Le Petit Prince

The Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry is a story about a little prince who has fallen from Asteroid B-612 into the Sahara Desert; said he becomes stranded in the desert with a pilot, the narrator, who has crashed his plane. During their time together, the Little Prince and the narrator form a bond of true friendship and love. Through the Little Prince, the narrator learns that “On ne voit bien qu’avec le cour. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux” – Only the heart can see well; what is essential is invisible to the eyes. This being the theme of the novel, the Little Prince frequently refers to the “misunderstanding of grownups.” He tells the narrator of all the planets he has visited and the grownups there. He visits a King, a vain man, a drunkard, a business man a lamplighter, and a geographer, a. The Little Prince leaves each planet with more certainty that grownups are caught up with what is unimportant (numbers, money, materials, etc.) and they are ignorant of what is truly important (love, friendship, relationships). While leaving the planet of the “serious businessman,” the Little Prince Exclaims “Les grandes personnes sont décidément tout a fait extraordinaires” meaning that what grownups care for is strange because it is quite unimportant in the great scheme of things. On the last planet he visits, Earth, the Little Prince meets a fox. It is through the fox that the Little Prince learns what taming is, and he learns that he has been tamed by his rose back on his home planet. It is because of taming that life is enjoyable- taming is a way to escape the monogamous aspects of life, but it is also what makes saying goodbye so hard. To emphasize this, the fox remarks: “On risqué de pleurer un peu si l’on s’est laisse apprivoiser…”- you risk tears if you let yourself be tamed.

When the book ends, the Little Prince leaves to go back to his planet. He does this by falling down and letting his spirit go back because his body is too large to transport back; however, when the narrator wakes in the morning, he discovers that the Little Prince’s empty shell has disappeared. This leaves the reader wondering if the Little Prince was ever there at all. Some have concluded that the Little Prince was foreign to this world, an alien, and when he left, his body was somehow able to go with him. Others hypothesize that his spirit left, and the sly snake the Little Prince met when first arriving on Earth confiscated his body. Still, others expect that the Little Prince was a figment of the narrator’s imagination, a mirage of his inner child.

Personally, I believe that the Little Prince was nothing more than a mirage. As a child, the narrator was forced to grow up too soon because the grownups did not support his innocent imagination. I think that when the Pilot crashed in the desert, fear, thirst, starvation, and loneliness set in, and he became crazy- creating a, for lack of a better word, imaginary friend who encompassed everything the narrator really believes, as a child and a matured adult. The creation of the Little Prince reinforced for the narrator what is truly important so that when he returns home, he will be able to improve his life in his relationships with his family and friends.

All in all, I feel that The Petit Prince is an excellent book, and it teaches the reader the true meaning of life: the heart sees well, what is important is invisible to the eyes.