By Daria Husni
When I first started reading the Alchemist, something felt familiar to me. It wasn’t until I was halfway through that I realized what it was; the Alchemist is very reminiscent of the epics of Greek mythology. As someone who devoured Greek mythology as a child, I recognized so many of the story beats—an epic god-given quest, tragic setbacks, separate encounters with important individuals. But it was only at the end of the story that I connected with what was most reminiscent of those stories—the idea that the quest was not really about the hero, that it was part of something bigger than himself. That it was written by some great cosmic power, a power that the boy had to understand in order to finish his quest.
But The Alchemist was not written by an ancient Greek philosopher. It was written in 1988, in a very different era of hero’s journeys. In the 80s, and even in today’s era of writing, hero’s journeys are much more self-focused. They typically involve a journey of self-discovery, culminating in some fatal flaw that the hero must overcome for their reward. But while the boy in The Alchemist has flaws he must overcome, it is not a personal flaw, such as pride or greed, that holds him back. Rather, it is a universal human flaw—the urge to cling to the known, the reluctance to learn from the world around them, the fear of letting go of societal notions to truly see creation for what it is.
When the boy and the alchemist are taken prisoner by a local military force, the alchemist saves their lives by promising that the boy can perform a miracle—in three days he will turn himself into the wind. The boy spends the entire first day panicking. He has been asked to do the impossible, at least by the standards of everything he has known. “He spent the entire afternoon of the second day looking out over the desert, and listening to his heart. The boy knew the desert sensed his fear. They spoke the same language (Coelho, 148).”
First, the boy speaks to the wind, and realizes that love holds the greatest power of all. Then he speaks to the sun, and he learns that love is a transformative power that pushes us to be better than we are. And finally he speaks to the hand that wrote all. “But that the hand had a reason for all this, and that only the hand could perform miracles, or transform the sea into a desert . . . or a man into the wind. Because only the hand understood that it was a larger design that had moved the universe to a point at which six days of creation had evolved into a Master Work (157).”
So much of the book prior to this moment is the boy letting go of self-focused ideology and connecting to the world around him. This is the culmination of that journey. “The boy reached through to the Soul of the World, and saw that it was a part of the Soul of God. And he saw that the Soul of God was his own soul. And that he, a boy, could perform miracles (157).” Through knowing how creation works and his place in it, he is about to learn what he himself is capable of.
This is the moment The Alchemist drifts away from even the Greek mythos. As Kaja Silverman writes in Subject of Semiotics, “It is important to stress that no actual text ever conforms at all points to the classic model; the actual text always contains a surplus of meaning, signifying elements which are incompatible with the abstract model (Silverman, 255).” The journey of the boy is not really about the inescapable path set by forces far greater than his own, nor about finding his own inner strength. The message is less about personal strength, and more about personal faith. In the end only two people were unafraid of the boy’s transformation: the chief, who had faith that he would see Allah’s glory, and the alchemist: who already knew how to turn himself into the wind. It is when the boy finds faith that he is able to succeed.
In many ways the boy’s journey in The Alchemist is very similar to our own journey in this class. He has to learn to look at the world in a different way, free from the preconceptions and prejudices he has built up throughout his life. He has to let go of what feels normal, what feels safe, to truly reach his fullest potential, and to truly achieve his personal legend.
All You Read is Love 
I wanted to talk a little about the hero’s journey that was developed in this book. It follows the main characteristics of the hero’s journey, almost to a T; the ordinary world, the call to adventure, the refusal of the call, meeting the mentor, crossing the first threshold, tests allies and enemies, approach to the inmost cave, the ordeal, reward, the road back, resurrection, and finally, the return with the elixir. As I went back through the book and tracked what events matched each piece of the hero’s journey, I found that they did fit almost every aspect of it. Most specifically, the story followed the characteristics of the hero’s journey perfectly for the first few steps. Santiago, the main character is seen in his ordinary world, taking care of his sheep. The call to adventure comes to Santiago in the form of a dream. Santiago refuses this call when Santiago hits a bump in the road; someone steals all of his money when he is distracted. The story follows these steps as the story progresses, making it a commonly known book across the globe, and a perfect example of a book that follows the hero’s journey.
LikeLike
I mentioned in my comment for Paige’s blog post about the semic code surrounding the Gypsy that lended itself to the cultural code. Of all the descriptions mentioned, the Gypsy’s seems to be the most unabashedly pessimistic. The semic code surrounding her continues even after we’ve departed from her and are now conversing with the King of Salem Melchizedek. Once Melchizedek asks Santiago for one-tenth of his sheep in exchange for information about the hidden treasure, Santiago automatically assumes the Gypsy plays some role in this scheme: “The boy remembered his dream, and suddenly everything was clear to him. The old woman hadn’t charged him anything, but the old man—maybe he was her husband—was going to find a way to get much more than money in exchange for information about something that didn’t even exist. The old man was probably a Gypsy, too” (22-23). In a way the semic code surrounding the word Gypsy has now become a negative connotation, despite the Gypsy’s apparent loyalty to Jesus that Santiago witnessed and the fact that she charged him no money whatsoever. Santiago continues to view her and other Gypsies through a lens of prejudice that he’s inherited from word of mouth of other people’s supposed experiences.
LikeLike
I liked how you connected this story to Greek mythos and overlapped the same expectations: tragedy, quests given by another being, and encounters with different people. Which brings me to this little tidbit of knowledge that I picked up on after reading. When interacting with different individuals throughout Santiago’s journey, we never learn everyone’s names. The only names we have other than Santiago (yet his name is only said once in the beginning) are Fatima and Melchizedek, the old king. Everyone else is just “the Gypsy”, “the crystal merchant”, the Englishman”, “the Alchemist”, etc. In a story, we as readers expect to know the names of every single character that our protagonist comes into contact with. This ties into the Proairetic Code, where it can be used as a function for conventions and expectations. Using this code, we break that convention of knowing everyone. Santiago didn’t need to know everyone’s names in order to know what they were about, or to further progress his Personal Legend. All we needed to know about those characters was that they each played a role in Santiago’s journey.
LikeLike