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Critical Analysis of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Challenges Santiago faced in the alchemist
Critical Analysis of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
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A boy named Santiago, who was a shepherd and travels around with his flock. He had met many people along with his travels, people included older woman who could interpret dreams, the old king, crystal merchant, the Englishman, and the alchemist. These people who help the boy pursuit his dream and given him tremendous courages.
The story started at an abandoned church and the boy dreamed a hidden treasure and the child playing with his sheep, the child showed the hidden treasure was located in Egyptian pyramids. After the awakened, he met the old woman who could interpret dreams. The old woman’s interpretation is the boy must go to the pyramid in Egypt, the old woman didn’t charge him for anything but she wants one tenth of the treasure.The boy have no idea where is the pyramid, he never heard of it.
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The boy thought the old man, don’t know how to read, then the boy asked the old man how to pronounce the title of the book. The boy was shocked the old man knew how to read. The old man told the boy this book is about “people’s inability to choose their own destinies and it ends up saying everyone believes the world’s greatest lie”. The boy asked “what is world’s greatest lie” “it’s that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us”. The boy noticed that the old man’s clothing was strange. It must come from another place, The boy asked where are you from? The old said he was born in Salem and the old was the kind of salem. The old man told the boy his
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...
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.
Cu (aq) + 2NO3 (aq) + 2Na+ (aq) + 2OH- (aq) → Cu(OH)2 (s) + 2Na+ (aq) + 2NO3(aq)
In the novel, The Alchemist, Santiago is an archetypal hero who embarks on the most common forms of a hero’s journey. From when he received his calling from his dream, the gypsy woman, and the king, his denial and refusing of the call with his thoughts of assurance of a stable livelihood, his acceptance and beginning of adventure, his help throughout the ways with the aid of the mystical alchemist, to finally the trials that he faces from the start to the conclusion. Therefore, so Santiago is what now, and always has been considered to be the all-known hero.
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.
A seven year-old child lives in China with his mother. This childs name is moonshadow. Moonshadow’s father lives in the United States which Moonshadow calls the land of the golden mountain. He beleivs that the “demons” (white people) live there. Moonshadow has never seen his father because before Moonshadow was born his father started a kite company in the United States to earn some money to benefit them. Suddenly his father calls for him and wants him to come live in the land of the golden mountain with him and work in the kite company. When Moonshadow gets there he is glad to finally spend some time with his father. Others in the company are nice and they show Moonshadow around. Windrider ( moonshadow’s father) treats Moonshadow with lots
There are many obstacles in everyday life, but none as detrimental to ones future as fear. Fear can cause people to not only avoid achieving their goals in life but it also forces them to think about it throughout every day. Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist shows that those who wallow in fear will never achieve their personal legend, and those who conquer fear will achieve anything they strive for. Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist is a commonly analyzed and criticized piece of literature. One of these articles is Rejendra Kumar Dash’s “Alchemy of the Soul: A Comparative Study of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist”. Dash’s article is a literary criticism of the different parts of the character’s journey in The Alchemist. He talks about, in his article, how the theme in The Alchemist is found through analyzing the different parts of Santiago’s journey and what those parts mean. Another one of these articles is Lily Hasanah’s “Decision Making in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist”. Hasanah’s article is a literary criticism of the main character in The Alchemist, Santiago. She searches for the theme in The Alchemist through analyzing the decisions, and the outcomes of those decisions, made by Santiago. Paulo Coelho provides access to his theme, for the most part, though the actions and adventures of the main character, Santiago. Although this is the method of delivery he had in mind, Dash and Hasanah view the delivery of his theme differently.
Santiago is a young boy who fits into the flawed hero archetype. His story tells of his journey to find his Personal Legend and the many new people and experiences he encounters. Santiago is flawed in the way that he does not have enough confidence in himself to complete the task set out in front of him. He is constantly putting himself off track and avoiding what he has to do. In the beginning of his journey, he faces a setback and his money gets stolen. While finding a solution and a job, he gets distracted loses sight of his dreams. A couple months into the job, he thinks, “...Egypt was now just as distant a dream as was Mecca for the merchant…” (Coelho 58) and he glorifies his new plan to “disembark at Tarifa as a winner” (Coelho 58) with his improved flock of sheep. However, he continues his journey two years later, despite his break in confidence. When Santiago reaches the Oasis during his journey across the desert, he gets sidetracked once more by a woman. This woman’s name is Fatima. The second time they meet Santiago speaks without thinking and says, “‘I came to tell you just one thing...I want you to be my wife. I love you.’” (Coelho 98). This alone demonstrates his rash actions of an inexperienced hero who causes his dreams to be postponed. However, Santiago is also a successful hero despite his flaws. He still continues his journey, no matter what, and eventually reaches his goal. Even through
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.
In The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, indirect characterization is used to contribute to the theme of, when following one’s Personal Legend, one’s attitude and behavior may become bitter. While travelling through the desert, Santiago befriends the Englishman. Santiago asks him, “‘Why do they make things so complicated?’... The boy had noticed that the Englishman was irritable, and missed his books” (82). Santiago is curious about alchemy so he asks the Englishman many questions. From the way that the Englishman responds, he assumes that the Englishman gets irritated easily. The Englishman getting easily annoyed indirectly characterizes the Englishman as not patient and easily irritable. The Englishman’s easily irritability contributes to the theme
There were around two hundred people that join the caravan including the Santiago and the Englishman. The Englishman says ‘there’s no such thing as coincidence’. Santiago realizes the closer one gets to realize his Personal Legends, the more that Personal Legends becomes his true reasons for beings. While crossing the deserts, he was thinking about the past and the future by learning the universal language. His mother’s referred this knowledge as hunches and also the word maktub means it is written. He realizes that he had learns more by observing his camel and the caravan, and he throw away his books. Santiago having a conversation with the camel driver at night, he told Santiago about his life before and how he became a camel driver. He learned
Santiago, a young shepherd form Spain, repeatedly had a dream about a child leading him to The Pyramids in Egypt. He was confused about these experiences until he met The Gypsy Woman, who enlightens him about personal legends, how everyone has one destined and how some follow the path to the finale and some give up or ignore realizing theirs. Santiago, being a brave
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
Santiago is a heroic figure because he was always kind to others. He was always helping someone with something. For example: when Santiago was working at the Crystal shop, he helped the Crystal Merchant, improve his business. When Santiago was leaving the Crystal Shop, the merchant stated “You brought a new feeling into my Crystal Shop”(61). The Crystal Merchant is talking about how much Santiago has changed his business. Santiago has helped the merchant’s business by making a display case to put outside the store, cleaning all the crystal and adding new things, such as the tea. Santiago also helped an Englishman by helping him find the Alchemist. The Englishman wanted to speak to an alchemist. The Englishman stated “I need you to help me find out where the alchemist lives”(90). Because the Englishman requested for help, Santiago helped him. It took over half a day to find the alchemist, but fi...