The Alchemist

Alex Kennedy
The novel The Alchemistby Paulo Coelho first starts out with a young
shepherd named Santiago on a quest to find his personal legend.
Throughout his quest, he goes through many events that occur that are not
coincidences. The theme of The Alchemist is that everything happens for a
reason because of the symbols, irony, and man vs. man conflict that Paulo
uses on through the novel.

In The Alchemist, the author uses methods of symbols to convey the

theme in the novel. One of the symbols he uses is where Santiago begins
and ends his quest. Santiago begins his quest at a church with a large tree
growing out of the center of it and he ends it in the same place he started.
This symbolizes Santiago has changed as a person, because he ventures all
over his country and other cities to find the he must go back to where he first
began. Santiago has changed the way that he thinks and feels about life. To
be believed a coincidence, but that just happened for a reason.

Throughout the novel, Coelho uses irony to convey the theme in the
novel. The name of the novel has irony in it. During Santiago’s quest, he
meets an alchemist in the desert in the middle of know where. The
alchemist and Santiago begin to become close to one another, through one
another. After spending many days together, Santiago becomes an
alchemist himself. That is ironic because there is an alchemist in the book
and the reader knows that, that is the alchemist that the author is speaking
about. But it is really Santiago who is the alchemist.

Paulo uses man vs. man conflict to convey the theme of the novel also.
When Santiago is going through the desert, a fierce tribe kidnaps him. They
won’t let him free unless he does something for them. Then Santiago
decides to speak the universal language to help take out the other tribe’s
camp. He speaks to the sun, wind, and the sand to guide him to
accomplishhis task. When he does, the tribe lets him go in fear of him.
There was a reason that he was kidnapped so that he could speak the
universal language.

Paulo Coelho was trying to convey a theme throughout the novel, but
didn’t want to make it obvious by using the symbols, irony, and the conflict.
The theme was that everything happens for a reason, and the events
throughout the novel weren’t coincidences.