Initial thoughts on the alchemist consisted of sheer appreciation. I enjoyed reading about the character and his tireless determination to heed his “personal legend”. After all, we all have dreams as kids; we all want to aspire to something that will make us happy, or in the very least content. It was reassuring, comforting, to read of the boy Santiago and his commitment to his dreams. I can honestly say that it even inspired me to accomplish anything I set out to do; for a short while. So, beyond that small, inspiring moment, was there any value in the book?
After a bit of time, after the sweet aftertaste of the book had been washed away, it began to sink in that, damnit, the stuff in the book is just some fantastical story. There are too many of us that work hard for our dreams, too damn hard, and never see it materialize. I don’t see the universe “aligning” and coming together as “one” in order to help us towards our “personal legend”. There’s just seems to me to be more people not capable of realizing their dream, despite heroic efforts, than there are people that do end up capturing their elusive goals.
But after thinking like this for some time, another thought struck me. What are the dreams that most of us aspire for? They’re the common ones, like wishing to grow up famous, marry a beautiful actress (perhaps like Natalie Portman), land on the moon. The point is that they are the dreams and ambitions that are the ones popularized by…society (is that even the right word, here?) I remember in the book, at several moments in the novel actually, the boy was torn between two goals in life. The example in mind is in the beginning, when he is torn between loving the merchant’s daughter and following his vague dream to Egypt. I feel like his dream to be with the merchant’s daughter could be related to the “customary” child dreams we usually have (i.e. growing up to be a fireman, becoming president, etc.) while his true “personal legend” was of course going to Egypt. But to follow his common desire to marry would have been against his life’s mission. This made me realize that I was wrong in my previous estimation of the book. The majority of people try so hard to follow their “childhood” dreams to become actresses, dancers, freaking novelists. The novel attempts to say that we usually aren’t in sync enough with our “personal legends” to even realize what they are most of the time. By following our child dreams, we pursue the wrong goal, completely missing our reason for being. Perhaps the novel does hold some merit after all. (J).
So what, in essence becomes the point of the novel? What was the point of the journey through the desert? Was it really just to see the splendor of the pyramids? To see the vastness of the sands of the sahara? I don’t think so. The point of the journey was to teach him how to interpret the omens. Well, I’m not too sure about omens going around earth and such. However, sometimes the hardest thing to analyze is what is within us: that which we desire, want, believe deep in our own heart. And I think that in the end, it’s this that the book stresses for us to attempt to understand. The truest sadness might be going through life, without ever really knowing our own true heart’s nature. Santiago was lucky enough to have many guide him on his path towards his own revelations; most of the time, however, we only have ourselves to figure out what is truly our calling. Even Paulo Coelho realizes the difficulty in this task, naming his book after the character whose art was never completely perfected in reality.
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