Night By Elie Wiesel And The Alchemist By Paulo Coelho

In life a single event can dramatically change a person forever, but how they survive determines what matters the most. In Night by Elie Wiesel and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, two characters named Elie and Santiago are placed in life altering situations where they must figure out how to persevere. The dramatic book, Night, recounts the reprehensible treatment that Elie had to live through during the Holocaust. Elie endures horrible conditions in a Nazi concentration camp and learns survival. He chooses to separate himself from his negative experiences and still have hope. In contrast, The Alchemist provides hopeful insights when Santiago goes on a journey and discovers new ideas and hidden treasures. He discovers that playing it safe proves more dangerous to his freedom than taking risks. When placed in a life and death situation, Santiago learns that the Soul of the World is shared by everything. In both of these books, the characters have traumatic experiences that eventually create epiphanies that provide hope and

He finds hope by learning that the Soul of the World has a spiritual force that meshes everyone together. Santiago must communicate with nature in what the novel considers the common language of the world, love. Santiago must seek out the help of the desert, wind, sun, and God in order to turn himself into the wind. His epiphany makes him recognize nature as a single, unified whole. Now Santiago understands that everything from a grain of sand to God himself shares the same physical and spiritual essence. In coming to this understanding, Santiago also believes he can “conquer the world.” (Coelho,157). He realizes the importance of hope on his journey and that he can and will persevere to the end. Santiago's epiphany leads to him pushing forward and finishing his journey of achieving his ultimate treasure of hope and