THE ALCHEMIST SUMMARY

Introduction:
How many of you like adventurous stories? What if the adventure story
starts with you? And If I told you a book how to find buried treasure, fulfil
your destiny, and also meet the lover of your dreams, wouldn't you want
to read it? No?
Well, what if that book was also the world best seller of all time and what
if that book were also recommended by Will Smith, Julia Roberts, Bill
Clinton, Oprah, and Madonna?
Oh, now you all look interested.
Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist was first published in Portuguese in 1988
in the author's home country, Brazil. It wasn't exactly a bestseller, but it
exploded into an international bestseller when the English translation
appeared in 1993. It has sold over 65 million copies counting worldwide
and has been translated into at least 56 languages as of September 2012.
Summary:
This story, dazzling in its powerful simplicity and inspiring wisdom, is
about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago, who travels from his
homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in
the pyramids.
Little shepherd boy Santiago is headed to a town where he met a beautiful
girl the year before, and is pretty ramped up about it. While camping out
in an abandoned church with his sheep, Santiago has a recurring dream.
He explains it to a Gypsy woman, like you do, who tells him that he must
go to the pyramids in Egypt to find a hidden treasure.
She said:
Dreams are the language of God. When he speaks our language,
I can interpret what he has said. But if he speaks in the language
of the soul, it is only you who can understand."
After that Santiago runs into a mysterious old man named Melchizedek,
who tells him that, the soul of the world is nourished by peoples
happiness and also by Unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize ones
destiny is a persons real obligation. All things are one.
And, when you want something, the entire universe conspires in
helping you to achieve it.

Melchizedek tells that everyone has a Personal Legend they must follow
that he must listen to omens in order to seek his treasure. (Omen is a
Thing or happening believed to foretell a future event, either good or evil).
He also gives him some handy-dandy stones (Named Urim and
Thummim: These stones stand for the characters' needs to respond to
omens, which are essential motivating factors)that will help him know
what to do when he can't seem to find answerssort of like a Magic 8 ball,
only less ambiguous.
Before Melchizedek leaves, he tells Santiago the story which I want to
share with u, the story of a shopkeeper who sends his son to learn the
secret of happiness from the wisest man in the world. The boy finds the
man in a beautiful castle in the desert. The wise man tells the boy to
spend time looking around while balancing a spoonful of oil. When the boy
returns, he says he didnt pay attention to any of the castles splendour
because he concentrated on the oil. The wise man sends him out again to
see the castle, and the boy returns having seen the castle but having also
spilled the oil. The wise man tells him the only advice I have to give you is
that The Secret of Happiness lies in looking at all the wonders of
the world and never forgetting the two drops of oil in the spoon.
Santiago sells his sheep and heads to Tangier, where he's promptly robbed
of all his money. Undeterred, he gets a job selling glass, coming up with
flashy marketing ideas that bring in all sorts of business. Once he's saved
up enough money to cross the Sahara and get to the pyramids, he meets
up with a caravan about to cross the desert on camels. Bonus: an
Englishman in the group is headed to the Al-Fayoum oasis to meet an
alchemist who will teach him how to turn any metal into gold.
So far everything's going smoothly, which obviously means that
something bad has to happen. And it does. There are nerve-wracking
rumours of war between desert tribes, and the caravan decides to chill in
a handy oasis until the wars are overmeaning anywhere from weeks to
years. Poor Santiago: so close to the pyramids and so very far.
He decides to help the Englishman find the alchemist. Luckily, the only
person who will give him any info just so happens to be a beautiful girl
named Fatima, with whom Santiago promptly falls in love.
When the Englishman goes to the alchemist he makes him start cooking
up some lead as a first step towards becoming an alchemist himself, so
he's pretty busy with that for the rest of the novel.

Santiago goes out into the desert where he has a vision of the oasis being
attacked. He tells the tribal leaders, who decide to get ready to defend.
One catch: if the oasis isn't attacked, they'll kill Santiago.
Surprise! The oasis is attacked, and the prepared men are able to defeat
the raiders. That worked out well. The alchemist takes note of the new
smarty pants in town and decides to help him reach the pyramids, but
they're captured by yet another group of warriors as soon as they ride out
on horseback across the desert. The alchemist has a solution: he tells
them that Santiago will become the wind.
Santiago figures he might as well try, what with being captured, so he sits
down, concentrates on the desert, and finally he becomes the wind.
Naturally, this scares the daylights out of the warriors, so they let him and
the alchemist go on their way.
They finally arrive at a monastery, where the alchemist whips up some
gold and divides it up before sending Santiago on to the pyramids. He digs
where he's sure he'll find the treasure, but (of course) some punks come
and beat him up and steal his gold. Give a guy a break, punks! Weirdly,
one of them mentions that he once had a dream on that spot of a treasure
buried in an abandoned church in Spain. Bingo! Santiago has his answer.
The book ends with Santiago digging up the treasure in the church where
the whole story started and getting ready to head back to Egypt, where
Fatima awaits.
So, what do you people learn from this story? wake up you all are not
having an adventure right now. Well the lesson I would like to break down
with my most favourite quotes I learn from The Alchemist
There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to
achieve: the fear of failure.
Every search begins with beginners luck and ends with the
victor being severely tested.
The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the
present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the
present, what comes later will also be better.
When we strive to become better than we are, everything
around us becomes better too.
You should read this if

Youre looking for travel inspiration (or inspiration for life in general).

You like feel-good stories.

You dont mind novels that involve mystical, magical things that
could never happen in real life.