The Alchemist Literary Analysis How does one become successful in life? We all have a goal that we want to achieve but some of us never do. It’s probably because we aren’t ready to take the next step. Paulo Coelho’s book The Alchemist tells a story of success and explains the rules of life to be successful. He lets us view how 2 characters in the story, Santiago and the Englishman are on a journey to reach their goals. They learn on the way to prepare themselves for it but they are learning in completely different ways. Coelho makes an example of how these differences affect their journey greatly. The Englishman longs to meet the Alchemist so he reads books to find a way to do so. Santiago just wants to find his treasure and he examines the …show more content…
By showing us this, Coelho wants his audience to understand there are many different ways of learning and if we have the knowledge then we should use that to move forward on our journey of life but if we don’t then we will not reach our full potential and it will prevent us from reaching our goal. Coelho begins to show us the Englishman’s personality at the beginning of their journey through the desert, he uses the desert as a way to represent life so their journey is in fact actually going through life itself. The leader of the caravan asks everyone to pray to a God they believe in and “The boy swore to Jesus Christ” but “The Englishman said nothing”(74). The boy (Santiago) is willing to listen to others to help him on the journey but the Englishman is not. Coelho describes their minimal interaction during the start of the …show more content…
He uses the differences between the Englishman and the boy (Santiago) to show that there are two types of learners in the world. There are people that do the one thing they think will help them be successful towards their goals and the people that actually learn from what is around them and use it to push forward to reach their goals. At some point the boy actually meets the Alchemist instead of the Englishman because he is more open about the world. He barely knew anything about the Alchemist or how to meet him but he was so willing to learn from his environment that he became more worthy of meeting him. Coelho wants to show his audience that having a goal will put you on your path but if you don’t actually do something out of your knowledge you will not get to where you want to be. The Englishman read so many books and was very educated on anything that had to do with the Alchemist but in the end he did not even start his