The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

First published:Le Petit Prince, 1943 (English translation, 1943)

Type of work: Children’s literature

Type of plot: Allegory

Time of plot: World War II

Locale: The Sahara

Principal characters

• The little prince, an unusual child
• The pilot, the narrator, who is stranded in the desert

The Story:

A golden-haired boy—a little prince—unexpectedly appears in the vast Sahara, where a pilot has landed his plane because of engine problems. The pilot is anxiously trying to fix the engine, for he has no food or water to survive for long. The boy politely asks the pilot to draw him a picture of a sheep. The pilot instead draws a picture from his own childhood: a boa constrictor with an elephant in its stomach. The boy, exasperated, concludes that adults cannot understand anything without numerous explanations. Only after the pilot draws a box with air holes in it is the boy happy. Both the pilot and the little prince understand that a sheep is inside the box.

Gradually, the man and the boy “tame” each other. The home from which the little prince has come is an asteroid, hardly larger than a house; it holds one rose, one baobab tree, and three volcanoes. The boy hopes to widen his knowledge by visiting much larger places, such as the planet Earth, and meeting the people, animals, and plants that live in those places. He is inwardly preoccupied, however, with the safety of his dearly loved rose.

The little prince tells the pilot about his visits to other tiny asteroids, where he met one single inhabitant on each: a king claiming to rule the universe, although he has no subjects; a conceited man who sees everyone as his admirer; a drunkard living in a stupor, drinking to forget his shame of being an alcoholic; a businessman greedily counting the stars as his own treasure; and a geographer who does not know the geography of his place and never leaves his office. The smallest planet he has visited, which turns very rapidly (with 1,440 sunsets per day), has no homes or people, yet the planet’s lamplighter has no moment of rest as he constantly lights and puts out the only lamp, following old orders that make no sense. The little prince, who sees grown-ups as odd, respects the lamplighter for his dedicated, selfless work.

In the Sahara, the prince meets the fox, who reveals to him the major secrets of life. These secrets cannot be seen by the eyes, unless the heart is involved. When the prince wants to play, the fox explains that “connecting” takes time and patience; through such connecting, one rose among thousands becomes special. The fox explains also that one is forever responsible where love is involved, that words cause misunderstandings; that rites and rituals are significant but often forgotten, and that crucial matters are often ignored and not appreciated. These lessons help the little prince understand his own mistakes, and he decides to return home to protect his rose.

The boy meets the snake, who talks in riddles, and he understands the creature’s power to send him back where he came from quickly. The little prince and the pilot are now both dying from thirst. In search of water, they walk through the starry night. On the verge of collapse, the pilot carries his little friend, not knowing whether they are even headed in the right direction. At dawn, when it is almost too late to save their lives, they find a deep, old well. The stars shimmer on the surface of the water. They drink, and the water tastes unusually sweet to them. Both the man and the boy sense the value of that moment. The pilot is sad; the prince feels fear mixed with joy, because of his decision to go home. The water feels like an earned gift. The prince comments that the beauty of the desert is in the knowledge that it hides such a well.

The prince tells his friend that he will be leaving the next day. Neither mentions the snake. When the little prince laughs to cheer his friend up, the laughter sounds like the jingle of a million little bells. He offers the pilot a farewell gift: From now on, when the pilot looks up on starry nights, he and only he will hear the little prince’s laughter. It will be comforting for both of them to know that they have each other.

The next day, on the one-year anniversary of the little prince’s arrival on Earth, the pilot comes to the same spot where he met the boy. There he glimpses the yellow flash of the snake as it bites the ankle of his little friend, and the boy falls quietly and gently onto the sand. Later, the little prince’s body is nowhere to be found. The pilot finally fixes his engine and leaves for home, hoping that his friend is safely back at his home, too. In the years afterward, on starry nights the pilot hears the little prince’s laugh and feels warm in his heart: Love is a powerful, invisible thread connecting people no matter how far apart in space and time they may be.

Bibliography

Breaux, Adéle. Saint-Exupéry in America, 1942-1943: A Memoir. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1971. Covers the events of the time Saint-Exupéry spent in the United States during World War II. Includes discussion of his work on The Little Prince.

Capestany, Edward J. The Dialectic of “The Little Prince.” Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1982. Searching study presents a chapter-by-chapter analysis of the book, focusing on Saint-Exupéry’s use of myth.

Cate, Curtis. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: His Life and Times. New York: Putnam, 1970. Comprehensive biography describes the author as a passionate pilot, inventor, mathematician, and diplomat. Provides a complete panorama of the times in which he lived and discusses the famous people he knew.

Harris, John R. L. Chaos, Cosmos, and Saint-Exupéry’s Pilot Hero: A Study in Mythopoeia. Scranton, Pa.: University of Scranton Press, 1999. Discusses the unique qualities of Saint-Exupéry’s writing and argues that scholars may overestimate the complexity of The Little Prince.

Higgins, James E.“The Little Prince”: A Reverie of Substance. New York: Twayne, 1996. Provides information on the book’s literary and historical contexts, including its critical reception. Offers an interpretation that emphasizes the “eye of innocence,” “the landscape of metaphor,” and Saint-Exupéry’s explorations of the spirit and of responsibility.

Robinson, Joy D. Marie. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Boston: Twayne, 1984. Unusually thorough study is perhaps the best resource for the beginning student of Saint-Exupéry’s works. Opens with three chapters devoted to Saint-Exupéry’s childhood, his student and soldier years, and his career as an aviator, with subsequent chapters following the development of both his life and his writing.

Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de. Saint-Exupéry: Art, Writing, and Musings. Compiled by Nathalie des Vallieres. New York: Rizzoli International, 2004. Collection of Saint-Exupéry’s photographs, letters, drawings, and private notebooks—compiled by Saint-Exupéry’s great-niece—sheds light on his life and writings through both words and images.

Saint-Exupéry, Consuelo de. The Tale of the Rose: The Passion That Inspired “The Little Prince.” Translated by Esther Allen. New York: Random House, 2001. Memoir by Saint-Exupéry’s wife—the possible model for the little prince’s coquettish flower—recalls her difficult marriage to the restless and sometimes irresponsible aviator and writer.

Schiff, Stacy. Saint-Exupéry: A Biography. 1994. Reprint. New York: Henry Holt, 2006. Presents substantial previously unavailable material on Saint-Exupéry’s life and career, especially his experience as a war pilot. Draws on extensive interviews in considering the relationship between Saint-Exupéry the aviator and Saint-Exupéry the writer.