A TEACHER’S GUIDE TO PAULO COELHO’S
THE ALCHEMIST
3
CCS.ELA.Literacy.RL.9-10.10
NOTE TO TEACHERS
Before the publication of The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho (b. 1947) worked as a theater director, playwright, and songwriter for some
of Brazil’s most popular singers. In 1986, he walked the Road of Santiago, an ancient Spanish pilgrimage, and this experience in-
spired The Pilgrimage, his first novel, and The Alchemist, whose protagonist takes his name from the road. When The Alchemist was
published in 1988, it was an instant international bestseller, and reached the #1 slot on bestseller lists in 29 countries. Paulo Coelho
became one of the most widely read contemporary authors.
The Alchemist tells the story of Santiago, the young Andalusian shepherd who dreams of buried treasure in Egypt and embarks
upon a challenging and enlightening journey to find it. With all the simplicity and symbolic richness of a fable, Paulo Coelho’s
novel is both a hunt for buried treasure and a spiritual quest, with a hero who overcomes trials along the way with the help of
disguised teachers who guide him.
The story begins with Santiago, referred to throughout the novel simply as “the boy,” deciding to sleep in an abandoned church
with an enormous sycamore growing from the spot where the sacristy once stood. It is here that the boy, who had recently chosen
not to become a priest, dreams of his treasure, and it is here that he will finally find it, buried among the roots of the tree, after he
returns from his pilgrimage to the pyramids. These kinds of traditional religious symbols appear throughout The Alchemist, but in
Coelho’s story they have either lost their hold or have been transformed. Santiago chooses not to become a priest, his treasure lies
in a ruined church, the Old Testament King Melchizedek is now an alchemist, the traditional Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca has been
replaced by the journey to find one’s “Personal Legend,” and so on.
Indeed, Coelho employs ideas that, although derived from alchemy, may be familiar to students from the many New Age concepts
that have become pervasive in contemporary American culture. In order for the boy to reach his treasure, he must first learn to
accept change, to value simplicity, to trust his experience of daily life over book knowledge. He must learn to live in the present
moment, to read God’s will in signs and omens, to listen to his heart, and to penetrate the Soul of the World and the Universal Lan-
guage through which it speaks. In other words, to attain his material treasure Santiago must undergo a spiritual transformation, a
process that parallels the alchemical transformation of lead into gold.
But if The Alchemist has clear lessons to impart, much of the novel’s appeal comes from the way Coelho dramatizes these lessons.
As Santiago journeys across the African desert, he falls in love, meets the Alchemist, encounters warring tribesmen, risks his life
by promising to turn himself into the wind, and is robbed, beaten, and nearly killed just as he thinks he is about to uncover his
treasure. The surprise ending, in which the boy learns that his treasure lies not at the pyramids, as his dream had foretold, but
back at the abandoned church where his journey began, has powerful implications about the importance of looking into the roots
and foundation of our lives, voyaging outward to find the way back home, and trusting our dreams even when it seems they have
slipped beyond our reach.
The questions and activities in this teaching guide were written to support standards-based instruction. The Alchemist meets the
standard for Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity for grades 9-10. It will fit well in survey courses and, thematically,
is a perfect compliment to Homer’s The Odyssey.
A complete list of the Common Core State Standards can be found at http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards.
The Alchemist
by Paulo Coelho
