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Essay about reading and writing literature
Essay about reading and writing literature
Essay about reading and writing literature
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Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi
In his first voyage in 1492, when Christopher Columbus set out to search for India, he ended up landing in America on a small island in the Caribbean Sea instead of Asia. He then made several other voyages to the New World in search for riches, thinking that he was exploring an already explored land. He had discovered America, which was the greatest riches of them all. This shows that when one sets out on a mission, they face different challenges on the journey but in the end, they can accomplish more than their aim. The novel The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, and the novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, both describe two journeys where the characters learn about life, survival, and patience. First, they understand themselves better, followed by learning to communicate with nature. Then they learn to face their fears, and lastly, understand religion better. The former is about a young shepherd named Santiago, who has a recurring dream of a treasure in Egypt, for which he makes a journey to achieve his personal legend with the help of a man who claims to be a king. The latter is about a boy named Pi, who is on a ship to Canada from India, which sinks and he has to learn to survive on a lifeboat with a tiger. Santiago and Pi both discover new ways to understand the meaning of life on their journey: they realize their strengths and weaknesses, they communicate with other living things, they tackle their agitation with logic, and their faith in God strengthens.
Santiago understands himself as he discovers on his journey, his purpose of life, which is achieving his personal legend, while Pi discovers his evil side, a side, which he never thought he would ever release. In The Alchemi...
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...ose of life, while Pi discovers his evil side. They both learn to communicate with living things around them, Santiago learning from his sheep, and Pi learning from Richard Parker, the fierce Bengal tiger. Then, Santiago fights his fears with faith while Pi reasons against his fears, and lastly, they both strengthen their belief in God. The lesson that both novels can teach students is that in the education life, it is best give it their one hundred percent. The aim at the time would just be to get the best grades, but what they don’t realize is that this is what will get them to good universities, and in the end, help them get better jobs. The lesson is that students can first understand their potential of what they can do, or want to do, and then believing in themselves. They can fight their fears, and in the end, just have faith that they will reap what they sow.
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...
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
Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi” shows all three of the main elements of a hero’s journey: the departure, initiation and the return, helping the story to greatly resemble Joseph Campbell’s structure of a hero’s journey. Through the trials Pi has to face, he proves himself to be a true hero. He proves himself, not just while trapped on the lifeboat with Richard Parker, but also before the sinking of the Tsimtsum. His achievement to fulfill the heroic characteristics of Campbell’s model are evident as he goes though the three stages.
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 Alchemist by Paulo Coelho an Andalusian boy named Santiago leaves Spain to travel to Egypt in order to achieve his Personal Legend. During his journey he meets four people, a Gypsy, a King named Melchizedek, an Englishman and an Alchemist, all of whom help Santiago along his journey towards his Personal Legend. However, only the King and the Alchemist teach Santiago lessons that he can learn from and use along his journey. The King teaches Santiago two lessons, to follow omens and that it is not always about the destination but that it is also about the journey. The Alchemist teaches Santiago to listen to his heart for guidance, what the Language of the World is and what the Soul of the World is. He eventually arrives in Egypt after
Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, is a fictional novel written in 2001 that explores the primacy of survival by employing symbolism, foreshadowing and motifs. This story follows the life of the protagonist, Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel, as he embarks on his journey as a castaway. After boarding the Tsimtsum which carries Pi and his family along with a menagerie of animals, an abysmal storm capsizes the ship leaving Pi as the only survivor, though he is not alone. The great Bengal tiger, Richard Parker, also survives the shipwreck and during the 227 days that Pi and Richard Parker are stranded at sea together, the two must learn to coexist and trust one another for survival. Through Pi and Richard Parker’s struggles to remain alive, Martel explores the primal idea of survival by employing literary techniques.
The Alchemist conveyed the up-most truthful meaning of santiago’s personal legend by teaching him the soul of the earth. This stage helped santiago and the Alchemist are talking doing what your personal legend is and also doing exactly what your personal legend desires are when they speak in terms of listening to one’s heart. “Whenever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure. Santiago takes initiative on his dreams and pursue them regardless of love affairs and the hurt that comes along with it. The stage encouraged and also motivated santiago to find his treasure and make a better life for fatima and
Coelho incorporates many internal struggles into Santiago’s life in order to prove that they don’t restrain people from achieving their personal legend. Through the use of the hero’s journey, Santiago faces many internal struggles such as when he attempts to understand
"If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear ideals of how other people should lead their lives, but none about their own.” That is one of many deep quotes that makes the reader truly think about life in The Alchemist, written by Paulo Coelho. The book is about a young boy named Santiago, who loves travel and adventure, but he does not have the money to do so. He was raised to be a priest, but decides that he would rather be a shepherd, so that he can travel. Santiago’s father gives him two spanish coins, and tells him that he will learn one day that no place is as beautiful as the one he lives in. It seems like Santiago’s father believes in him, but not the way Santiago wants him to.
In his first voyage in 1492, when Christopher Columbus set out to search for Asia, he ended up landing in America on a small island in the Caribbean Sea, which he confidently thought was Asia. He then made several other voyages to the New World in search for riches, thinking that he was exploring an already explored land, but he had found the greatest riches of them all, undiscovered land, America. This shows that when one sets out on a mission, they face different challenges on the journey but in the end, achieve more than what they planned on achieving. The novel The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, and the novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, both describe two journeys where the characters achieve more when they learn about life, survival and patience, by understanding religion, tackling their fears, associating with nature, and encountering other characters from whom they learn something. The former is about a young shepherd named Santiago, who has a recurring dream of a treasure in Egypt, for which he makes a journey to achieve his “Personal Legend” by the help of a man who claims to be...
On its surface, Martel’s Life of Pi proceeds as a far-fetched yet not completely unbelievable tale about a young Indian boy named Pi who survives after two hundred twenty-seven days on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. It is an uplifting and entertaining story, with a few themes about companionship and survival sprinkled throughout. The ending, however, reveals a second story – a more realistic and dark account replacing the animals from the beginning with crude human counterparts. Suddenly, Life of Pi becomes more than an inspiring tale and transforms into a point to be made about rationality, faith, and how storytelling correlates the two. The point of the book is not for the reader to decide which story he or she thinks is true, but rather what story he or she thinks is the better story. In real life, this applies in a very similar way to common belief systems and religion. Whether or not God is real or a religion is true is not exactly the point, but rather whether someone chooses to believe so because it adds meaning and fulfillment to his or her life. Life of Pi is relevant to life in its demonstration of storytelling as a means of experiencing life through “the better story.”
The Life of Pi, written by Yann Martel, is the story of a young man, Piscine, or Pi for short, who experiences unbelievable and unrealistic events, which are so unrealistic ambiguity is aroused amongst the reader. Duality reoccurs over the course of the novel through every aspect of Pi’s world view and is particularly seen in the two contradictory stories, which displays the brutal nature of the world. Martel wonderfully crafts and image of duality and skepticism though each story incorporated in this novel.
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
The Theme of “The Alchemist,” by Paulo Coelho is, always follow your dreams and listen to your heart. At the start of the novel Santiago does not know what he should do when he is confronted by his dream. But by the end of the novel Santiago completely trusts his heart to guide him though life. Santiago’s story shows him learning and living out the theme of the novel.
The novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, talks about a sixteen-year old man named Pi Patel, who unbelievably survives a dreadful shipwreck after 227 days with the animals in a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean. Different ideas and themes in the book can be found in which the readers can gain an understanding about. The author communicated to the reader by using an ample amount of symbolisms to talk about the themes. The main themes of this novel are religion and faith. His religion and him being faithful have helped him throughout the journey, and this eventually led to an incredible precedent.