The Alchemist versus The Little Prince

The Alchemist and The Little Prince are two books written by two different authors. The first book’s author is Paulo Coelho and the second book’s is Antoine de Saint-Exupery, both of them being written in the twentieth century in two different corners of the world. The first book, The Alchemist is about a young shepherd named Santiago who decides to go on a trip to the Piramids in Egypt in order to find his treasure, in other words on a trip pursuing his destiny as a result of a dream which he had when he was still in Andalusia. There he met an old king named Melchizedek who encouraged him to pursue his dream. He experienced a lot of troubles in his way to the Piramids but after he met his love, Fatima he had more hope in achieving his dream.

The second book, The Little Prince is about a prince who arrives in the Sahara desert from his planet. There he met the narrator who is a pilot and whose plane crashed in the same place,the Sahara desert.The first thing that the little prince asked the narrator was to draw a sheep for him despite his bad talent in drawing. After several attempts he drew a box saying that inside of it was a sheep.The narrator asked the prince how did he arrive in the middle of the desert. He told him that he went on a trip to see how the other planets are like. On each of the six ”planets” he visited, lived a man. On the sixth planet was a geographer who told the prince to visit the Earth, and so he came in the Sahara desert. There are similarities and differences on plot, symbolism, characters.

The similarities on characters between The Alchemist and The Little Prince is that the both protagonists Santiago and The little Prince are possitive heroes. They have many difficulties in finding the treasure which is the love. Santiago finds Fatima his loved one in one oasis in the middle of the desert and The Little Prince finds his loved rose on his small planet near his volcanoes.

The differences on the characters between those two novels are also present. Santiago is a young boy, almost an adult who traveled a lot because he was a shepherd while The Little Prince is a small child from a small planet who didn’t travel much and who doesn’t know how the rest of the world looks like. Both authors chose the narrative voice of young people in their stories because their words are most of the time dismissed by adults. In the second novel the narrative voice is a little child while in the second novel we understand a message of a young shepherd who follows his feelings about his destiny and about finding a woman to love starting from Andalusia and ending up in the Sahara desert at an oasis and then near the Piramids where he is about to die but because he is a positive hero he survives and comes back to Fatima. Also the both authors underline the soul, the heart, and the relationships.

In The Little Prince the author accentuates the way we treat our friends. Through this he is trying to say that the material things became much more important to us than our friends; the fact that we do not care about how they feel, and what are their problems. The other author Paulo Coelho suggested a similar thing when Santiago can not find the seminary important and he chose to be a shepherd. The relationship between boy’s sheep is similar with the relationship of the The Little Prince’s relationship with the rose on his planet when he fell in love with it but he no longer trusted her because it lied to him.

A significant difference between these two novels would be the difference between the thesis. In The Alchemist Santiago discovers his truthfully destiny or what does the live mean for him. He also learns about and he passes through new experiences in his life such as travelling to a different continent, learning new languages and new cultures. He also develops his patience working in a crystal shop and clearing pieces of crystal which are very fragile. But when he finishes his trip he becomes more mature and intelligent, understanding the way in which the world goes. However, in The Little Prince the author ilustrates a theme that have an importance in staying young and not becoming like adults seeing not only the material side of the things in life but to be open-minded and also to love our friends and to care for them. He underlines this fact through The Little Prince who observes everything like it should be, not only the oulside part of the things. In the book this fact is reflected when the little boy observe how perfect is the sheep that the narrator drew in the box he gave to the child.

There are two similarities on the plots of those two books. One of them would be that both of them come back home from where they left with the loved ones and of course living forever. In The Little Prince the protagonist leaves his body on the Earth and he goes back back to his planet and to his rose because he becomes aware of that his rose is unique in the whole universe and he forgives her for lying to him. In the other book The Alchemist Santiago discoveres his treasure and feastes his legend and he thinks that it is the time to come back to Fatima.

The difference on the plot is that Santiago falls in love with a woman and they marry each other fact that shows the love and the relationships between human beeings while The Little Prince loves a flower which is not a human being so Antoine de Saint-Exupery refers to a friendship love that will last forever between two souls. In conclusion, these two novels The Alchemist and The Little Prince are two books that share a lot of things togheter including the similarities between authors, the way in which they describe the characters, the characters themselves, between the plots and themes. But of course there are some differences besides those novels beacause if there were not any differences at all those would have been the same stories with others authors.

The symbolism of those two stories is to find our destiny and the truly loved ones. Moreover from The Little Prince we should learn that not only the material side is important but caring for friends and feelings are coming first as well.