With tens of millions of copies sold in over 80 languages The Alchemist may not need my praise. This is either my third or forth time reading it. I thought it would be a good selection for my book club, and I’m looking forward to our discussion next week. It’s clearly written and may seem like simple writing, but it has so many ideas thoughts and phrases throughout the work. Terms like ‘Personal Legend,’ ‘The Soul of the World,’ ‘Universal Language,’ and more are used. It has themes of destiny, drive, love, passion, and ambition throughout the work. I’m going to attempt not to give spoilers. Once you read it, you know the basic plot, and the ending. But on rereading it, maybe once a decade, you get so much more life lessons to learn or relearn.
Without trying to spoil it the basic premise is the main character, the boy, from Spain has a dream of something he wants to attain. Then he goes through ordeals, and setbacks along the way towards achieving his goal. Early on in the book he meets a glass merchant in Africa who has settled into a comfortable life. The glass merchant’s goal as a muslim was to take the pilgrimage to Mecca. But he was older, set in his ways, and may never make that journey.
The whole idea of if the boy attains his dream and what people want in life is a powerful one. When people are young everyone has some type of dream. But not everyone has ambition enough to go through the hoops and tribulations to achieve their goals. When people grow up they settle into work, a career, family, or their way of living. The positive message of this novel is everyone can in some way achieve their own ambitions with enough discipline, practice, patience, and help from others.
When the boy meets and works for the merchant he is set back for more than a year. At certain points he forgot his goal, and worked hard for the merchant to make his shop successful. By learning a trade and doing well at it, he became a stronger person overall, and that experience helps him later.
At one point in the desert someone tells the boy how to survive the desert one most focus only on the present. Not paying attention could get one killed. This is another gem of philosophy is the use of time. People that focus on the past can get stuck and never progress. People focused on the future will get more heartbreak at every failure, and so forth. The last two sentences I just made up, but a lot of these little phrases and sentences in this novel could be interpreted in a variety of ways, or with the readers own little take on it.
The novel does have some magical elements that are purely fiction, but those do not detract from the little truths spread out on every page. Paulo Coelho must have done a lot of research and crafted this masterpiece carefully.
I could go on, but it’s Saturday and this is enough for a blog post. Anyway, if you haven’t already read The Alchemist do so. And if you haven’t read in years it’s worth a reread even if you remember the basic storyline.
