The analysis paper about The Alchemist
Lichao Zhang
May. 6. 2013
English II
Spring Semester
Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, brings up the question, “Does love help people achieve their personal legends?” “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” A quote from The Alchemist points an idea which describes the function of achievement which is mutually beneficial that when you have desires. The most common desire is love. There are two types of love appear in this book, which can help people in a positive way and a negative way. So, love as a potential power which becomes a loop including positive feedback and negative feedback to help people to achieve when people have demanded.
In our society, we need people’s help friendly and unfriendly. Friendly represents the positive power from the environment. Obviously, unfriendly indicates the negative power from the environment. Those two powers surrounding in our society to support people. As one of the supports, the platonic love to help people achieve their personal legends.
“Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.” As individuals in the universe, we should have undergone the purpose of life which helping people out of the suffering. It is the important linchpin in our own adventure. From the analysis of the quotation, we can realize that individuals cannot alive without other’s help, for instance, sharing with people is one of the best way to achieve our goal about pursuit our personal legends. According to the word of “personal” this means the representation of the individual. In spite of chasing or personal legends, we should make sure that the way we follow is the correct way, which is the positive way in the society.
As a positive energy to help people find our personal legends. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” The one of functions of love, direct people to against their fear of failure. Without unfriendly helping, for example, cheating on you or lie to you. However, working together as a team, getting rid of danger and fear of each other. That is the exact way to improve our relationship between friendly people.
The friendly relationship shows how people could get benefit from the process. Someone has over-confidence but honest. “Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.” We need positive power to continue our personal legends. Perhaps we all know what we want, however, not by ourselves. Santiago, a young shepherd who finds his own treasure to achieve his own personal legend. During his journey, he gets lots of help from his friends. They bring him material wealth and the desire of love. Although he had considered with how life goes. The truth is nothing can stop him to finish his personal legend, which finds his own real treasure.
The unfriendly relationship indicates the connection between people who want to chase their personal legend but not so successfully. “Don't give in to your fears. If you do, you won't be able to talk to your heart.” the power of fear also can stop people to complete their goals. It becomes one of the obstacles in our life. From the introduction of this book, the author said that the love is the second obstacle of personal legend, which can show love as a negative power in our life. A loop running in our personal journey expands the meaning of life. The positive power and the negative power push each other as physics theory. It exactly follows the law of nature. Meanwhile nothing could alive without two sides of power to develop.
No matter how life goes, we should clarify our mission in this world, which means we should know our responsibilities to fix our tangential dream of our personal legends. Using the circle that we analyzed, going through from the top is the advantage of the platonic love, to the process the friendly and unfriendly relationships to the bottom of the loop which is the power of the nature's laws. “In love lies the seed of our growth. The more we love, the closer we are to the spiritual experience. When you love, things make even more sense.” The more sense we make, the more positive feedback we will get. This is the function of the society, which can help people achieve their personal legends. Using all the resources from the society in a three-dimensional way, which is the loop we mentioned before to think, nothing you could not approach.
How people get advantages from the society and it is the most interesting step during our life experiences. Otherwise there is the opposite side of things that we have to deal with, also. Combining both of the points, the abilities of social skills are extremely important. How to love other people, especially the certain people you love, here is another example, romantic love, which could be a positive or a negative energy to improve abilities of success.
There are four obstacles that the author mentioned in the book. The third obstacle is the fear of the defeats we will meet on the path. “When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” Obviously, the one of the functions of romantic love is helping people conquer all the obstacles that appear on our own path, which means love could make us look better and receive more accomplishments. In order to avoid more sufferings, the path is not easy any more. People have to find a way out to understand the meaning of life. From the influence of love, we could realize the environment is quite different. “Freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves the most.” Although we have a hard time about facing obstacles, throughout it, the love brings us up the advantages side of personal experience which is determinations of goals.
Love may blind you when you struggle making a decision, mislead you into a tangential situation. “This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there's no need at all to understand what's happening, because everything happens within you.” The whole world makes you outstanding with all successes. “When we love, it is not necessary to understand what is happening outside, because everything happens inside us instead.” The improvement that we have can help us to seek our personal legends. That's what we learned from Romantic love.
No matter how many types of love that mentioned in this book, the only thing we should not forget, which using our own valuable experiences to combine all the suggestions and analysis, put them into our real action, which can understand with following our personal legends. Again, does love can help us to achieve our personal legend? The answer is yes. Furthermore, it also can help us to solve all the obstacles that we meet during the journey, instead of letting difficulties suffering us all the time. As we demand, love can be positive or negative, however, it is the linchpin for us to comfort us in any cases.
