Santiago’s Father and fighting the good fight

Well, already nine pages into The Alchemist, and Paulo is already brining up one of the key idea from The Pilgrimage.  On page 9, Santiago details the exchange between with his father when Santiago tells his father of his desire to travel, which will mean Santiago will become a shepherd.  Santiago’s father tries to warn Santiago about the futility of his desires.  Thought Santiago notes, “The boy could see in his father’s gaze a desire to be able, himself, to travel the world — a desire that was still alive, despite his father’s having to bury it, over dozens of years, under the burden of struggling for water to drink, food to eat, and the same place to sleep every night of his life.”

The description of Santiago’s father directly draw from The Pilgrimage where Paulo is told by Petrus about fighting the good fight.  Santiago’s father has lost the will to go into combat.

Re-reading ‘The Alchemist’

I finished The Pilgrimage about a week ago.  I just couldn’t keep up my blog notes while reading the book (I was that into it!)  My next book is going to be The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.  It is the follow-up novel to The Pilgrimage, during which he was actually inspired to write The Alchemist. As such, and also because I’ve already read The Alchemist, I plan to write much more frequently on here about my thoughts as a read with both books mind.

From ‘The Pilgrimage’

“Fans who lack the faith can make a team lose a game it is already winning.”

From ‘The Pilgrimage’

So, I’m reading The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho, and rather than keep personal notes to myself, I thought I’d keep track of quotes and thoughts I had on my blog as I read.  Here is the first:

“The good fight is the one that’s fought in the name of our dreams.  When we’re young and our dreams first explode inside us with all of their force, we are very courageous, but we haven’t yet learned how to fight.  With great effort, we learn how to fight, but by then we no longer have the courage to go into combat.  So we turn against ourselves and do battle within.  We become our own worst enemy.  We say that our dreams were childish, or too difficult to realize, or the result of our not having known enough about life.  We kill our dreams because we are afraid to fight the good fight.”

- The Pilgrimage, page 57