Wind, Sand, and Stars: Analysis of Setting
"Wind, Sand, and Stars" offers a rich exploration of various settings that significantly shape the author's experiences as a pilot in the early 20th century. The narrative unfolds across diverse landscapes, including the vast and treacherous Sahara Desert, where the author faces mechanical failures and learns about resilience and survival in an inhospitable environment. His encounters with local Arabs highlight themes of human kindness and shared humanity, despite cultural differences. The story also takes readers to the war-torn cities of Barcelona and Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, offering a stark contrast between the destruction seen from above and the everyday lives of residents below. The Andes Mountains present a dramatic backdrop, where the pilot contends with the unpredictable forces of nature, leading to profound reflections on life and the struggle against overwhelming odds. Additionally, the town of Punta Arenas in Chile serves as a poignant setting for introspection, as the author grapples with feelings of isolation and the challenge of connecting with others. Through these varied settings, the narrative reveals how landscapes influence personal growth, perspective, and the human spirit’s resilience in the face of adversity.
Wind, Sand, and Stars: Analysis of Setting
First published:Terre des hommes, 1939 (English translation, 1939)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Autobiographical
Time of work: 1920’s and 1930’s
Asterisk denotes entries on real places.
Places Discussed
Airplane
Airplane. After training as a pilot in the mid-1920’s, the author carries mail and passengers over oceans and continents. During his first years as a pilot, he flies a small, single-engine craft whose guidance system is mainly his own eyes and ears. In this plane, he is always acutely aware of the engine and of the possibility that if it fails, he may plunge to his death. Piloting gives him an exhilarating feeling of power and motion. In his comparatively primitive plane, the pilot senses his interactions with its controls more powerfully than he does later in his career—after engineering advances automate many piloting functions. Meanwhile, he cannot take for granted the reliability of his plane’s instrumentation. Within his cockpit, he experiences the violence of nature in new ways, for aloft there is no shelter from tornadoes, cyclones, and other extremes of weather, and even ordinary winds can be dangerous.
In compensation for the danger he faces in his plane, he enjoys new perspectives on the earth from vantage points thousands of feet above the planet’s surface and rediscovers nature. In this way, mechanical advances can promote spiritual advances, as from his aircraft the pilot appreciates natural places that he may never see on the surface of the earth.
*Sahara
*Sahara. Immense desert that extends across the entire width of northern Africa that provides the setting for much of the book. At least twice, aircraft malfunctions force the pilot down in the desert—once in Spanish colonial Africa on the western coast and once in the Libyan desert. His mishaps land him on a plateau with sides so steep as to make it inaccessible from the ground, leaving the pilot to suppose that he is the first person ever to stand on that location.
When the pilot and his mechanic, Prévot, go down in Libya, they do not know exactly where they are, beyond the fact that they are too far from the Mediterranean Sea to reach it on foot. They then begin walking eastward, across endless sand. After three days they see mirages—images that look like fortresses and patches of vegetation that turn out to be the shadows of cumulus clouds. Eventually, they return to their plane where they stave off thirst by capturing morning dew on parachute strips. The desert days are hot, but the nights are cold. When they again set forth on foot, they encounter Arabs who lead them to safety. Their desert experience teaches them that they have the courage and resourcefulness to survive hard conditions and that even this lonely and inhospitable place supports people who, though alien in speech, garb, and customs, possess great human kindness.
*Barcelona
*Barcelona. Spanish port city near the Pyrenees, the mountains that separate France and Spain, that the pilot visits during the midst of the Spanish Civil War. From the air, the city’s wartime damage looks minimal; however, on the ground the pilot sees the war’s true devastation in the once-beautiful city, within which many people are still going about their daily business. He concludes that civil war is a “disease” afflicting the participants, whether communists, anarchists, or fascists.
*Madrid
*Madrid. Spain’s capital city, which to the author seems like a ship loaded with humanity that an enemy intends to sink. He witnesses a bombing of the city that kills and mutilates innocent civilians but also fortifies the citizens’ will to endure.
*Andes
*Andes. South American mountain range where the pilot almost crashes during a strong downdraft near the coast of Argentina. From this experience he learns why some accidents occur in the mountains even when visibility is not obstructed by fog or rain. However, he himself does not crash because a sudden reversal of the wind sends him back high into the air. Then a cyclonic wind blows him out to sea. In a matter of a few minutes, he is carried, against his will, high over mountains, through a deep valley, and out over a rough Atlantic Ocean. Such a struggle against the elements, he discovers, can temporarily rob a person even of sensation.
*Punta Arenas
*Punta Arenas (poon-tah ah-ray-nahs). Town in northern Chile on whose central square the pilot spends an evening observing people and musing about not only the solitariness he feels as a stranger but also about the isolation of human beings generally, of the difficulty of entering the world of any other person.
Bibliography
Cate, Curtis. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. New York: Putnam, 1970. Contains many informative details and is well written. Portrays Saint-Exupéry as an eccentric figure. This voluminous work serves as an excellent starting place.
Galantière, Lewis. “Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.” Atlantic Monthly 179, no. 4 (April, 1947): 133-141. Galantière, who translated Wind, Sand, and Stars, discusses such aesthetic aspects of Saint-Exupéry’s writing as his philosophy of art and the influences on his development.
Migeo, Marcel. Saint-Exupéry. Paris: Flammarion, 1958. An interesting, reliable account of Saint-Exupéry’s life by someone who knew Saint-Exupéry during his military service. Migeo is mainly concerned with Saint-Exupéry’s personal life, but he also examines the role the author’s experiences as a pilot in the French military played in forming his theories of art.
Peyre, Henre. “The French Novel at Mid-century.” New Republic 129, no. 6 (September 7, 1953): 16-17. Useful for a literary analysis of Saint-Exupéry’s work. Provides a critical evaluation of Saint-Exupéry’s novels and places the author in the tradition of contemporary French novels.
Robinson, Joy D. Marie. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Boston: Twayne, 1984. Explores the philosophies and themes that underlie all Saint-Exupéry’s works. The study is enriched by the extensive use of biographical material. Includes a chronology and a selected bibliography of English and French sources. Essential for any literary discussion of Saint-Exupéry.