The Alchemist Essays

The Alchemist, a fable about following your dream, Paulo Coelho in his selected work The Alchemist, works on the concept of self-exploration. The Alchemist is a novel by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho which throws light on how a person will power, determination, positive attitude, sacrifices lead to his destination or his dream. The Alchemist was first published in 1988; this novel was a great achievement for Paulo Coelho. Originally it was write in Portugess, than it got translated into 72 languages and become one of the bestselling books in history and make Guinness world record for most translated book over 72 languages by a living author. Paulo Coelho was born in Brazil and has become one of the most widely read and loved authors in the world.

The Novel was originally written in Portuguese by its Brazilian-born author by the name of Paulo Coelho. He wrote the best-selling novel, The Alchemist sold 65 million copies and is the most translated book in the world by a living author. It has been translated in 56 languages as of September 2012. It was a fiction book and was published on 1988. The original publisher was a small Brazilian publishing house; The Brazilian Publishing Company “Rocco” was the first large publisher to print the book.

Paulo Coelho, the author of The Alchemist tells the story of Santiago a Shepard whose life changes once he finds out about a treasure from his frequent dreams and meets a strange man who helps him to start his personal legend. On Santiago’s journey he starts to see the hidden meanings behind daily life creating the thesis that through seeing and understanding symbols behind the world people can learn about their own personal legend and live life to the fullest. Santiago’s life starts out all about his sheep, he chose to be a shepherd, so he could travel and meet new people. Santiago’s job is to take care of the sheep, but the sheep have more meaning in the story. The sheep represent how he is comfortable in his life and how he is questioning his frequent dream, to sacrifice his comfortable life to find this treasure or to continue without taking the risk.

The Alchemist is a very well written and intriguing book by Paulo Coelho. It is a story about a young shepherd known as Santiago who abandons his live in Spain and embarks on a journey to Egypt, during his journey for treasure hunt he faces many obstacles. Making several different stops he realizes truth about himself, the world, and the kingdom of god which are interrelated in the story. Paulo uses the characters of The King Salem, The Crystal merchant, the Alchemist and Fatima to explore the theme that true happiness can only be achieved if one works hard towards his goal or purpose in life and to realize one’s personal legend, one must work hard, make great sacrifices, and take risks. True happiness is only when one realizes his Personal legend.

The Author and His Times: “When you want something, the whole universe conspires to help you” is the saying the author of the novel The Alchemist has lived by. Paulo Coelho, his childhood to coming of age an be best compared to the fantasy of magical world of his character whom he brought to life, the shepherd, Santiago. Forty-one and desperate, Coelho was coming to realization that his novel The Alchemist wasn’t working, with his original publisher decided to cut him loose and cancelled their contract. And sure enough, the one and only thing that kept him from moving forward was all of him, heart and soul. “I was living my own metaphor.

Based on the number of copies each book sold in past 50 years, “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho is the fifth most read book in the world (Polland, 2012). "The Alchemist" received worldwide attention. The book is mainly about the journey of a guy named Santiago who is trying to achieve his personal legend which is what people have always wanted to accomplish (Coelho 1998, pg.22). In the book, Santiago faced many difficulties and fear of failure, but Santiago was able to overcome those hardships. Just like Santiago, people nowadays face many hardships or fear of failure that prevent them from achieving their own dreams.

In Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, Santiago's sheep are big part of him that shows how much he wanted to achieve his personal legend by giving them up. This in turn shows the theme of achieving one’s goals by giving up the only things he owned just to go on a journey that he saw in his dreams. He had thoughts on his decision, but realized that it was too late to turn back. His decision of giving up his sheep shows how much he was willing to give up to gain something, or anything at all. Santiago has been having dreams or dream the he keeps seeing.

“To realize one’s personal legend is a person’s only obligation and when you want something all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.” Many people know what their personal legend is and some have achieved it. But in the story the Alchemist written by Paulo Coelho, a shepherd boy named Santiago achieves his personal legend, his goal in life with some help from three major characters who teach him many important things. During his journey, Santiago learns more about his surroundings and things that also helped him grow. The first character who helped Santiago in his journey was the King of Salem known as Melchizedek.

In life a single event can dramatically change a person forever but how they survive is what matters the most. In Night by Elie Wiesel and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, two character named Elie and Santiago are placed in life altering situations where they have to figure out how to persevere. Night is a dramatic book that recounts the reprehensible treatment that Elie had to live though during the Holocaust. Elie has to endure deplorable conditions in a Nazi concentration camp and learn to survive. He has to choose to separate himself from his experiences and still have hope. In contrast, The Alchemist is a hopeful book where Santiago goes on a journey and discovers new ideas and hidden treasures.

The book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is about a shepherd named Santiago who is looking for a treasure at the Egyptian pyramids. Along the way, he encounters many people and challenges and they affect him in a positive way throughout the story. Santiago has transformed and has understood more about life throughout his journey because of dreams, and love. Santiago has learned a lot from the people who help him to better understand dreams.

Everyone in their childhood dreams of things that we will ever achieve in the future, are the fiery dreams of what anyone can have, we have had the inexhaustible enthusiasm that came from our heart, the pursuit of that dream was the hope we lived, we were just happy about what we could become, how we could reconstruct what we had, how to become worthy of our parents, our family, we would be the pride of everyone when they realized those dreams, with the infallible intuition of the road, but we did not know the risk and the opposite verses in the way of dreams, how we thought about thinking about something bad, so we grew up but when time spent dreaming to childhood, things become more complicated and we start to bear responsibility. American,

Personal Essay: How The Alchemist Changed My Life Forever As most people in Los Angeles are today, I was sharing an apartment with another roommate at a rent of $1,800 a month and commuting along the busy and noisy 405 to work everyday - two hours each direction, surrounded by traffic and angry people honking out of frustration. As I headed out for work every day and came back home after a long day, I eventually became more and more miserable as time passed - I stopped spending any valuable time with friends and family as I became bitter and sour spending most days and nights at a job that demanded more and more of me, I spent less time doing the things I used to enjoy like hiking or reading as I was worn out

In the world where humans reside in today, a vast diversity of individuals strive towards their ultimate goals; one may endeavor to become a prestigious actor or perhaps a contented engineer. These varied, ultimate goals are “Personal Legends”; this phrase appeared in Paulo Coelho’s best-selling novel, The Alchemist, and he concretely defines the peculiar term “Personal Legend”. Throughout this novel, Santiago, a youthful shepherd, strived to follow his Personal Legend, finding treasure at the Egyptian Pyramids; he encountered numerous hindrances as well as meeting various individuals that guided him closer to the inevitable goal. Near the beginning of the book, Coelho elaborated, utilizing the technique of dialogue, that “[A Personal Legend

First and foremost,in my perspective,I would say that the main message of the story The Alchemist is that whatever life gives you appreciate it. Life can always lead you to places or objects,but not every human can have them. To face facts life can be hard for some people and not as hard to others,in comparison to the Santiago’s life in the story he knew that he had to give up the only thing he had in order to get enough money to travel to egypt where he thought his treasure would be,and where he would get to know what his personal legend was,so he decided that he would go for his dream if he really wanted to be able to find his treasure. While traveling to the pyramids he came upon thieves,love,and fear,but none of that stop him from getting

In the book, The Alchemist, there are many major themes but the one that I took from it and could relate to was “fear is a bigger obstacle than the obstacle itself.” Throughout the story, Santiago goes through many challenges that he is afraid of that when he finally does them he discovers that they were much easier than anticipated. Santiago feared the thought of failure, leaving his home to find his treasure, leaving the crystal shop to fulfill his destiny, and to tell the chief he can turn into the wind. I, like Santiago, have had times in my life where I feared doing things and the greater obstacle was my fear and overthinking than the activity itself. The instances I chose from my own life to relate to Santiago were; when I do a new flip on snow, the first time I flew on a plane by myself, the first time I went surfing, and self-advocating by talking to

In the novel The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, there are multiple prominent themes. The book talks of omens and treasure and many other physical things as well as ideas, such as the Soul of the World, the Language of the World, and Personal Legends. The most important and relevant theme in The Alchemist is perseverance. The main character Santiago perseveres through many obstacles that come in his path.

In The Alchemist, Santiago’s wisdom gives him credible ethos. Santiago, is a boy that has been a shepherd for two years. He had one job, and it was to take care of the sheep. The only thing that the concerned the sheeps were food and water. As long as long as he knew the best pastures of Andalusian, they would stay with him.

A few years ago, someone told me of an ancient Greek legend. According to them, humans had originally been created with four arms, four legs, and two faces. Zeus, fearing their power, split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend the rest of their existence searching for their other halves. In a way, the Greeks trusted that finding their soul mates was meant to be, that it was their destiny, in other words, maktub. To understand maktub in full clarity, you would have to be an arab, but the closest translation of maktub there is to our language would be something like "it is written".

Paulo Coelho captures the journey of a young shepherd finding his Personal Legend in an awe-inspiring, sleek and captivating novel named The Alchemist. The story of The Alchemist focuses in on Santiago, a shepherd that has just found his Personal Legend and will pursue it into the unfamiliar land of Africa. Santiago is just a regular shepherd but, after dreaming of treasure at the pyramids Santiago goes to consult with a woman about his dreams and has no luck, then he meets a man in the plaza who says he’s the King of Salem. After chatting with the man Santiago decides to travel to Africa to pursue his Personal Legend. Santiago works at a mans crystal shop to earn money to travel to the pyramids and after a few successful months he hops aboard a caravan of camels and makes his way to the pyramids.

1. Describe the lead character(s) of the book: Name of Character: Santiago Description: Santiago is the protagonist of the Alchemist. He is a sheperd from a small town and ever since he had been a child, he had wanted to know the world,