The Little Prince
The
Little Prince (French: Le Petit Prince,
pronounced [lə
p(ə)ti pʁɛ̃s]) is a novella by French aristocrat, writer, and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published in English and French in the US by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943, and posthumously in France following the liberation of France as Saint-Exupéry's works had been banned by the Vichy
Regime. The story follows a young prince
who visits various planets in space, including Earth, and addresses themes of
loneliness, friendship, love, and loss. Despite its style as a children's book,
The Little Prince makes poignant observations about life and human
nature.[3]
The
Little Prince became Saint-Exupéry's most
successful work, selling an estimated 140 million copies worldwide, which makes
it one of the best-selling and most
translated books ever published.[4][5][6][Note
2][8] It has been translated into 361 languages and dialects.[9][10][11] The Little Prince has been adapted to numerous art
forms and media, including audio recordings, radio plays, live stage, film,
television, ballet, and opera.[10][12]
Plot
The
narrator begins with a discussion on the nature of grown-ups and their
inability to perceive especially important things. As a test to determine if a
grown-up is enlightened and like a child, he shows them a picture that he drew
at the age of 6 depicting a snake which has eaten an elephant. The grown-ups
always reply that the picture depicts a hat, and so he knows to talk of
"reasonable" things to them, rather than fanciful.
The
narrator becomes a pilot,
and, one day, his plane crashes in the Sahara, far from civilization. He has 8 days of water supply and
must fix his airplane to be saved.
In
the middle of the desert, the narrator is unexpectedly greeted by a young boy
who is nicknamed as "the little prince". The prince has golden hair,
a lovable laugh, and will repeat questions until they are answered.
Upon
encountering the narrator, the little prince asks him to draw a sheep. The
narrator first shows him his old picture of the elephant inside the snake,
which, to the narrator's surprise, the prince interprets correctly. After three
failed attempts at drawing a sheep, the frustrated narrator simply draws a box
(crate), claiming that the sheep the prince wants is inside the box. Again, to
the narrator's surprise, the prince exclaims that this was exactly the drawing
he wanted.
Over
the course of eight days stranded in the desert, while the narrator attempts to
repair his plane, the little prince recounts the story of his life.
The
prince begins by describing life on his tiny home planet: in effect, a
house-sized asteroid
known as "B 612" on Earth. The asteroid's most prominent features are
three minuscule volcanoes
(two active, and one dormant
or extinct) as well as a variety of plants.
The
prince describes spending his earlier days cleaning the volcanoes and weeding
unwanted seeds and sprigs that infest his planet's soil; in particular, pulling
out baobab trees that are constantly on the verge of overrunning the
surface. If the baobabs are not rooted out the moment they are recognized, it
may be put off until it is too late and the tree has grown too large to remove,
its roots having a catastrophic effect on the tiny planet.
The
prince wants a sheep to eat the undesirable plants, but worries it will also
eat plants with thorns.
The
prince tells of his love for a vain and silly rose that began growing on the
asteroid's surface some time ago. The rose is given to pretension, exaggerating
ailments to gain attention and have the prince care for her. The prince says he
nourished the rose and attended her, making a screen or glass globe to protect
her from the cold wind, watering her, and keeping off the caterpillars.
Although
the prince fell in love with the rose, he also began to feel that she was
taking advantage of him and he resolved to leave the planet to explore the rest
of the universe. Upon their goodbyes, the rose is serious and apologizes that
she failed to show she loved him and that they'd both been silly. She wishes
him well and turns down his desire to leave her in the glass globe, saying she
will protect herself.
The
prince laments that he did not understand how to love his rose while he was
with her and should have listened to her kind actions, rather than her vain
words.
The
prince has since visited six other planets, each of which was inhabited by a single, irrational,
narrow-minded adult, each meant to critique an element of society. They
include:
- A king with no subjects, who only issues orders that can be followed, such as commanding the sun to set at sunset.
- A narcissistic man who only wants the praise which comes from admiration and being the most-admirable person on his otherwise uninhabited planet.
- A drunkard who drinks to forget the shame of drinking.
- A businessman who is blind to the beauty of the stars and instead endlessly counts and catalogues them in order to "own" them all (critiquing materialism)
- A lamplighter on a planet so small, a full day lasts a minute. He wastes his life blindly following orders to extinguish and relight the lamppost every 30 seconds to correspond with his planet's day and night.
- An elderly geographer who has never been anywhere, or seen any of the things he records, providing a caricature of specialization in the contemporary world.
It
is the geographer
who tells the prince that his rose is an ephemeral being, which is not recorded, and recommends that the
prince next visit the planet Earth.
The
visit to Earth begins with a deeply pessimistic appraisal of humanity. The six
absurd people the prince encountered earlier comprise, according to the
narrator, just about the entire adult world. On earth there were
111
kings ... 7000 geographers, 900,000 businessmen, 7,500,000 tipplers,
311,000,000 conceited men; that is to say, about 2,000,000,000 grown-ups.
Since
the prince landed in a desert, he believed that Earth was uninhabited. He then
met a yellow snake that claimed to have the power to return him to his home, if
he ever wished to return. The prince next met a desert flower, who told him
that she had only seen a handful of men in this part of the world and that they
had no roots, letting the wind blow them around and living hard lives. After
climbing the highest mountain he had ever seen, the prince hoped to see the
whole of Earth, thus finding the people; however, he saw only the enormous,
desolate landscape. When the prince called out, his echo answered him, which he
interpreted as the voice of a boring person who only repeats what another says.
The
prince encountered a whole row of rosebushes, becoming downcast at having once
thought that his own rose was unique and that she had lied. He began to feel
that he was not a great prince at all, as his planet contained only three tiny
volcanoes and a flower that he now thought of as common. He lay down on the
grass and wept, until a fox came along.
The
fox desired to be tamed and teaches the prince how to tame him.
By
being tamed, something goes from being ordinary and just like all the others,
to be special and unique. There are drawbacks since the connection can lead to
sadness and longing when apart.
From
the fox, the prince learns that his rose was indeed unique and special because
she was the object of the prince's love and time; he had "tamed" her,
and now she was more precious than all of the roses he had seen in the garden.
Upon
their sad departing, the fox imparts a secret: important things can only be
seen with the heart, not the eyes.
The
prince finally meets two people from Earth:
- A railway switchman who told him how passengers constantly rushed from one place to another aboard trains, never satisfied with where they were and not knowing what they were after; only the children among them ever bothered to look out the windows.
- A merchant who talked to the prince about his product, a pill that eliminated the need to drink for a week, saving people 53 minutes.
Back
in the present moment, it is the eighth day after the narrator's plane crash
and the narrator and the prince are dying of thirst. The prince has become
visibly morose and saddened over his recollections and longs to return home and
see his flower.
The
prince finds a well, saving them. The narrator later finds the prince talking
to the snake, discussing his return home and his desire to see his rose again,
whom he worries has been left to fend for herself. The prince bids an emotional
farewell to the narrator and states that if it looks as though he has died, it
is only because his body was too heavy to take with him to his planet. The
prince warns the narrator not to watch him leave, as it will upset him. The
narrator, realizing what will happen, refuses to leave the prince's side. The
prince consoles the narrator by saying that he only need look at the stars to
think of the prince's lovable laughter, and that it will seem as if all the
stars are laughing. The prince then walks away from the narrator and allows the
snake to bite him, soundlessly falling down.
The
next morning, the narrator is unable to find the prince's body. He finally
manages to repair his airplane and leave the desert. It is left up to the
reader to determine if the prince returned home, or died.
The
story ends with a drawing of the landscape where the prince and the narrator
met and where the snake took the prince's corporeal life. The narrator requests
to be immediately contacted by anyone in that area encountering a small person
with golden curls who refuses to answer any questions.
Tone and writing style
The
story of The Little Prince is recalled in a sombre, measured tone by the
pilot-narrator, in memory of his small friend, "a memorial to the
prince—not just to the prince, but also to the time the prince and the narrator
had together."[13] The Little Prince was created when Saint-Exupéry was
"an expatriate and distraught about what was going on in his country and
in the world."[8] According to one analysis, "the story of the Little
Prince features a lot of fantastical, unrealistic elements.... You can't ride a
flock of birds to another planet... The fantasy of the Little Prince works
because the logic of the story is based on the imagination of children, rather
than the strict realism of adults."[14]
An
exquisite literary perfectionist, akin to the 19th century French poet Stéphane Mallarmé,[15] Saint-Exupéry produced draft pages "covered with fine
lines of handwriting, much of it painstakingly crossed out, with one word left
standing where there were a hundred words, one sentence substitut[ing] for a
page..."[16] He worked "long hours with great concentration."
According to the author himself, it was extremely difficult to start his
creative writing processes.[17] Biographer Paul Webster wrote of the aviator-author's
style: "Behind Saint-Exupéry's quest for perfection was a laborious
process of editing and rewriting which reduced original drafts by as much as
two-thirds."[18] The French author frequently wrote at night, usually
starting about 11 p.m. accompanied by a tray of strong black coffee. In 1942
Saint-Exupéry related to his American English teacher, Adèle Breaux, that at
such a time of night he felt "free" and able to concentrate,
"writing for hours without feeling tired or sleepy," until he
instantaneously dozed off.[16] He would wake up later, in daylight, still at his desk,
with his head on his arms. Saint-Exupéry stated it was the only way he could
work, as once he started a writing project it became an obsession.[19]
Though
the story is more or less understandable, the narrator made almost no
connection from when the little prince traveled between planets, he
purposefully did that so that the book felt like it was told from a secretive
little boy.[citation needed]
Although
Saint-Exupéry was a master of the French language, he was never able to achieve
anything more than haltingly poor English. Adèle Breaux, his young Northport
English tutor to whom he later dedicated a writing ("For Miss Adèle
Breaux, who so gently guided me in the mysteries of the English language")
related her experiences with her famous student as Saint-Exupéry in America,
1942–1943: A Memoir, published in 1971.[20]
"Saint-Exupéry's
prodigious writings and studies of literature sometimes gripped him, and on
occasion he continued his readings of literary works until moments before
takeoff on solitary military reconnaissance flights, as he was adept at both
reading and writing while flying. Taking off with an open book balanced on his
leg, his ground crew
would fear his mission would quickly end after contacting something 'very
hard'. On one flight, to the chagrin of colleagues awaiting his arrival, he
circled the Tunis airport for an hour so that he could finish reading a novel.
Saint-Exupéry frequently flew with a lined carnet (notebook) during his
long, solo flights, and some of his philosophical writings were created during
such periods when he could reflect on the world below him, becoming 'enmeshed
in a search for ideals which he translated into fable and parable'."[21][22]
Inspirations
Events and characters
In
The Little Prince, its narrator, the pilot, talks of being stranded in
the desert beside his crashed aircraft. The account clearly drew on
Saint-Exupéry's own experience in the Sahara, an ordeal described in detail in
his 1939 memoir Wind, Sand and Stars (original French: Terre des hommes).[3]
On
30 December 1935, at 02:45 am, after 19 hours and 44 minutes in the air,
Saint-Exupéry, along with his copilot-navigator André Prévot, crashed in the
Sahara desert.[23] They were attempting to break the speed record for a
Paris-to-Saigon flight in a then-popular type of air race called a raid,
that had a prize of 150,000 francs.[24] Their plane was a Caudron C-630
Simoun,[Note
3] and the crash site is thought to
have been near to the Wadi
Natrun valley, close to the Nile
Delta.[25]
Both
miraculously survived the crash, only to face rapid dehydration in the intense
desert heat.[26] Their maps were primitive and ambiguous. Lost among the
sand dunes with a few grapes, a thermos of coffee, a single orange, and some
wine, the pair had only one day's worth of liquid. They both began to see mirages, which were quickly followed by more vivid hallucinations. By the second and third days, they were so dehydrated that
they stopped sweating altogether. Finally, on the fourth day, a Bedouin on a camel discovered them and administered a native
rehydration treatment, which saved Saint-Exupéry's and Prévot's lives.[24]
The
prince's home, "Asteroid B-612", was likely derived as a progression
of one of the planes Saint-Exupéry flew as an airmail pilot, which bore the
serial number "A-612". During his service as a mail pilot in the
Sahara, Saint-Exupéry had viewed a fennec (desert sand fox), which most likely inspired him to create
the fox character in the book. In a letter written to his sister Didi from the
Western Sahara's Cape Juby,
where he was the manager of an airmail stopover station in 1928, he tells of
raising a fennec that he adored.[citation needed]
In
the novella, the fox, believed to be modeled after the author's intimate New
York City friend, Silvia Hamilton Reinhardt, tells the prince that his rose is
unique and special, as she is the one he loves.[27] The novella's iconic phrase, "One sees clearly only
with the heart" is believed to have been suggested by Reinhardt.
The
fearsome, grasping baobab
trees, researchers have contended, were meant to represent Nazism attempting to destroy the planet.[27] The little prince's reassurance to the pilot that the
prince's body is only an empty shell resembles the last words of Antoine's
dying younger brother François, who told the author, from his deathbed:
"Don't worry. I'm all right. I can't help it. It's my body".[28]
Rose
Many
researchers believe that the prince's kindhearted but petulant and vain rose
was inspired by Saint-Exupéry's Salvadoran wife Consuelo de Saint Exupéry,[27][29] with the small home planet being inspired by her small
native country, El Salvador,
also known as "The Land of Volcanoes."[30] Despite a tumultuous marriage, Saint-Exupéry kept Consuelo
close to his heart and portrayed her as the prince's rose, whom he tenderly
protects with a wind screen and places under a glass dome on his tiny planet.
Saint-Exupéry's infidelity and the doubts of his marriage are symbolized by the
vast field of roses the prince encounters during his visit to Earth.[3]
This
interpretation was described by biographer Paul Webster who stated she was
"the muse to whom Saint-Exupéry poured out his soul in copious
letters..... Consuelo was the rose in The Little Prince. "I should
have judged her by her acts and not by her words," says the prince.
"She wrapped herself around me and enlightened me. I should never have
fled. I should have guessed at the tenderness behind her poor ruses."[18]
Prince
Saint-Exupéry may have drawn inspiration for the prince's character and
appearance from his own self as a youth, as during his early years friends and
family called him le Roi-Soleil ("the Sun King") because of
his golden curly hair. The author had also met a precocious eight-year-old with
curly blond hair while he was residing with a family in Quebec
City in 1942, Thomas
De Koninck, the son of philosopher Charles De Koninck.[31][32][33] Another possible inspiration for the little prince has been
suggested as Land Morrow Lindbergh, the young, golden-haired son of fellow
aviator Charles Lindbergh
Jr. and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, whom he met during an overnight stay at their Long
Island home in 1939.[34][35][Note
4]
Some
have seen the prince as a Christ figure, as the child is sin-free and
"believes in a life after death", subsequently returning to his
personal heaven.[36] When Life photojournalist John Phillips questioned the author-aviator on his inspiration for the
child character, Saint-Exupéry told him that one day he looked down on what he
thought was a blank sheet and saw a small childlike figure: "I asked him
who he was," he replied. "I'm the Little Prince" was the reply.[37]
One
of Saint-Exupéry's earliest literary references to a small prince is to be
found in his second news dispatch from Moscow, dated 14 May 1935. In his
writings as a special correspondent for Paris-Soir, the author described traveling from
France to the USSR by train. Late at night, during the trip, he ventured from
his first-class accommodation into the third-class carriages, where he came
upon large groups of Polish families huddled together, returning to their
homeland. His commentary not only described a diminutive prince but also
touched on several other themes Saint-Exupéry incorporated into various
philosophical writings:[38]
I
sat down [facing a sleeping] couple. Between the man and the woman a child had
hollowed himself out a place and fallen asleep. He turned in his slumber, and
in the dim lamplight I saw his face. What an adorable face! A golden fruit had
been born of these two peasants..... This is a musician's face, I told myself.
This is the child Mozart. This is a life full of beautiful promise. Little
princes in legends are not different from this. Protected, sheltered,
cultivated, what could not this child become? When by mutation a new rose is
born in a garden, all gardeners rejoice. They isolate the rose, tend it, foster
it. But there is no gardener for men. This little Mozart will be shaped like
the rest by the common stamping machine.... This little Mozart is condemned.
— A Sense of Life: En Route to
the U.S.S.R.
Background
Upon
the outbreak of the Second
World War, a laureate of several of France's
highest literary awards and a successful pioneering aviator prior to the war,
he initially flew with a reconnaissance squadron as a reserve military pilot in
the Armée de l'Air
(French Air Force).[3] After France's defeat in 1940 and its armistice with
Germany, he and Consuelo fled Occupied
France and sojourned in North America, with Saint-Exupéry first arriving by
himself at the very end of December 1940. His intention for the visit was to
convince the United States to quickly enter the war against Nazi
Germany and the Axis
forces, and he soon became one of the
expatriate voices of the French
Resistance. In the midst of personal upheavals
and failing health, he produced almost half of the writings for which he would
be remembered, including a tender tale of loneliness, friendship, love and
loss, in the form of a young prince visiting Earth.[39]
An
earlier memoir by the author recounted his aviation experiences in the Sahara,
and he is thought to have drawn on the same experiences as plot elements in The
Little Prince.
He
wrote and illustrated the manuscript during the summer and fall of 1942. Although
greeted warmly by French-speaking Americans and by fellow expatriates who had
preceded him in New York, his 27-month stay would be marred by health problems
and racked with periods of severe stress, martial and marital strife. These
included partisan attacks on the author's neutral stance towards supporters of
both ardent French Gaullist
and Vichy France.[40] Saint-Exupéry's American translator (the author spoke poor
English) wrote: "He was restless and unhappy in exile, seeing no way to
fight again for his country and refusing to take part in the political quarrels
that set Frenchman against Frenchman."[16] However, the period was to be both a "dark but
productive time" during which he created three important works.[41]
Between
January 1941 and April 1943, the Saint-Exupérys lived in two penthouse
apartments on Central Park South,[42] then the Bevin House
mansion in Asharoken, New York,
and still later at a rented house on Beekman Place in New York City.[43][44]
The
couple also stayed in Quebec
for five weeks during the late spring of 1942, where they met a precocious
eight-year-old boy with blond curly hair, Thomas, the son of philosopher
Charles De Koninck, with whom the Saint-Exupérys resided.[45][46][47][48] During an earlier visit to Long Island in August 1939,
Saint-Exupéry had also met Land Morrow Lindbergh, the young, golden-haired son
of the pioneering American aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh.[34][35]
After
returning to the US from his Quebec speaking tour, Saint-Exupéry was pressed to
work on a children's book by Elizabeth Reynal, one of the wives of his US
publisher, Reynal & Hitchcock. The French wife of Eugene Reynal had closely observed
Saint-Exupéry for several months, and noting his ill health and high stress
levels, she suggested to him that working on a children's story would help.[49][Note
5] The author wrote and illustrated The
Little Prince at various locations in New York City but principally in the
Long Island north-shore community of Asharoken
in mid-to-late 1942, with the manuscript being completed in October.[44][45][51]
Although
the book was started in his Central Park South
penthouse, Saint-Exupéry soon found New York City's noise and sweltering summer
heat too uncomfortable to work in and so Consuelo was dispatched to find
improved accommodations. After spending some time at an unsuitable clapboard
country house in Westport, Connecticut,[50] they found Bevin House, a 22-room mansion in Asharoken that
overlooked Long Island Sound.
The author-aviator initially complained, "I wanted a hut, and it's the Palace of Versailles."[52] As the weeks wore on, the author became invested in his
project and the home would become "a haven for writing, the best place I
have ever had anywhere in my life."[53] He devoted himself to the book on mostly midnight shifts,[16] usually starting at about 11 pm, fueled by helpings of
scrambled eggs on English muffins, gin and tonics, Coca-Colas, cigarettes and
numerous visits by friends and expatriates who dropped in to see their famous
countryman. One of the visitors was his wife's Swiss writer paramour Denis de Rougemont,
who also modeled for a painting of the Little Prince lying on his stomach, feet
and arms extended up in the air.[39][44] De Rougemont would later help Consuelo write her
autobiography, The Tale of the Rose, as well as write his own biography
of Saint-Exupéry.
While
the author's personal life was frequently chaotic, his creative process while
writing was disciplined. Christine Nelson, curator of literary and historical
manuscripts at the Morgan Library and Museum which had obtained Saint-Exupéry's original manuscript in
1968, stated: "On the one hand, he had a clear vision for the shape, tone,
and message of the story. On the other hand, he was ruthless about chopping out
entire passages that just weren't quite right", eventually distilling the
30,000 word manuscript, accompanied by small illustrations and sketches, to
approximately half its original length.[54] The story, the curator added, was created when he was
"an ex-patriate and distraught about what was going on in his country and
in the world."[8]
The
large white Second French Empire-style mansion, hidden behind tall trees, afforded the
writer a multitude of work environments, but he usually wrote at a large dining
table.[16] It also allowed him to alternately work on his writings and
then on his sketches and watercolours for hours at a time, moving his armchair
and paint easel from the library towards the parlor one room at a time in
search of sunlight. His meditative view of sunsets at the Bevin House were
incorporated in the book, where the prince visits a small planet with 43
daily sunsets, a planet where all that is needed to watch a sunset "is
move your chair a few steps."[39][44][Note
6]
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