An eighteen-year-old named Kai Kloepfer has invented a gun recognition system that has the potential to save lives. This invention, which he has named the “smart gun,” will only fire when it recognizes the fingerprint of the person pulling the trigger. The idea is to make a dangerous weapon like a gun less dangerous by only allowing it to be fired in the hands of someone responsible.…
From listening to their dreams, Santiago and Siddhartha realize their Personal Legends and embark on their journeys to pursue enlightenment. Both characters need experience to help them understand what they desire from life. In the town Tarifa, Santiago is intrigued because in his dream “[a] child [takes] [him] by both hands, [ ] transports [him] to the Egyptian pyramids” and tells him that he will find treasure near the location (Coelho 13). Therefore, Santiago craves to know if his dream is significant. Without this dream, Santiago would not be able to go to the gypsy who tells him he must go to the Pyramids in Egypt to find a treasure that will make him rich. Santiago “[has] the same dream that night, a…
He had a reoccurring dream that there was a treasure at the Pyramids. After talking with Melchizedek, the King of Salem, I believe his fear was to not discover his Personal Legend of finding the treasure. “I’m an adventurer, looking for treasure.” (Santiago, page 45) There were several omens along his journey that made him fearful of pursuing the treasure. When he met the alchemist at the oasis there was a tribal war happening around them making it dangerous to travel through the desert. Santiago said to the alchemist, “I have already found my treasure.…
This statement from Melchizedek the king of Salem is essentially telling Santiago that dreams are not silly or selfish and they should not be ignored or denied, dreams are meant to be fulfilled that is why they exist. He wants Santiago to realize that his persistent dream of him going to the Pyramids to find his treasure is not just a silly old dream it is his Personal Legend. Mr. Melchizedek explains Santiago that this desire to go to the Pyramids “originated in the soul of the universe.” He wants Santiago to go on this journey because he believes that it is his true meaning and mission on earth.…
Evaluate the effectiveness of the use of techniques used in marketing products in one organisation.…
Santiago has a reoccurring dream of him going to a field and from there being brought to the Egyptian pyramids. When he meets the King of Salem, Melchizedek, Santiago tells him about his dream and the King tells him that going to the pyramids is his Personal Legend. The King also says to Santiago, “To realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation” (Coelho 22). To follow his Personal Legend, Santiago must give in order to receive. He must give one sixth of this sheep to the gypsy and also one sixth to the King. Once he has given that, he must sell the rest of his flock to obtain enough money to get to Egypt. Foster says that “The real reason for a quest never involves the stated reason” (3) and for this Santiago is not aware that going to Egypt is an actual quest. The King comes to help Santiago realize where he is to go, “You are trying to realize your Personal Legend, and you are at a point where you are about to give it all up” (Coelho 23). Typically when something in life does not go your way, we give up and do not want to continue trying. Santiago starts to feel the urge to give up early on, however he begins to work hard to overcome these feelings “More…
“The land was ruined, and I had to find some other way to earn a living. So now I’m a camel driver. But that disaster taught me to understand the word of Allah; people need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want” CITATION Pau \l 1033 (Coelho). Throughout the novel Santiago feared many things which his fear became an obstacle for him to successfully achieving his Personal Legend. He experienced several forms of fear: every since his childhood he feared the gypsy women would…
and he gets so worried about losing his things, there was a chance that he may forget about the oil in the spoon parable, making Santiago enjoy the world, but not forgetting about the little things in life. “We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it’s our life or our possessions or our property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.”(Pg. 76) Fear and failures can be the biggest setbacks to achieving your personal legend. Santiago is scared of losing the things he already has obtained over his journey. In the middle of the novel, in Tangier, Santiago is fearful of losing his money that he earned from working with the Crystal Merchant at his shop. Near the end, Santiago is frightened that he may lose Fatima. In the story, the camel driver spoke words of assurance to Santiago, knowing from experience after he had lost all his possessions to a flood. Santiago will soon realize that moving on and losing things will allow him to grow in his journey.…
“If we have enough courage to disinter dream, we are then faced by the second obstacle: love” (Coelho 2). Santiago is afraid of hurting those around him. He isn’t afraid of love itself, but of hurting those he loves by doing what he wants. When Santiago has the dream about the treasure, he is very hesitant to abandon his sheep. After thinking about it, Santiago realizes that he has to follow his dream, so he sells his sheep and follows his dream of the treasure.…
To begin with, Santiago would not have realized what his personal legend is without the dream. The dream reoccurred and at first Santiago tried to brush it off, but then he thought of it as an “omen”. This is his “Call to adventure”. From there, he decided he wanted to be a Sheppard and travel the world with sheep. Later on in the book he met the gypsy woman. She told him, “You must go to the pyramids in Egypt. I have never heard of them, but if it was a child who showed you them, they exist. Then you will find a treasure that will make you rich”(Coelho 14). If the gypsy would have never explained to him what the dream meant, he might have not known the true meaning of his personal legend, and would not be able to fulfill it.…
In the alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Santiago’s greatest obstacle is overcoming his fear of the unknown. As the boy goes to the ticket booth to buy a ticket to Africa, he comes to the realization, “If he sold just one of his sheep, he’d have enough to get to the other shore of the strait. The idea frightened him.” (26). Santiago is fearful because he doesn’t know what will happen if he leaves. He knows his sheep and the lands of Andalusia, but does not know what will occur if he leaves what he knows for the vast mysterious desert to achieve his personal legend. The alchemist wants the boy to understand, “If a person is living out his Personal Legend, he knows everything he needs to know. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure” (141). Santiago must accept the fact that he will not let fear of what he cannot do affect what he can do. Also, he must not let fear cloud his judgment of what his heart thinks. He does not know what will happen so he fears of what cannot be predicted. Finding a way to manage with his fear of the unknown is a constant challenge for Santiago. Even though he knows he should pursue his personal legend into the desert, Santiago has second thoughts when “He reminds himself that he had been a shepherd, and that he could be a shepherd again. Fatima was more important than his treasure” (95). The boy debates whether he should leave the oasis with the alchemist to fulfill his personal legend or stay with his love Fatima. He is scared because he does not know what will be the outcome of their relationship if he leaves Fatima. He worries if their love will last even if they aren’t together. He is afraid to take the risk because he won’t know the result until he returns. The boy has many obstacles on his journey but finding a way to cope with his fear of the unknown is an ongoing challenge for Santiago throughout the book.…
I chose this quote because it talks about fear. Something that every human portrays, and comes up in the novel quite often. Once Santiago realizes there is nothing to be scared about, he is able to do anything he puts his mind to.…
When Santiago debates with himself about whether he wants to pursue his Personal Legend, because he feared losing Fatima, the Alchemist explains to him that his heart needs to understand "that the fear of suffering is worse than suffering itself. And that no heart had suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and eternity" (130). Santiago's journey surely did not bring upon suffering to him; he learned more about alchemy, found his treasure, and still felt love from Fatima. Ultimately following his dreams brought him closer to God; he literally had an "encounter" with Him when he became the wind. I felt the same as Santiago two years ago before I went to teach a vacation bible school on my mission trip to Canada, I was terrified because I had never done anything comparable to it and I did not know what to expect. I always dreamed of sharing my faith with others and when I went on that mission trip I legitimately felt like I was exactly where I should be. I now go on the trip up north for that vacation bible school every summer, every time I feel more blessed and closer to God. Fear haunts everyone, but when we learn to take risks and push the thought of suffering aside we will truly be…
When we start to fear about a certain situation we are only causing pain for a longer time, instead of living in the present and working on that certain situation when it occurs, we start trying to figure everything out beforehand, causing us to fear when there is no need to. As soon as people stop fearing the unknown, they can focus on achieving their goal. So often people miss their calling because they feared the outcome and didn’t want change. For instance, in The Alchemist, the merchant had always dreamed of going to Mecca, but never did because he feared change. He missed his calling because of one small instinct. When people let go of their fears, they are open to so many more…
In 1968, H.J. McCloskey wrote an article on atheism called “On Being an Atheist.” He states that there are three proofs which do seem to move ordinary theists to their theism to constitute major motivations towards a belief in God, namely the cosmological proof, the teleological proof, and the argument from design (McCloskey). In his article he states that these proofs are inadequate, and that atheism is much more comfortable than theism. He also says that most theists don’t come to the belief in God through as a reflection on the proofs, but they come to a belief in God through others reasons and factors. Through our faith as theists we believe God exists and that the existence of God is the best explanation for the effects we observe in the universe. Philosophers say that an argument is a set of statements or propositions, which are premises, which show that another statement, the conclusion, is true. Throughout this paper I will mention the premises and conclusions of each argument and explain why McCloskey is incorrect when trying to prove his arguments.…