Fear In The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist presents many obstacles throughout the novel. This includes the challenges when one faces fear in life, and Coelho shows what fear can do using characters throughout the novel. Paulo Coehlo incorporates many life lessons into The Alchemist one being that everyone has to overcome his terrors; otherwise, he will not progress in life and will live in fearfulness, uneasiness, and unhappiness. Coehlo demonstrates in The Alchemist three different experiences with fear and why it must be overcome in life by his use of character choices with the crystal merchant, the Englishman, and Santiago. Fear can have many different types of physical and emotional effects on an individual’s life, including something as simple as an uneasy thought in the back of one’s mind, to a continuous tormenting thought that leaves a person unable to move forward due to being overwhelmingly afraid. Fearfulness can make a person avoid even the simple things in life, and can affect the physical health of a person as well (Fear). However, the little steps are important in a person’s life in order to conquer his fears and gain the courage to keep going through life (Babauta).
A person or an animal can experience a physical response when …show more content…
However, the Englishman was different from the crystal merchant in many ways. While the crystal merchant had let his fear completely control his life (The Alchemist Themes, Motifs, & Symbols), the Englishman’s apprehension only delayed him for a decade (Coelho 40). In The Alchemist Coelho writes, “To do that successfully, I must have no fear of failure. It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the Master Work. Now, I'm beginning what I could have started ten years ago. But I'm happy at least that I didn't wait twenty years" (Coelho 40). The Englishman let his apprehension delay him, but now he has to defeat them in order to follow his