Book review of The Little prince The day i came upon with The Little prince was anything but by chance. i was strolling slowly in a bookstore when i found The Little Pricess lying on the best—seller bookshelves. i flicked casually though as the drawing of a little boy with golden hair, a scarf and a lovable laugh caught my attention. Not knowing why, i have a strong impulse to buy this book, deciding to have a quick read. So i bought immediately, then read it at a quite and pleasant corner in a park.
There was such a depth of attraction after a few paragraphs that i have read. I knew this was a book i had to own, for i have fallen in love with it deeply. The Little Prince is a book for child, but this is also a book for the child every adult has inside. The little prince is a unusual beautiful tale, but it is unusual for realistic observations about life and human nature. The Little Prince is a profound book, in which some of us maybe don’t totally appreciate. However, it tells us something much important related to love and responsibility.
Written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a French writer, The little prince was created during World War II, after Germany’s invasion of France had forced him to give up aviation and flee to New York. In addition to his torturous thoughts of the war in Europe, having to leave his homeland and no longer being able to fly planes affected Saint-Exupery deeply. The novel’s nostalgia for childhood indicates both Saint-Exupery’s homesick desire to return to France and his hope of returning to a time of peace.
This wartime stress undoubtedly contributed to the sense of urgency in Saint-Exupery’s message of love and responsibility. Published in 1943, The Little Prince tells a story in a narrator’s tone: The narrator, an airplane pilot, crashes in the Sahara desert. The crash badly damages his airplane and leaves the narrator with very little food or water. As he is worrying over his predicament, he is approached by the little prince, a very serious little blond boy who asks the narrator to draw him a sheep. The narrator obliges, and the two become friends.
The pilot learns that the little prince comes from a small planet that the little prince calls Asteroid 325 but that people on Earth call Asteroid B-612. The little prince took great care of this planet, preventing any bad seeds from growing and making sure it was never overrun by baobab trees. One day, a mysterious rose sprouted on the planet and the little prince fell in love with it. But when he caught the rose in a lie one day, he decided that he could not trust her anymore. He grew lonely and decided to leave. Despite a last-minute reconciliation with the rose, the prince set out to explore other planets and cure his loneliness.
While journeying, the narrator tells us, the little prince passes by neighboring asteroids and encounters for the first time the strange, narrow-minded world of grown-ups. On the first six planets the little prince visits, he meets a king, a vain man, a drunkard, a businessman, a lamplighter, and a geographer, all of whom live alone and are overly consumed by their chosen occupations. Such strange behavior both amuses and perturbs the little prince. He does not understand their need to order people around, to be admired, and to own everything.
With the exception of the lamplighter, whose dogged faithfulness he admires, the little prince does not think much of the adults he visits, and he does not learn anything useful. However, he learns from the geographer that flowers do not last forever, and he begins to miss the rose he has left behind. At the geographer’s suggestion, the little prince visits Earth, but he lands in the middle of the desert and cannot find any humans. Instead, he meets a snake who speaks in riddles and hints darkly that its lethal poison can send the little prince back to the heavens if he so wishes.
The little prince ignores the offer and continues his explorations, stopping to talk to a three-petal flower and to climb the tallest mountain he can find, where he confuses the echo of his voice for conversation. Eventually, the little prince finds a rose garden, which surprises and depresses him—his rose had told him that she was the only one of her kind. The prince befriends a fox, who teaches him that the important things in life are visible only to the heart, that his time away from the rose makes the rose more special to him, and that love makes a person responsible for the beings that one loves.
The little prince realizes that, even though there are many roses, his love for his rose makes her unique and that he is therefore responsible for her. Despite this revelation, he still feels very lonely because he is so far away from his rose. The prince ends his story by describing his encounters with two men, a railway switchman and a salesclerk. It is now the narrator’s eighth day in the desert, and at the prince’s suggestion, they set off to find a well. The water feeds their hearts as much as their bodies, and the two share a moment of bliss as they agree that too many people do not see what is truly important in life.
The little prince’s mind, however, is fixed on returning to his rose, and he begins making plans with the snake to head back to his planet. The narrator is able to fix his plane on the day before the one-year anniversary of the prince’s arrival on Earth, and he walks sadly with his friend out to the place the prince landed. The snake bites the prince, who falls noiselessly to the sand. The narrator takes comfort when he cannot find the prince’s body the next day and is confident that the prince has returned to his asteroid. The narrator is also comforted by the stars, in which he now hears the tinkling of his friend’s laughter.
Often, however, he grows sad and wonders if the sheep he drew has eaten the prince’s rose. The narrator concludes by showing his readers a drawing of the desert landscape and by asking us to stop for a while under the stars if we are ever in the area and to let the narrator know immediately if the little prince has returned. The magic of this tale is contained in its simplicity, in showing us as adults, that we were all once children, but that upon growing up, we forgot all about the values and the dreams that used to be so important to us.
Also, in this book we are reminded, through the eyes of a small and innocent Little Prince, about the irrationality and uselessness of the adult world. While journeying, the narrator tells us, the little prince passes by neighboring asteroids and encounters for the first time the strange, narrow-minded world of grown-ups. The first man who The Prince meets is a King, who only orders what is ‘ reasonable’ and ‘ when the conditions are favourable. ’ In other words, he orders intrinsic objects that are independent of anything else so that he can feel an authority on his planet.
However, he cannot truly have power over anything because he is the only occupant on his planet, so his isolated life has therefore led him to a life of pretence to comfort his loneliness. He says: It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom. The second man is then a ‘ conceited man’ who believes that everybody admires him because he was the handsomest, best-dressed, richest and most intelligent man on his planet, and because he was the only man on his planet, he is correct.
People in 21 century to large extent are much of the second man. At this point, human beings are quite self–centered. Having too many excuses” i was too busy. ” or “ i had my own goals. ” or “ i was preoccupied with working, having fun or perparing for my examination”. People around are easily neglected. Their relationships goes further and further, until they cannot recognize it evetually. Sometimes when you are alone, you feel confused and overwhelmed. As a matter of fact, what we need to do is quite easy. Break down the walls in front of you, step forward to see the world in open eyes.
The third is a drunkard who spends his days and nights lost in the alcohol. The drunkard is a sad figure, but he is also foolish ” so I may forget…that I am ashamed…ashamed of drinking”. The forth is a businessman. To busy even to greet his visitor, the businessman claims that he owns all the stars. He spends all day counting the stars but he cannot remember what they are called and contributes nothing to them. Through each of these portrayals of adults, we see the different ways that men cope with living on a planet alone. There is one positive portrayal of an adult, however.
The final man that The Prince meets spends his days lighting and blowing out a lantern on his planet, even though he is the only occupant. The Prince goes on to describe this man’s job as “ a beautiful occupation. And since it is beautiful, it is truly useful”, and says that,“ He is the only one who does not seem ridiculous to me. Perhaps it is because he is not only concerned with himself. ” The narrator then brings these characters together by saying that: “ All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides.
For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems… But all these stars are silent. You – You alone will have stars as no one else has them. ” It is through the characters that we meet through The Prince’s travels that the narrator, and ourselves, are taught many life-lessons and mottos, as The Little Prince looks at life through the eyes of a child’s, but through an adult’s analytical mind. It gives audience an clear picture on flaws and deficiency adults’ world. As time went by, grow-ups gradually lost innocence of their youth, and paid more attention to so said “ serious matters”.
They abandon their very beginning dreams in the childhood and become more and more realistic, paying too much attention to life’s basic necessities. However, while these five men open the book with great meaning, it is through the other characters that we goes on to introduce us to the main idea of the novella. One of these figures is a rose. Although the rose appears only in a couple of chapters, she is crucial to the novel as a whole because her melodramatic, proud nature is what causes the prince to leave his planet and begin his explorations.
Also, the prince’s memory of his rose is what prompts his desire to return. It is the rose that the prince often refers back to throughout his journey, and it is through her that the book focuses on an even bigger human emotion – love. The rose gains significance because of how much time and effort the prince has invested in caring for her, the rose embodies the fox’s statement that love comes from investing in other people. Although the rose is, for the most part, vain and naive, the prince still loves her deeply because of the time he has spent watering and caring for her. People where you live grow five thousand roses in one garden, yet they don’t find what they’re looking for… And yet what they’re looking for could be found in a single rose. ” This quote is a personal favourite, again making a truthful observation that we go can through life having a number of relationships, but that what we are constantly searching for the one person that can give us everything we are looking for. Furthermore… “ It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important. The other main character also my favorite is the fox. The fox appears to be the little prince’s pupil as well as his instructor. He helps steer the prince toward what is important in life. In the secret the fox tells the little prince before they say their good-byes, the fox sums up three important lessons: only the heart can see correctly; the prince’s time away from his planet has made him appreciate his rose more; and love entails responsibility. It is through the fox that the little prince finally realizes the value of his rose.
Meanwhile, This encounter displays an ideal type of friendship because even though the prince’s departure causes the fox great pain, the fox behaves unselfishly, encouraging the prince to act in his own best interest. “ There is a most well-acknowledged quote said by the fox: The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart… Now here is my secret, it’s very simply: you can only see things clearly with your heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye. ” The Prince links this to the desert being beautiful because somewhere hidden is a well full of lear water, and the narrator links this to a house becoming enchanted because there may be hidden treasure. The Little prince is simple but meaningful. Every chapter is like a teaspoon of everyday life with a message that leaves you reflecting about your own life in a good way. Trust me, if you read this book you will be entertained, fascinated, overwhelmed, you will laugh to tears but above all, you will start asking yourself questions while gazing at the stars. If you’re curious to find out the questions I am referring to, get yourself a copy of The Little Prince and enjoy a good book that you will never regret reading.
