“The Alchemist” written by Paulo Coelho, tells the story about a boy named Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd, pursuing his personal legend of finding a treasure in the Egyptian pyramid. Santiago has a recurring dream about the pyramids. He then goes to visit a gypsy woman interpreting his dream. This gypsy woman suggests Santiago go to Egypt, and Santiago promises to give her 1/10 of his treasure. Santiago later meets the king of Salem, which is Melchizedek. He uses Santiago’s personal legend and tells him his father and mother’s name. He gives two stones to him as omens, and Santiago gives him 1/10 of his sheep as exchange. He then sets off for Africa, only to be robbed by a thief of all his money. For survival, Santiago works for a crystal merchant. Sadly, the crystal merchant has not followed his personal legend of going to Mecca and is consequently dissatisfied with his life. Santiago works for him for some time, improving his business along the way. He gets enough money to go to Egypt, and he boards a Caravan going to the Al-Fayoum oasis. Santiago protects the oasis because of a vision from being attacked, therefore he is promoted to the counselor of the oasis. There Santiago falls in love with a girl, Fatima, in the oasis. Later Santiago meets the Alchemist, and the alchemist urges Santiago to embark on the treasure hunt again. On the way, they were kidnapped by the army. The alchemist makes a deal with the chieftain of the army: If Santiago could turn himself into a sandstorm, the chieftain would let them go. Santiago finally goes to the pyramids, but gets robbed of his gold by the refugees. However, the leader of the robber says that he had a recurring dream about treasure under a church, and Santiago knows where to look. At the end, Santiago’s dream comes true, much better than he could have ever hoped for. Santiago takes his treasure, pays the gypsy woman 10% of the reward, and goes to the oasis to find her girl Fatima. The Alchemist tries to tell the readers the importance of following one’s dream and listening to one’s heart. There are many parts of The Alchemist worth discussing. Let’s focus on the character of the crystal merchant and his choices: the conflict between the dream and real life.
Most people being afraid of making mistakes, which is a normal psychological reaction, would lead themselves to miss valuable opportunities of pursuing their personal legend. When an individual keeps the legend in mind, follows it, takes the action for it, never lets go of it, and has no fear of making mistakes, ultimately his personal legend would be achieved and this achievement would purify him. Santiago goes to the crystal shop. He suggests cleaning up the dust on the crystals. At first, the crystal merchant is unwilling to do so because he is afraid of breaking the crystals. Plus, the crystal has been dusty for a while. Santiago still wipes out the dust and soon two customers come immediately into the store and start looking at the crystals. The crystal merchant surprisedly thinks of this as an omen and hires Santiago. They talk for a while about their personal legend. The crystal merchant, a Muslim, says that his biggest dream is to make a pilgrimage to the holy land of Mecca in his lifetime but he will never be able to do it. The actions and thoughts of the crystal merchant is a cautionary tale for someone who has given up their personal legends. When the crystal merchant was young, he wanted to earn enormous money first to be able to go to Mecca. However, when the crystal merchant made enough money for the trip, he thinks that he cannot trust anybody other than him to look after that shop, and that when he goes to Mecca, the shop will be upheld by another person, whom he doesn’t trust. Honestly, the crystal merchant could have gone to the holy land of Mecca if he is willing to take the risk. He is just afraid of making mistakes, thinking something bad would take place. Therefore he does not want to take the initial actions for his personal legend. Similarly, when Santiago proposed to dust the crystals, the crystal merchant refused. But it turned out that this small change of dusting crystals immediately brought him two customers. The crystal merchant refuses to change his ways, even after Santiago shows him taking risks isn't that bad and can result in success. He is an example of the dangers of a life that hasn’t been achieving his personal legend, obvious in his disappointment over his own life decisions. The crystal merchant will never be a prominent and heroic person in his own life, making him not able to make his personal legend true as he is unable to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. All these reasons point to the fact that the Crystal Merchant doesn’t like change and has failed to achieve his personal legend. The crystal merchant's choice of abandoning his personal legend ultimately causes him to live in sorrow for the rest of his life and his unhappiness in life trapped in the store.
Too often people are hesitant of making the change because they assume there are many obstacles ahead before even starting, which stop them taking the first step, let alone achieve their personal legend. Overthinking potential challenges and negative outcomes would make it hard for an individual to believe he can overcome those challenges and outcomes, which in turn lead to inaction, where one would become so consumed by possible difficulties that he never begins. Santiago was being very innovative by adding a display case, much to the Crystal Merchant’s objection. He doesn’t like change, and also another reason is that he fears that the display case will bump into people, and later be broken. These crystals have cost him much work. However, Santiago, a naturally curious person, risks this disadvantage, and eventually the business opens up to many more customers. Santiago says that they should take advantage of the situation, as luck is on their side, this is called beginner’s luck, or “principle of favorability”, in Melchizedek’s words. Typically, the sellers were often just yelling out the prices. Amazingly, Santiago was innovative in his tactics, building a crystal display stand at the entrance of the store, which did not have an appearance in that era. The crystal store is located on a hill, not many people want to climb it. After Santiago made a display case, many customers were attracted to the crystal. People, instead of being lazy and not climbing the hill, will become interested in the crystal, and in turn buy it for themselves. Santiago is innovative and restless for change here, but the crystal merchant objects to Santiago's idea. The crystal merchant explains that people would bump into the crystal display stand when walking by and the crystals would fall down and break. But Santiago takes his previous shepherd’s life to explain it is part of life to take the risks and lose things. Pursuing the happiness of life isn’t exactly the main goal of life, but we still need to accept the fact that there will be losses and gains, just like how life has ups and downs. If people are always hesitant to do something or make changes, and if people set up obstacles before taking actions, they will never take the initiative to make the first step. The crystal merchant's choice of assuming obstacles are impassable before even starting discourages him to take the initiatives and make the efforts, resulting in missing the opportunity of being advanced.
Different people show their different perspectives in thinking and viewing the same problem would lead to different results. Some people may not improve or succeed because of their ways of thinking; they think that “this is it” or “some people are having a worse life than me”. This kind of thinking ultimately prevents any kind of improvement. Santiago has learned to recognize omens: when he sees a man out of breath after climbing the hill to the shop, he realizes they should sell tea in the crystal they are selling. This proves to be very effective, and immediately three customers come to the store to buy some crystal. They drink the tea, and all of them buy a few pieces of crystal, proving Santiago's tactic works. He got this idea from a person saying that there is nowhere to get a good drink. Before long the news spreads, and many people climb the hill just to visit the crystal shop that sells both crystals and tea. Santiago proposes adding tea inside the crystal cups, thus the potential customers would be attracted and come inside the crystal store for drinking a cup of tea, even buying the crystal cups. Santiago is trying to make the business better, but the crystal merchant rejects this idea. The crystal merchant thought that if the business is getting better, then he will be too busy. This means he will need to hire more people working for him, thus breaking his previous leisure and comfortable life. On the other hand, the crystal merchant thought there was nothing wrong with staying in the current situation because he thinks that “maybe someone is having worse time than me” or “if I change, it will be worse not better”, and this kind of thinking perfectly explain the idea of people being stuck in their comfortable zone, unwilling to take a further step to leave the zone. But the truth is that the new feature of selling tea in the crystal shop makes the passing customers deeply attracted and think it is a wonderful idea to buy a crystal cup to hold drinks as well as being an art work. The crystal merchant's choice of viewing and thinking problems lead to his inactions, showing no desire to improve and becoming a stumbling block to his personal legend.
The merchant's choice decides his fate, as he has chosen not to follow his personal legend. When he was young, he wanted to pursue his personal legend by living out his dream, which was going to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. He is old now, and he has enough money to go make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Now the problem is that he cannot trust anyone to take care of his store, and the dream of going to Mecca has been such an integral part of his life that he just wants to dream about it. Through the three discussions that Santiago has with the crystal merchant, a lot can be gleaned from his personality and the reasons why he didn’t pursue his personal legend. The Crystal merchant's choice to abandon his Personal Legend is not correct, because it was his dream, and he will live sad for the rest of his life, knowing that he will not be able to achieve it. Being innovative often leads to success, just as when people see things that are creative, they are often attracted to them, because of the novelty of something new, such as a new menu item or an eye-catching advertisement. Interpreting the meaning of omens is often very helpful, and watching others and taking advantage of them can make people very successful, getting them to pay you or do things for you.
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