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In Coelho's The Alchemist, how does the reader know that more trouble awaits Santiago?

Before Santiago travels to Africa to start his journey, he receives guidance from the king of Salem. Discussions about achieving one's Personal Legend encourage and inspire both the boy and the reader for the upcoming search for the treasure. Melchizedek also gives him the Urim and Thummim to help him if the boy ever feels stuck and can't read the omens. Everything seems perfectly in place for the boy to succeed. However, when he gets...

Before Santiago travels to Africa to start his journey, he receives guidance from the king of Salem. Discussions about achieving one's Personal Legend encourage and inspire both the boy and the reader for the upcoming search for the treasure. Melchizedek also gives him the Urim and Thummim to help him if the boy ever feels stuck and can't read the omens. Everything seems perfectly in place for the boy to succeed. However, when he gets to Africa, to the port of Tangier, he falls victim to a thief's trickery and is robbed. The unforeseeable becomes the inevitable in hindsight. The realization that achieving one's Personal Legend won't be easy or simple comes to light, which forces Santiago to decide whether he will continue on his journey despite his humiliating loss, or go home. Looking back to one of the last pieces of advice the king of Salem gave him foreshadows the fact that misfortune would also accompany the boy on his travels:



"Don't forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else. And don't forget the language of the omens. And, above all, don't forget to follow your Personal Legend through to its conclusion" (30).



Naively trusting a stranger, therefore, is just "one thing and nothing else." It doesn't have to be the end of everything the boy plans to do. Once the boy loses his money to the thief, though, he struggles with its meaning. Does this experience mean that he should turn back? No. After thinking about Melchizedek and the reason he is on this journey, he decides that he must make his own decisions and take command of his fate. This is the first lesson that the boy learns about achieving one's Personal Legend. It won't be easy and it won't be without suffering and opposition; but in the end, it will be worth it.

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