The Alchemist

The Alchemist 

by Paulo Coelho

        Most of the books I usually consume are of the darker nature, ones that deal with dystopias, tragic characters and situations, along with a painful joinery against an enemy. The Alchemist, is not like the rest. This was a very uplifting, light, and charming story about a boy taking control of his life. 

It talks about taking control of your own life, making the best of every situation and going where life takes you. It speaks of a personal legend, which is discussed below in my comparison of free will and fate in the story below. I loved how this book was written, it had a lot of flowery language, but it is short enough where that is not overwhelming, and Coelho paints the world around the main character, Santiago, beautifully. I felt a sense of wonder and how while reading this book and after. I am defiantly going to recommend it to some of my friends and family members. 

Below is my analysis and fate and free will that are in this book. Enjoy! 

 During childhood, a common phrase kids hear from adults is “life is what you make it”. We are told that we can do anything we set our minds to if we work hard enough. Children usually have very high aspirations, like being the president or being an inventor, and those aspirations are praised by adults. However, as we get older, we start to question if our lives are really in our control; If we have can make our own choices or if every step of our path is already decided? Fate and free will are opposite forces, but both exist in The Alchemist. Paulo Coelho paints them as two coexisting forces that we can choose between. One’s perspective of their own life determines if they believe in either free will or fate.      

 Coelho uses two concepts to describe the tension between free will and fate. Free will is shown through Personal Legends. He describes a Personal Legend as “What you have always wanted to accomplish,” (Coelho 23). It is different than the fleeting interests that occur throughout life; It is a deep desire, or even a feeling of needing to do that task or achieve that goal. They are uninfluenced from others around us, Personal Legends are not hereditary, so everyone has a unique one. An example could be a child wanting to be an astronaut when they grow up and they are determined that their Personal Legend is to be an astronaut. On the flip side, The King of Salem, who served as a mentor to Santiago, talks about a Mysterious Force that represents fate. The king says “But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend,” (Coelho 24). Meaning, that as one gets older and experiences more of life, they start to feel like their Personal Legend is unattainable from where they are starting, or what was delt to them in the card game of life. 

Continuing with the example, when that child gets older and graduates from high school and choose to go to college, while they still want to be an astronaut, the mysterious force has set in, and they feel that it would be too hard for them. This mysterious force is a result of adults believing, what the King called, the greatest lie, which is “That at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate,” (Coelho 20). Adults believe that their life is out of their control, that they can’t change anything in their life, and they create this mysterious force, which they unknowingly enforce on their children as they get older. This mysterious force is named so because most adults seem to forget their own Personal Legend, as Coelho said “People learn, early in their lives, what is their reason for being. Maybe that's why they give up on it so early too. But that’s the way it is” (Coelho 26). No one can pinpoint exactly when in their life they gave up on their Personal Legend, it is just accepted as what happens. That child begins to think that being an astronaut is not possible for them, they were not born gifted at math or science, their family is not rich, or they do not live in Florida where NASA training facilities are. Their parents suggest becoming an accountant for a reliable job that pays well, and while their inner child is refusing, they go to school for accounting because it is reliable and would fulfill the fate their parents made for them. 

A person’s fate and a Personal Legend could be the same thing, if one creates it for themselves without any outside input. They are both about accomplishing things in life, finding what your reason for existing is, exploring your mission in life. Becoming an astronaut would have been the child’s fate and Personal Legend. As we get older, they differentiate into a realistic possibility and a childhood dream. We start to see a fate that someone else determined for us. Our parents want us to get a good job and live in a two-story house with 2.5 kids, but we might want to live in a van on the coast with a dog. This person does not have the van or the white picket fence house, and since the house is easier and more socially acceptable, it seems like the better option. This mysterious force is just another word for “maturity”, meaning that it is the responsible thing to do to give up on one’s childhood goals and focus on more realistic accomplishments. This force sets in with age because adults are stingy with time, they know they are not a child anymore, so they think they must have a certain house, a certain amount of money, a spouse, and two children to be considered successful. The adults imprint to their children that that is what they should want, because that is what their parents did to them, and the cycle continues until someone breaks the chain. The one who does is often seen as the black sheep of the family, the odd ball, because they reject the lie and followed their Personal Legend. Santiago was that odd ball, and his story has been inspiring thousands to reject the world’s greatest lie and go after their own Personal Legends. 

:)