book the little prince
book the little prince
Written by Fabian Coelho
The Little Prince is a short story by the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The story focuses on a little prince who makes a journey
through the universe. On this trip, he discovers the strange way adults see life and
understands the value of love and friendship.
The Little Prince is considered one of the best books of all time and a contemporary classic of universal literature. Due to its simple and direct style,
it has been considered a children's book. However, its reflective character on life, society
and love, make it a story of interest to everyone.
It was published in April 1943 in the United States, since, due to World War II, the work could not be printed in France.
The book has been translated into dozens of languages and adapted to various formats,
such as theater, cinema, animated series, ballet and opera.
Summary of The Little Prince
The Little Prince tells the story of a pilot who, while trying to repair his damaged plane in the
middle of the Sahara desert, runs into a little prince from the asteroid B 612, who insistently
asks him to draw a lamb and never forgets a question. .
The pilot will begin to discover the fascinating story of the little prince, which begins on his
asteroid, where he lived with three volcanoes and amused himself by pulling weeds and
watching sunsets.
One day, on the ground of the asteroid, a flower is born. The little prince takes care of it and
attends to it with dedication, but the flower is dramatic and capricious, and this annoys him.
So, he decides to leave his home and embark on a journey through the universe in search of
a friend.
On the journey, which will take the little prince to visit several asteroids until he reaches Earth,
he will meet a diverse group of eccentric characters who convince him how strange the world
of adults is, always so busy with serious and important matters that they forget to enjoy life.
On Earth, the little prince will come into contact with animals, flowers and people. It will be
there where, before finding the pilot, he will meet the fox, who will reveal to him the importance
of friendship and the value of the love he feels towards his flower. It will be the nostalgia for
her and the disappointment that the adult world causes him that will motivate him to return to
his planet.
Analysis of The Little Prince
The essential is invisible to the eyes.
This sentence is said by the fox to the little prince. It means that the true value of things
escapes the eyes, but not the heart. It is a reflection on those things that, sometimes,
we are not able to see, because we observe them with a superficial gaze. The most important
thing is not always the obvious. This is a constant in the book, which calls us to see beyond
appearances.
See more about What is essential is invisible to the eye.
It was the time you spent with your rose that made it so important.
The sentence is said by the fox to the little prince. It means that relationships and affections
are cultivated over time and that is what makes them valuable to us. Reflect on the importance
of spending time on the things we love and on the responsibility of being constant in our relationships,
whether friendship or love.
If you come, for example, at four in the afternoon, from three o'clock I will begin to be happy.
This sentence is said by the fox to the little prince. It expresses the happiness that friendship
produces in us and the way in which this affection is shown in the imperative need that we feel
to see someone we love. It also talks about the importance of meeting the expectations of the
people we love and the responsibility we assume before them.
You are responsible forever for what you have tamed.
The sentence is said by the fox to the little prince. It means that when a relationship, friendship
or love has been cultivated with another person, this makes us co-responsible for the progress
of that relationship. It reminds us that when we have "tamed" a relationship with another person,
we have become very important to each other, and we cannot abandon each other.
You just have to ask each one what each one can give.
This sentence is said by the king to the little prince. The king was incapable of ordering something
that could not be fulfilled. He said that in order to be obeyed, he only had to command what others
were willing to do. It is a phrase that talks about the importance of kindness in power.
You may also like:
25 short novels that must be read.
characters and items
The little Prince
The little prince is the main character of the story. He lives on an asteroid, which he left to travel
the universe in search of a friend.
When he arrives on Earth he meets the pilot, to whom he tells his impressions about the world
of adults, always so busy with their own business, and their inability to give value to the things
that are really important in life.
The little prince represents the child that we all carry inside and the feelings of love, hope and
innocence that feed our lives. His way of seeing the world motivates the pilot to write the story
to reunite with the child he once was.
The pilot
The pilot is the narrator of the story of the little prince. He meets him when his plane breaks
down in the middle of the Sahara desert.
When he was a child he wanted to be a cartoonist, but adults dissuaded him from his purpose.
He finds a friend in the little prince, who understands his drawings and teaches him, with his
stories and his actions, the true value of things. The pilot portrays the importance of following
our dreams.
The flower
The flower is the little prince's love object, but his relationship with it is difficult. Although he
fervently cares for her and protects her, she is proud, melodramatic, and capricious. Her behavior
confuses him to such an extent that he decides to embark on a journey through the universe to
separate from her.
It is his memory that makes the little prince return to his planet. It symbolizes love, which must
be cultivated and cared for every day.
The Fox
The fox is the first friend the little prince meets on his journey. He explains to her that friendship
is a domestication process, in which two people establish a unique relationship, where both need
each other.
It is he who teaches the little prince the value of friendship and who leads him to reflect on the
relationship he had cultivated with his flower since he loved it.
The lamb and the box
The little prince asks the pilot to draw him a lamb, but he is not satisfied with the result.
The pilot draws a box and tells the one inside that there is his lamb. Then the little prince
admits that this was what he wanted. This drawing represents the power of imagination.
The elephant inside the boa
The narrator tells that when he was a child, he drew an elephant inside a boa, but the adults
did not understand the drawing, they hardly saw a hat, so they advised him to stop drawing
and dedicate himself to important things. Due to this, the narrator forgets his career as a
cartoonist and dedicates himself to that of a pilot.
Years later, when he meets the little prince, he shows him the drawing and he understands it
instantly. This drawing symbolizes how deceptive appearances can be and how the misunderstanding
of others can motivate us to make wrong decisions.
the astronomer
A Turkish astronomer was the discoverer of the asteroid B 612, home of the little prince.
However, when he presented his discovery at a large congress of astronomers, no one
gave credit to his finding because of his clothing.
Years later, he made the presentation again elegantly dressed in European style, and,
this time, everyone accepted his discovery.
In this sense, it makes us reflect on the exaggerated importance that we sometimes attach
to people's appearance, leading us to judge them negatively, without listening to them and
without truly knowing them.
baobabs
Every day, the little prince cleans the soil of his planet of weeds, preventing one of them
from being a baobab.
The baobabs worry him because they are trees that can grow too big, to the point of destroying
his little planet.
The little prince's discipline shows the importance of preventive thinking and tackling problems
early before they become too big.
The snake
The snake is the first character the little prince talks to on Earth. He is a wise character, who
speaks in an enigmatic way. In this sense, he has clear biblical resonances. He will be the one
to send him back home, thanks to his poisonous King.
The king
The king is a character who claims to rule the entire universe. Despite his eagerness to
command, he is a good-hearted man: he only gives orders that others can comply with.
As the king can't get the little prince to stay on his planet to serve him as a subject, he
appoints him his ambassador. In this way, he represents the absurd need for the power of
men.
The drunk
The drunkard is a character who drinks to forget the shame of drinking. The little prince is
saddened by him and amazed by his attitude. He represents those people who, to escape
from reality, take refuge in a vice.
The businessman
The businessman is too busy with his accounts to attend to the little prince. He thinks that he
is rich and that he owns all the stars in the universe. He is a symbol of adults who spend their
lives enslaved by the idea of a ridiculous possession and are unable to recognize the value of
the life they are wasting.
the lamplighter
The lamplighter is one of the characters that the little prince likes the most because at least he
performs a useful task. His objective is to light a lantern at night that he must then turn off
during the day. However, his world spins so fast that his work begins to become exhausting.
He represents people who thoughtlessly indulge in their tasks, without reflecting on the
meaning of their actions.
the geographer
He is a man with a lot of knowledge about geography. When the little prince questions him
about the geography of his own planet, he discovers that, paradoxically, he knows nothing
about it.
This character represents the inability to realize the value of what is within our reach, of our
reality. It is he who reveals to the little prince the ephemeral condition of the flowers, which
makes him very sad.
the vain
The vain one is an eccentric character, who lives alone on his planet, but who has an
enormous need to be admired and praised by others. He is a representation of those
who only care about what others think of them.
About Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince, was born in Lyon, France, in 1900, and died on the island of Riou in 1944.
He was an aviator and writer. Part of his experience as a pilot inspired him to write The Little Prince. Most of his literary production was written during his exile in the United States,
a country to which he was assigned with the mission of convincing the US government to
declare war on Germany during World War II.
Was this content helpful? YesNo
SHARE
Comments
Post a Comment