According to Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a College Professor, “Every trip is a quest” and every quest is composed of 5 things: a quester, a destination, a stated reason to go, challenges, and the actual reason behind the quest. The actual reason helps make a “quest” or a journey much more meaningful to any literary work as a whole. In The Alchemist, Santiago’s long journey for treasure ends up giving him wisdom and self-knowledge worth more than any gold or treasure.
Every quest needs, a “quester”, who is simply just the person who goes on a quest. In this case, that person would be Santiago, a young man who became a shepherd to pursue his dream of traveling, and now travels across his home country of Spain. One night however, after sleeping in an abandoned church, Santiago has a strange reoccurring dream about a young girl leading him to hidden treasure in the pyramids, only to wake up before finding out where it is buried. Disturbed by this, he sets out to go to Tarifa and visit the old woman who can interpret dreams.
The destination of a journey and the stated reason to go tend to go hand in hand, or as put in Foster’s words, “...someone tells our protagonist, our hero, who need not look very heroic, to go somewhere and do something. Go in search of the Holy Grail.” The old woman who interpreted Santiago’s dreams saying, “...you must go to the Pyramids in Egypt. I have never heard of them, but if it was a child who showed them to you, they exist. There you will find a treasure that will make you a rich man” was one of those people who gave Santiago the destination and the incentive …show more content…
In The Alchemist, that quest is for a young boy named Santiago, in search of treasure in Egypt. While his journey didn’t work out the way he thought, Santiago matured as a person and gained something more important than the treasure he originally sought
Every quest needs, a “quester”, who is simply just the person who goes on a quest. In this case, that person would be Santiago, a young man who became a shepherd to pursue his dream of traveling, and now travels across his home country of Spain. One night however, after sleeping in an abandoned church, Santiago has a strange reoccurring dream about a young girl leading him to hidden treasure in the pyramids, only to wake up before finding out where it is buried. Disturbed by this, he sets out to go to Tarifa and visit the old woman who can interpret dreams.
The destination of a journey and the stated reason to go tend to go hand in hand, or as put in Foster’s words, “...someone tells our protagonist, our hero, who need not look very heroic, to go somewhere and do something. Go in search of the Holy Grail.” The old woman who interpreted Santiago’s dreams saying, “...you must go to the Pyramids in Egypt. I have never heard of them, but if it was a child who showed them to you, they exist. There you will find a treasure that will make you a rich man” was one of those people who gave Santiago the destination and the incentive …show more content…
In The Alchemist, that quest is for a young boy named Santiago, in search of treasure in Egypt. While his journey didn’t work out the way he thought, Santiago matured as a person and gained something more important than the treasure he originally sought