Part 1, Section 6: Summary

This episode focuses on the crystal merchant. The merchant’s once-thriving business is presently not doing well. The merchant had once nurtured hopes of being wealthy, but now he feels that his time may have passed. Santiago meets the merchant and says that he will clean the glasses in the shop’s window in exchange for a meal. The man later tells Santiago that he need not have offered to work for the meal, as the Koran urges followers of Islam to feed the hungry without expecting anything in return. Later Santiago expresses his desire to work for the merchant, so he can earn enough money to travel to Egypt. However, the merchant informs him that he would need to work for more than a year to earn enough money to travel to the land of the pyramids far away beyond the desert. Once again, Santiago almost gives up on his dream and decides to work till he has enough money to go back home and buy a new flock of sheep.

Part 1, Section 6: Analysis

Like Santiago’s father and the baker, the crystal merchant is another man who never fulfilled his Personal Legend; in the merchant’s case the dream was to visit Mecca. However, it is evident to readers that the merchant is honest and a man of values. Despite following different religions, the merchant and Santiago share similar beliefs—for instance, the importance they accord to signs and omens. At the end of this section we find that, as Melchizedek had warned, the path to success is full of troubles. Santiago is overwhelmed and dejected on account of the troubles, but he does overcome them in the end.