The Alchemist Pt. II

So, I wanted to elaborate slightly on why I liked the Alchemist but unfortunately I'm not going to be able to put much effort into it. My cat has been missing for about 16 hours and I'm a little stressed. Regardless I wanted to offer this:

Santiago had to leave. Regardless of how stereotypical the plot is. He had to go. If he'd stayed he would not have found the treasure at home, and the real story is right, his wanderlust is what would have ruined his potential future with the merchant's daughter. If he didn't have wanderlust, a yearning for adventure, then he wouldn't have left.

Still, putting that logic aside, had he not left he would not have been able to return to the same field he started in and known it for the first time. He learned something new about it from when he'd left. He also learned that he truly did not want to be there. And that he truly did not want to be with the woman he had intentionally fawned over.

Here's the real kicker about this book. I'm generalizing so I know there will be those of you who didn't have this experience but, my experience was this. We came into this class to discover something about high brow and low brow literature, some of us with knowledge of highbrow and some without. We all learned a thing or two and some of us converted to a great appreciation of highbrow works. The Alchemist was painful for me initially for similar reasons, and in retrospect I'm laughing, it was TOO LOWBROW! I had returned to where i had started and had to get to know the place for the first time. I had to teach myself, using a similar mysterious mental maneuver to learning to enjoy highbrow literature and the bible, to enjoy lowbrow literature again!

Bah, I'm burning my dinner...