In Coelho's The Alchemist, be specific about how the prologue is related to the rest of the novel.

Theof
Coelho's tells how the alchemist finds a book that tells the story
of...

...Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake
to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into
the lake and drowned.

This section of the novel has
proven to be somewhat confusing for me in the past. The story goes on to report that the lake
where Narcissus contemplated his image for so many hours (and in which he died) weeps for him.
The lake does not weep for the death of Narcissus or
the loss of his beauty:

I weep for Narcissus, but I never
noticed that Narcissus was beautiful.

In fact, the lake
seems to be very much like Narcissus in that she cries because now she will
no longer be able to see how beautiful she is.

I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his
eyes, my own beauty reflected.

In my belief that the
lake was also narcissistic, I could not understand how the alchemist could conclude that it was
a...