Fair Warning
Today we are explaining the ending of The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, and the twist that sends Santiago home.
Fair warning: this one is full of spoilers. If you haven’t finished the book, pause here and come back later.
The Dream
Let’s start with the dream. Santiago is a shepherd from Andalusia who dreams, twice, of a hidden treasure at the Pyramids of Egypt. A fortune teller says the dream is real, and an old king named Melchizedek tells him to follow his Personal Legend.
So he sells his sheep, keeps two stones called Urim and Thummim, and crosses the sea to Africa.
The Journey
At first, everything goes wrong. In Tangier, a thief takes all his money. Santiago ends up working for a crystal merchant, and he stays almost a year, improving the shop and earning enough to leave.
The merchant has his own dream, a pilgrimage to Mecca, but he is too afraid to go. For him, the dream is more precious unfinished. It is a warning of what Santiago could become.
The Oasis
Santiago joins a caravan across the Sahara. On the way he meets an Englishman who is looking for an alchemist, and at the oasis of Al Fayoum, he meets Fatima, a woman of the desert.
He falls in love. But Fatima tells him that if he truly loves her, he must follow his dream, because love will never keep a man from his Personal Legend.
The Alchemist
At the oasis, Santiago meets the alchemist, a mysterious man who guides him across the desert. He teaches Santiago to listen to his heart, to read omens, and to understand the Soul of the World.
Along the way, tribal warriors capture them. The alchemist tells the chief that Santiago can turn himself into the wind, and they have three days to prove it, or they will die.
The Test
Santiago is terrified. But he speaks to the desert, the wind, and the sun, and at last to the Hand that wrote all things. A sandstorm rises, and the chief lets them go.
The alchemist’s lesson is that everything in the world is connected, and that anyone who learns its language can do extraordinary things.
The Pyramids
When the alchemist leaves him, Santiago travels on alone. At last, under the moon, he sees the Pyramids. He kneels and weeps, and a scarab beetle crawls over the spot where his tears fell. His heart had told him that his treasure would be where he wept.
He digs all night, and finds nothing.
The Twist
At dawn, a group of refugees from tribal wars finds him. They beat him and take his gold. As he lies on the sand, he tells them his dream. One of them laughs.
He says that two years ago, he too had a recurring dream. In it, he was told to go to Spain, to an abandoned church with a sycamore tree growing from its ruined sacristy, and to dig at its roots. But he was not so foolish as to cross a desert for a dream.
Santiago laughs too. He knows exactly where that church is. It is the place where he started.
The Return
He travels back to Spain and reaches the church at nightfall. The sycamore is still there. He digs, and after an hour he uncovers a chest of Spanish gold coins, precious stones, and gold masks. The old treasure is worth a fortune.
Then he hears the wind, which carries the alchemist’s voice. If the alchemist had told him where the treasure was, Santiago would never have seen the Pyramids. The journey was the point.
The wind also carries a kiss and a scent he knows. It is Fatima, and he whispers, I’m coming. He plans to give a tenth of the gold to the fortune teller as promised, and then go back to the desert.
What It Means
The ending says that the treasure is real, but the journey made Santiago the man who could find it. The sycamore was always there, but he had to go through the desert to be able to dig.
It also says that your dream may be closer than you think, and that you may need to leave home to understand it.
My Verdict on the Ending
I like this ending, even though I know it is a bit neat. The idea that the thing you want is waiting where you started, but you could not see it until you left, is both comforting and true to life.
My only complaint is that the cost of the journey is easy to forget, because the treasure arrives so smoothly. If you want to talk about it, leave a comment: would you have gone, or stayed? Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.
