The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - An Honest Review of ‘A Fable About Following Your Dream’


Dreams are a natural phenomenon that occurs to almost everybody. Dreams are snippets of the things that go on in the back of our mind, to our surprise they must be realistic when we see them in between the sleep. Dreams show us our desires as well as fears, which we call nightmares. Sometimes they push things which we buried deep back and never want to face them, even in our thoughts, ever again.

But how many of us actually follow what we see, or what we go through in the dream? Forget about following, how many of us even believe that they are something to be concerned for? Very least. But there has been led in front of a story of seeing dreams, choosing its path and trying to chase it through thick and thin in the most unnatural, yet phenomenal way, in ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho.

Introduction

Book’s Name - The Alchemist

Author’s Name - Paulo Coelho

Genre - Inspiration, self-help

Language - Originally: Portuguese, Adapted: English

Synopsis - Spoiler Alert

A recurring dream troubles a young and adventurous Andalusian shepherd, Santiago. He has the dream, every time whenever he sleeps under a sycamore tree that grows out of the ruins of a church. During his dream, a child tells him to seek treasure at the foot of the Egyptian pyramids. Santiago further consults a gypsy woman for the interpretation of the dream, and to his own surprise, she also tells him to go to Egypt.

Along the way, the boy meets an Englishman who has come in search of an alchemist and then continues his journey with the new companion. When they reach an oasis, Santiago meets an Arabian girl named Fatima, and falls in love with her. He even proposes to her for marriage. 

 

She promises to agree to that only after he completes his journey and comes back. He gets frustrated at first, but later comes in term with the fact that true love will neither stop nor must one sacrifice to one's personal destiny, since doing so robs it of the ultimate truth.

 

The boy then bumps into a wise alchemist who also helps him in realizing his true self. Further together, they risk a journey through the territory of quarrelsome tribes, where the boy is forced to demonstrate his skill of oneness with "the soul of the world" by turning himself into a simoom before he is allowed to proceed further onto his journey. 

 

When he begins digging within sight of the pyramids after reaching the core of Egypt, he gets robbed, again, but  also accidentally learns from the leader of those thieves that the treasure he sought all along was actually in the ruined church where he had been watching his original dream on loop.


Picture Credit: Productive or Not

About the Author

Paulo Coelho, born on 24th August, 1947 is an Brazilian author popularly known for employing a rich set of symbolism in his depictions of the often spiritually motivated journeys undertaken by his characters. Coelho’s birth and upbringing took place in Rio De Janeiro, where he rebelled against the all time conventions of his Roman catholic upbringing. Due to this, he was also admitted to a psychiatric hospital by his parents. 


Besides his tough youth age, he never for once was demotivated when it came to writing. He never let his past experiences cloud his capability towards writing and giving the world the top bestsellers in context to each of his books. Among them, ‘The Alchemist’ is one of the most inspiring novels of modern age. And as we all know about Coelho, there always lies a different way of interpretation in his books. 

About the Book

The Alchemist (Portuguese: O Alquimista) is a novel written by the Brazilian author Paulo Coelho that was first published in the year 1988. Though it was originally written in Portuguese, yet it became an international bestseller translated widely into different languages.


A metaphorical novel, ‘The Alchemist’ follows a young Andalusian shepherd into his journey to the pyramids of Egypt, after having a constant recurring dream of finding some sort of treasure there.


The book's main theme is about finding one's destiny. Although, according to The New York Times, The Alchemist is more of a self-help book than literature. The advice given to Santiago that ‘when you really want something to happen, the whole universe will conspire so that your wish comes true’, is the core phrase of the novel's philosophy and a monogram that plays throughout the novel.


Picture Credit: Storyboard That

Themes Involved


  1. The Centrality of Personal Legends- According to the book, personal legends serve as the only means through which an individual can live a satisfying life. In fact, the universe can only achieve its perfection if all natural things would continuously undergo a cycle of achieving their personal legend. And in this process, evolving into a higher being with a new legend, and then being able to hound that new goal.

  2. The Unity of Nature- In the context of the book, the spiritual unity represented by the ‘soul of the world’ binds all of nature, from human beings to desert sand, altogether. This idea underlies the parallel we observe in the novel between the alchemist purifying metal into gold, as well as, Santiago purifying himself into someone capable of achieving his personal legend.

  3. The Danger of Fear- Fear tenaciously keeps coming up throughout Santiago’s journey as a prime obstacle to Santiago’s achieving his personal legend successfully. He experiences several forms of fear - 

  1. A childhood fear of having a gypsy woman interpret his dream. 

  2. A material fear of losing all his earned wealth by departing to Tangier or by joining the desert caravan. 

  3. A physical fear of dying in the battle at Al-Fayoum in the desert.

  4. A spiritual fear that he might get failed in turning himself into the wind when the alchemist forces him to try so.

Famous Quotes


  1. “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

  2. “It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.” 

  3. “The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”

  4. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

  5. “Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.”


The Bottom Line

The book is full of metaphors, and the things that might seem surreal. While the book is pretty inspiring as to how a common shepherd reaches Egypt just in order to follow a dream he was constantly seeing. I mean, how many of us do that? It even becomes difficult to remember the whole plot of the dream sometimes. But the book takes us into a whole new spectrum of the concept of dreams. 

Although the book is known to be inspiring and a self-help as well, it couldn’t hold a reader’s mind and heart while reading. At Least not mine. The plots of the book and the characters associated within are very differential, but it also leads to boredom at certain points. Regardless of being a fictional novel, it can’t fascinate its readers.

My Ratings for the book - 3 on 5


Written By - Pavas Shrigyan