The Alchemist is an excellent example of the Hero's Journey, seeing as one can easily trace Santiago's steps along the path. He starts out as a shepherd and thinks he will always be shepherd. This is the life before the call. Then, he meets the old man, whom he soon learns is the king of Salem, who teaches him about the Personal Legend. "It's what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is." (23) This is the call to adventure. After that, Santiago begins his journey but is stopped in Africa and begins to work for the crystal merchant. That stops Santiago for a while. He almost decides to quit and go home after he leaves work with the crystal merchant. That is another of the trials, but Santiago does decide to continue his journey. Santiago meets the Englishman and learns from him about alchemy as he travels to the oasis with the caravan. He meets the love interest, Fatima, in the oasis and meets the alchemist soon after. The alchemist is the supernatural aid in this story. He and the alchemist leave out into the desert, where Santiago learns about alchemy. The alchemy is Santiago's tool that is necessary for him to complete his journey. Santiago uses alchemy to change himself into the wind and overcome yet another trial. After that he finds out the location of the treasure described to him in his Personal Legend. He travels to the pyramids, gets the stuffing beat out of him, and learns that the treasure is back where he started, in Spain. He travels back, gets the treasure, and that's where the story ends.
You didn't say much about personal legends, you mainly described the books plot rather than use the plot to help your explanation.
ReplyDeleteThe point of the prompt was to show how Santiago's adventures in general contained elements of the Hero's Journey monomyth, not to specifically use Personal Legends to find the parallels. That's also why it was necessary for him to write about the plot of the book- the plot helped his explanation by being the explanation. In other words, he couldn't have done this blog post without describing the plot because analyzing the plot is part of the assignment. All of that aside, I thought he did a good job at summing up everything and identifying all of the elements of the book that he needed to put into this blog post.
DeleteI like how you explained the plot of the book cause while I was reading the book I got a little lost.
ReplyDeleteDo you think that the King of Salem was another supernatural aid to Santiago? I also think that the tool for Santiago to complete his journey was him realizing that he could understand his heart and understand the soul of the world, not him being able to do alchemy.
ReplyDeleteI think the King of Salem was one of many of Santiago's supernatural aids throughout him completing his personal legend. I also think that Santiago not only understood the Soul of the World, but also had the Soul of the World within him.
Deletei agree that the book fits the "hero's quest" monomyth very well. you could replace every mention of "personal legend" with "quest" and it would make no difference.
ReplyDeleteI liked your response, but I have to agree with James that there was a lot more plot than using the plot to help support your idea. Maybe you could next time just edit down the plot summery. But I like your opening sentence!
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about the english man's role in the heroes journey? Do you think that he has a journey and a call of his own? I think that maybe there are more than one wheels of fate that are turning here, and I can only wonder where the Englishmans role in all of this is.
ReplyDeleteYour response was written very well, explaining the examples of "the Hero's journey". The parts about Africa, meeting the King of Salem, and the parts about Santiago being a Shepard. After that, you seemed to have written more of the story's plot than how it relates to "the Hero's journey".
ReplyDeleteI would have talked more about the magical stones that were given to Santiago by the King of Salem. They seemed to be his supernatural aid.
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