Question 3: At least three paragraphs The Alchemist is an allegory, Almost everything in the novel is representative of the growth and
development of the human soul, and yet, this might strike modern readers as archaic.
Read the following quote by the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Then write about how this
quote supports one of the main themes of the novel
"We have no symbolic life, and we are all badly in need of the symbolic life. Only the symbolic
life can express the need of the soul - the daily need of the soul, mind you! And because people
have no such thing, they can never step out of this mill - this awful, banal, grinding life in which
they are "nothing but." ... Everything is banal; everything is nothing but," and that is the
reason why people are neurotic. They are simply sick of the whole thing, sick of that banal life,
and therefore they want sensation. They even want a war; they all want a war; they are all glad
when there is a war, they say, "Thank heaven, now something is going to happen -- something
bigger than ourselves!"