Love In 'The Alchemist And Siddhartha'

How does Hesse and Coelho present the importance of wealth and love is to fulfilment and self-discovery in ‘The Alchemist’ and ‘Siddhartha’?

Siddartha and The Alchemists are both novels featuring a world of sacrifice and journeys of the soul in order to find enlightenment and have fulfilling lives. Both stories show a journey distracted by love and wealth but ultimately returning to their desired goal of finding true happiness. The Alchemist describes the journey of a humble shepherd who seems to live a happy life before he meets a king who tells him his destiny is to travel to Egypt and find hidden treasures. His pursuit of a 'personal legend' leads him down a path of self-discovery and love which convinces him he does not need to fulfil
Wealth and social status is almost personified as hypnotising and attractive. This highlight’s their need to reject such intense indulgence in order to obtain their real goals. As well as love and wealth social status also begins to play a large part of these gluttonous experiences. Siddhartha suggests it becomes an obsession more than desire. ‘For a long time Siddhartha had lived the life of the world without belonging to it. The years passed by. Enveloped by comfortable circumstances, Siddhartha hardly noticed their passing. He had become rich…people liked him.’ This suggests that while love and wealth are a distraction, they are also a waste of time and ridicules the fascination of humans with such things especially with the detrimental effects it has on one’s journey to self-discovery. For example when he says ‘Living without belonging’ he distancing himself from the game he is playing. In the Alchemist, Santiago almost abandons his personal legend because a thief steals the gold he was given to travel to Egypt. Instead he decided to start working in a shop in order to make enough money to go back to tending his sheep. ‘For nearly a year, he had been working incessantly…so that he could return to Spain with pride.’ The authors gave the protagonists the chance to settle for ‘comfortable life’ but both men resist the influence and power of effortless love and wealth so they could achieve their goals. Siddhartha realises this when he says ‘How many years had he spent without any lofty goal…content with small pleasures yet never really