Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Alchemist, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Alchemy and Transformation
Religion
Sex and Greed
Deception and Gullibility
Summary
Analysis
Doll enters and looks out the window. She can see Sir Epicure Mammon coming up the street, and he has someone with him. Subtle turns to Face and tells him to quickly go change. Doll asks why, and Subtle explains that Mammon thinks Subtle has created the philosopher’s stone for him. Mammon has been talking around town for the last month as if he already has it. He has visited those with the plague and the pox—even the lepers outside the city—and he promises to soon cure them. Mammon plans to turn the old young, and he will make beggars rich. “If his dream last,” Subtle says, “he’ll turn the age to gold.”
Clearly, Face must don a new disguise to meet Mammon. Face has been posing as a captain, but Mammon obviously believes he is someone else entirely. The philosopher’s stone, which also represents transformation, promises to turn the whole world to gold, and it has the power to heal the sick and make the old young again. Mammon has some good intentions for the stone, but his desire is equally rooted in greed, as he wants to “turn the age to gold.”
Themes
