‘Little Prince’ for child in all of us
Print Edition
ABOUT eighty years ago, French writer Antoine de St-Exupery wrote “The Little Prince.”
From the very first, the story stresses the difference in the values held by adults and children. Adults fixate on money, status and the paraphernalia of rank and fashion; while children and the young-at-heart focus on relationships.
St-Exupery drew from his own life to depict the character of the Pilot. One night, the Pilot crash landed in the Sahara desert with drinking water to last eight days.
The next day, the Pilot was woken by a soft voice saying: “Please draw a lamb for me!”
Thus we see the start of the friendship between the Pilot, now stranded in the desert, and the Little Prince, who came to Earth from a planet no bigger than a house.
The Pilot and the Little Prince then spent the next few days together in the desert. The Little Prince described his travels through space, and also his impressions of the planet Earth.
The Little prince found Earth “dry and harsh, and people have no imagination.” He walked into a rose garden, covered with five thousand roses. It reminded him of his own Rose, a flower unique in the whole universe.
Then a fox appeared and engaged the Little Prince in conversation and taught him a critical lesson: “If you tame me, my life will be filled with sunshine. I’ll know the sound of your footsteps that will be different from all the rest. Other footsteps send me back underground. Yours will call me out of my burrow like music.”
As the fox said goodbye, he gave the Little Prince a parting admonition: “Here’s my secret... One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”
“For instance,” the fox explained, “It’s the time you spend on your rose that makes your rose so important…” So that was what the fox had meant by “taming” — that you care for and leave your mark on something and achieve a relationship.
It was by now the eighth day since the pilot had crash-landed on the desert and met the Little Prince, and his supply of water was exhausted. The two friends decided to look for water in the desert. The Little Prince seemed inspired as he stated that what makes the desert beautiful is that it hides a well somewhere, just as what makes a house beautiful is that it hides an ancient secret somewhere within its walls.
As if by a miracle, the two friends eventually found a well in the desert, and the Little Prince summed up his thoughts on planet Earth: “People grow five thousand roses in one garden… but don’t find what they are looking for. And yet what they are looking for can be found in a single rose, or in a little water!” He added: “Eyes are blind, you have to look with the heart.”
By now he was ready to return to his little planet and rejoin his Rose. The Pilot, too, had fixed his engine and was ready to resume his flight.
As they made ready the next morning to say a last goodbye, the Pilot caught the little Prince talking to a snake. The snake was going to make good on his promise to help the Little Prince, actually, to help him die.
Why? Because he realized that his Rose was dead. He wanted to join her up among the stars. And the snake could help.
The Little Prince’s message is about the importance of seeing, understanding, caring and giving.
One cannot help seeing the irony of how the Little Prince had his eyes opened by a fox in order to understand relationships, and was then reunited with his beloved Rose by sacrificing himself to the snake.
If we see the world with the eyes of the Little Prince, we see adults who are arrogant and selfish and silly and greedy; they spoil the world for the next generation.
As we fight creeping wrinkles to stay young, we should fight harder to retain the child in us and find our own Rose.
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