The Multiple Messages in "The Alchemist"

Recently, I read Will Smith's favorite story, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. The book is about a boy named Santiago who wants to find his purpose in life. He talks to a magical and wise king who guides him and advises him to try to reach his 'Personal Legend" in life, and to not care about other things and really just strive for this thing he wants in life. So, Santiago goes on multiple adventures and travels across Spain and Egypt to reach his goal of finding the treasure he sees in his dreams in the Great Pyramids of Egypt. This book is very unique in a lot of ways, so I'll try to cover the ones that I think are the most important.

This book is extremely unique in the way it is structured, which I really like. The book is basically a whole bunch of smaller stories chained together, all tied around this idea of Santiago trying to find this treasure in the Pyramids and to find his purpose in life. In the beginning of the book he is a Shepherd, who is spurred by his passion of traveling and his want to travel the world. His goal is to guide these sheep and meet with a girl he fell in love with once when he sold his sheep's wool to her father. However, the king tells him about the treasure, and Santiago changes his goals to finding this treasure. He then goes to Egypt and on his first day gets all of his money stolen, so he must work a job. He ends up working for this crystal vendor, and Santiago transforms his declining crystal shop into a shop that makes a lot of money, and eventually the vendor makes enough money to achieve his dream and do his pilgrimage to Mecca. This is basically how the entire story goes, and it's all connected through Santiago's goal of finding his Personal Legend and the treasure.

For each story there is a message to it. Santiago learns plenty of things from each one of his experiences. He learns things from the sheep, the crystal vendor in Egypt, and the desert in which he must cross to find the treasure. I find this a really interesting aspect of the story, and it keeps the story fresh and fast-paced. It makes the book very inspiring, and teaches the reader a lot of new ideas that Coelho has incorporated into this novel.

The message I want to focus on is the main one which is to follow your "Personal Legend". I think that this hit me the strongest because it has a strong correlation to my life right now. High School is all about finding who you are and who you want to be, and this book gives the good lesson of following your dreams. A lot of the times now we are forced by maybe our parents or society to do in terms of jobs and college, even if that isn't what we want to do. This book makes the argument that we should always follow our dreams and do what we truly believe we want to do.

Despite the book being extremely fast-paced and cramming so many lessons into only a couple chapters, I found I liked the characters and I found the book very addicting and intriguing. I really felt like I was in the book, and I completely forgot about the life around me, completely immersed in this world. I know this sounds like a corny exaggeration but it isn't. I completely forgot about finals, school, winter break coming up and I was completely relieved of everything going around me. I'm not sure why it was like this, but I really enjoyed every bit of it and found Coelho's storytelling extremely addicting.

On top of the immersive storytelling, I really enjoyed all the side characters. Even though some of these characters are only in the book for 20 pages, like the crystal vendor, I really cared for each one of them. Coelho made each character teach Santiago a lesson, and made each relatable. My personal favorite is the crystal vendor who knows what his life goal is, knows what his Personal Legend is, but doesn't want to go for it because he is too scared of change. He feels like it might be a disappointment, and he prefers to dream about it to keep him going rather than go and have it be a disappointment. He explains it like "I just want to dream about Mecca. I've already imagined a thousand times crossing the desert, arriving at the Plaza of the Sacred Stone...But I'm afraid of the disappointment, so I prefer just to dream about it." However, he ends up listening to Santiago's advice on how to improve his shop and it ends up making his shop thrive and gets him enough money to follow his dream. I found myself wishing the best for the crystal vendor and wished that Santiago would visit him to see how he is doing. I think I like the side characters because they all hold a flaw that I can relate to.

The few complaints I have about the book is that the main character Santiago doesn't develop as a character very much. The book is based around different lessons the book is trying to teach so it didn't matter too much to me, and Santiago was still likable enough for me to not care too much about it. It also sometimes hard tell what is going on as the book is very fast paced and switches perspective a lot.

I would recommend this book to really anyone. It is a really quick read and is still a very good story. If you are looking for a full fledged character piece then this book may not be the one you are looking for. However, it still teaches a lot of good lesson and is so short you can't go wrong in my opinion. The reviews on Amazon for this is either 5 stars or 1 star so I can't guarantee you'll like as much as I did, you might hate it. But in my opinion, I can see why this is Will Smith's favorite book, and it'll go down as one of my personal favorites as well.
-Teo