, and so when his very own father doubted his ability to be able to achieve his dreams, Santiago too grew up to doubt himself. This then influenced Santiago to try to bury his own life callings when faced with his Personal Legend. He used excused, “But there’s a tribal war”, (pg 115) “I
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
To begin with, the fear of losing beloved things or people presents people with dilemmas that influence the continuation of their journey and they can only bypass these dilemmas by getting rid of the fear altogether. To begin, Santiago’s fear of losing everything he already earned makes him second guess his plans and therefore discourages him to continue his journey. Santiago expresses his doubts by stating that his “‘heart is a traitor…it does [not] want [him] to go on.’ ‘That makes sense,’ the alchemist answered. ‘Naturally it [is] afraid that, in pursuing [a] dream, [a person] might lose everything [they] [have] won’” (Coelho 145). Throughout the novel, Santiago learns to always listen to his heart, but in this situation if he did, it would result in abandoning his journey. The alchemist encourages Santiago to move on from this fear by stating that it is normal to feel scared, but not normal to give up on a dream because of a feeling. Santiago’s best solution in this situation is to conquer his fear of loss altogether and erase the doubts in his mind for a smoother journey. Next, the fear of losing life in the midst of the journey makes Santiago wonder if it is appropriate to risk his life to pursue a dream. Santiago learns how to handle this situation as “the camel driver had [once] said, to die tomorrow [is] no worse than dying on any other ...
Santiago is a complex character who learns a lot through the course of this story. He is a very good, humble man and loves Manolin, his apprentice. Santiago is a poor man and is regarded as bad luck by others because he was not caught a single fish in 84 days. One cannot help feel sorry for him because he is very alone. His wife died and the book suggested that he never had any children. Yet he was humble and did not complain at all about his hard life. Santiago is a very persistant and determined character. He fought the huge marlin that he had caught for three agonizing days desopite feeling intense pain. He often had contradictory feelings and thoughts. One that I found strange was when he felt sorry for the marlin while he joyfully pondered how much money he would get for selling the fish.