A Dream In Virginia Woolf's The Alchemist

There are many reasons one may fear that his dream lacks importance. The dream may not resource much money, it may not be deemed significant in accordance to society’s perspective, or there may be a different reason entirely. There are many characters and small fables within The Alchemist that present this fear. One of the many, is the story of a baker. At a young age, the baker “wanted to travel” (22); however, he feared the significance of traveling. Consequently, the baker chose to make the safer decision of becoming a “more important” person as a baker, seeing as “Bakers have homes, while shepherds sleep out in the open…[and] parents would rather see their children marry bakers than shepherds” (23). A career as a baker guaranteed a better future for the baker.
Some may argue that the baker had still “put some money aside” so that “when he’s an old man, he…[may] spend a month in Africa”; however, it is an opportunity without any guarantee (22). Even if the baker did eventually wind up traveling to Africa, it will be too late for him and he will not be able to relish in his dream, as he spent the majority of his life fearing his dream and submitting to conformity. After all, “in the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own Personal Legends" (23). Santiago also demonstrates this fear near the beginning of the novel. Santiago gets his dream interpreted by a gypsy, and while at first, Santiago “laughed - out of happiness”, he later became “irritated” at the simplicity of his dream (14). The gypsy had simply told Santiago that he “must go to the Pyramids in Egypt...there [he would] find a treasure”