The Little Prince & We

Every writer has some purpose inherent in his work, a mindset to which his ideas and ideals gravitate. In one good book, this strikes as some insight which enables the readers to see the author as an advocate of some truth.

While such truth is universal, embracing an aspect of human life, it is only when the reader realizes this truth that the author is seen as his interpreter, his means to see himself.

French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is no less than this author. His popular novel The Little Prince (1945) is just but one of his greatest revelations of the self, much as he reveals himself.

Considered a fairy story ostensibly written for children, The Little Prince is the type of book immediately dismissed as “charming,” something only delightful and attractive. Others insist that it may not be necessary for one to finish reading the work to interpret what it sends him to know. The book may be simply for children in each of us.

Children are said to face the world by themselves. They always ask questions and they never run out of them. They want to know almost everything, just like the little prince who wants to know everything about the earth.

In The Little Prince, the characters that the prince meets one by one represent the influence on the mind of a child: the snake the fox and so many others shaped his view of the earth in many ways.

Chapter 16 begins: "So then the seventh planet was the Earth". On the Earth, he starts out in the desert and meets a snake that claims to have the power to return him to his home planet (A clever way to say that he can kill people, thus "Sending anyone he wishes back to the land from whence he came.")

The prince’s meeting with the snake delineates the author’s concept of isolation—desert imaging the loneliness or more aptly the dryness of everything. This resonates in the author’s distance from his family and his dangerous position as pilot unsure of his future feats during the war.

When the snake tells the prince, “It is lonely among men,” the author affirms that some men are unhappy even with their peers, as if to say, loneliness knows no favourites. The presence of the snake applies to the author’s judgment of evil—as one who confuses people and creates chaos in human life, but also one who will eventually make him realize his weakness or strength.

As the little prince wanders in the desert, vivid perception about the author and his work are seen. When the prince meets the flows in the same desert, the author elaborates that all things—short joys, isolation, and intense emotions brought about by evil—are so useless if man does not find meanings from them. Man has to transcend all circumstances with them to find meaning for himself.

In their conversation, the little prince comes to know from the rose about the nature of men—or what men really are. The reply of the flower strongly tells of human nature: “But no one never knows where to find them. The wind blows them away. They have no roots and that makes their life more difficult.

The prince meets a desert-flower, who, having seen a caravan pass by, tells him that there are only a handful of men on Earth and that they have no roots, which lets the wind blow them around making life hard on them.

Children, the author suggests, should realize through time that while life is fleeting, men have no constancy in their lives. Their decisions often have no permanence.

As the prince goes further, he now finds himself alone in the desert. When he speaks, an echo answers him: “Be my friends. I am all alone.” “I am all alone— all alone— all alone.” This scene makes for man’s call for companionship, for by his very nature, man is virtually made for companionship. Needless, man is social by nature. He cannot live by himself or alone. He needs the company of other people. He must interact with other people. Though the world does seem unfriendly, he needs to.

The little prince climbs the highest mountain he has ever seen. From the top of the mountain, he hopes he will see the whole planet and find people, but he sees only a desolate, craggy landscape. When the prince calls out, his echo answers him, and he mistakes it for the voices of humans. He thinks Earth is unnecessarily sharp and hard, and he finds it odd that the people of Earth only repeat what he says to them.

Here, it is as if de St. Exupéry says every person must reach out; for he will have no grasp of the wholeness of the world unless he reaches out to others. With others he may be able to find (the) meaning (of things).

After wandering the desert for a while, the little prince sees signs of civilization, and “all roads lead to the abodes of men.” There he meets a flower very much like his flower in his own planet.

Eventually, the prince comes upon a whole row of rosebushes, and is downcast because he thought that his rose was the only one in the whole universe. He begins to feel that he is not a great prince at all, as his planet contains only three tiny volcanoes and a flower he now thinks of as common. He lies down in the grass and weeps.

Of course, he is saddened to know that his flower is only one among many others, and later realized that he need not brag about it. To know and realize one is not entirely different from millions of others saps confidence. One therefore realizes there is nothing here to brag or boast about.

The author places the helpless child—a little prince—such a minute character as his focal point of introspection, his looking glass to articulate that the universe is too vast, if not too profound, for man to simply ponder.