The Little Prince: Great Books Explained
Summary
TLDRThe script explores 'The Little Prince', a timeless tale by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that celebrates the purity and simplicity of children's minds while critiquing the dullness of adult life. It delves into the author's life, from aristocratic beginnings to his passion for flying, and his experiences that influenced the narrative. The story, a philosophical fable, discusses themes of love, loss, and the essence of relationships, ultimately teaching that wisdom lies in recognizing life's complexities and finding hope in despair.
Takeaways
- 📚 The Little Prince is a celebrated book that highlights children's natural curiosity and open-mindedness, while contrasting it with the dullness and lack of imagination often found in adults.
- 🌟 Despite its essential meaning being far from clear, The Little Prince has become a classic, recognized as a beautiful and urgent parable, and has been translated into 345 languages, making it one of the most widely translated books ever.
- 👶 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, born into an aristocratic French family, had a challenging early life, including the death of his father and brother, which influenced his writing.
- 🚀 Saint-Exupéry's passion for flying began with his first airplane ride and led to a career in pioneering postal flights, which he later wrote about, gaining international acclaim for his book 'Night Flight'.
- 💐 The character of the Rose in The Little Prince is believed to represent Saint-Exupéry's tempestuous marriage to Consuelo Suncin, symbolizing capricious and demanding lovers.
- 🏜️ A near-death experience in the Libyan Desert, where Saint-Exupéry and his mechanic-navigator survived a crash and were saved by a Bedouin, influenced the central event in his memoir and the setting of The Little Prince.
- 🌍 The Little Prince was written in exile in North America during World War II, reflecting themes of love, loss, loyalty, separation, and sacrifice.
- 🎨 All illustrations in The Little Prince were drawn by Saint-Exupéry, but he chose not to include an image of the pilot narrator to maintain the boundary between fantasy and reality.
- 🌌 The story of The Little Prince involves the prince's travels across various small planets, encountering characters that represent different human failings, and ultimately finding wisdom and understanding through his experiences.
- 🦊 A key philosophical insight from the book is the importance of building relationships and the uniqueness of connections, as articulated by the fox who teaches The Little Prince about 'taming' and the value of what we invest in relationships.
- 🌹 The Little Prince's journey and experiences with the roses in the garden and the fox's secret highlight the idea that the most important aspect of a relationship is its uniqueness and the value we attribute to it through our investments.
Q & A
What is the central theme of 'The Little Prince'?
-The central theme of 'The Little Prince' is the celebration of children's curiosity and open-mindedness, contrasting it with the dullness and lack of imagination often found in adults.
How many languages has 'The Little Prince' been translated into?
-'The Little Prince' has been translated into 345 languages, making it one of the most widely translated books of all time.
What significant event in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's life influenced his writing about death?
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's younger brother François died from rheumatic fever. The description of his brother's death was later used to describe the death of The Little Prince.
Why did Antoine de Saint-Exupéry decide to become a pilot?
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry decided to become a pilot after taking his first airplane ride and being inspired by the dawn of the age of flight, following the Wright brothers' achievement in 1903.
What was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's career before becoming a writer?
-Before becoming a writer, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a pioneer of postal flights in Africa and South America, which he began after leaving the Air Force.
Which book did Antoine de Saint-Exupéry publish in 1931 that became an international bestseller?
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry published 'Night Flight' in 1931, which received great acclaim and became an international bestseller.
What is the significance of the rose in 'The Little Prince'?
-The rose in 'The Little Prince' represents capricious and demanding lovers, and it is a reflection of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's tempestuous marriage to Consuelo Suncin.
What event from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's life served as the background for 'The Little Prince'?
-The background for 'The Little Prince' comes from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's experience of crashing in the Libyan Desert and being saved by a passing Bedouin.
Why was 'The Little Prince' banned in France during its initial publication?
-'The Little Prince' was banned in France by the Vichy regime, a government collaborating with Nazi Germany, partly due to its metaphorical critique of fascism and Nazism.
What is the philosophical message conveyed by the fox in 'The Little Prince'?
-The fox in 'The Little Prince' conveys the message that the most important part of a relationship is its uniqueness, and the value of a relationship is a reflection of what we invest in it.
What is the ultimate fate of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry?
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry disappeared without a trace during a reconnaissance mission on July 31, 1944, flying an unarmed Lockheed P38 from Corsica.
Outlines
📚 The Essence of 'The Little Prince' and Its Author
This paragraph introduces 'The Little Prince' as a complex narrative that critiques the lack of imagination in adults while celebrating the innate curiosity of children. It delves into the life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the aristocratic French author and pilot, whose experiences with loss, aviation, and a tumultuous marriage influenced his work. The summary touches on his early life challenges, his passion for flying, his career as a pioneer of postal flights, and his literary success with 'Night Flight'. It also hints at the autobiographical elements in 'The Little Prince', drawing parallels between Saint-Exupéry's life events, such as his desert crash, and the story's plot.
🛫 The Creation of 'The Little Prince' Amidst War and Exile
The second paragraph focuses on the creation of 'The Little Prince' during Saint-Exupéry's time in exile in New York. It outlines his desperate attempts to join the free French forces despite his age and injuries, leading to his participation in reconnaissance missions. The summary also discusses the book's publication and its ban in France by the Vichy regime due to its allegorical critique of the political situation. Additionally, it explores the narrative techniques used in the book, such as the omission of the pilot narrator's image to maintain the boundary between fantasy and reality, and the significance of the story being accessible to both adults and children.
🌹 The Philosophical Journey of The Little Prince and Life's Lessons
This paragraph explores the philosophical themes of 'The Little Prince', detailing the prince's journey through various planets and the encounters with different characters that represent human follies. It highlights the prince's care for his own planet and his attachment to a single rose, which symbolizes complex love relationships. The summary emphasizes the fox's wisdom on the importance of relationships and the uniqueness of connections we make. It concludes with the prince's realization about the value of life's mundane tasks and his ultimate sacrifice, which saves the stranded aviator and imparts a profound life lesson. The paragraph also reflects on the book's status as a timeless fable that addresses the complexities of life, grief, and the importance of maintaining childlike wonder.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Curiosity
💡Open-mindedness
💡Adult Life
💡Purity and Simplicity
💡Parable
💡Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
💡Exile
💡Crisis
💡Metaphor
💡Relationships
💡Self-sacrifice
Highlights
The Little Prince is a book that celebrates children's curiosity and open-mindedness while lamenting the dullness and lack of imagination in adults.
The book has become a classic, recognized as a beautiful and urgent parable, and has been translated into 345 languages.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born into an aristocratic French family and experienced significant personal loss early in life.
Saint-Exupéry's fascination with flight began early and led to a lifelong passion for aviation.
His career as a pioneer of postal flights in Africa and South America inspired his writings.
The Little Prince's Rose represents Saint-Exupéry's tempestuous marriage to Consuelo Suncin.
Saint-Exupéry and his mechanic-navigator survived a crash in the Libyan Desert with minimal supplies.
The experience of being lost in the desert influenced the central event in his 1939 memoir and The Little Prince.
Saint-Exupéry went into exile in North America during the Nazi occupation of France.
The Little Prince was written and illustrated by Saint-Exupéry while living in New York.
The book was banned in France by the Vichy regime, which collaborated with Nazi Germany.
The Little Prince's journey to six other planets critiques various aspects of human nature and society.
The story emphasizes the importance of building relationships and the obligations towards those we 'tame'.
The Little Prince's encounter with a fox reveals the secret of the uniqueness and value in relationships.
The book critiques the idea of time-saving devices, suggesting they do not improve our quality of life.
The Little Prince negotiates his own death, symbolizing a journey to the stars.
The Little Prince is a philosophical fable that explores the meaning of beauty, life, grief, and loss.
Saint-Exupéry's life was marked by curiosity and exploration, which he believed were vital for understanding life's complexities.
The mysterious disappearance of Saint-Exupéry parallels the enigmatic journey of The Little Prince.
Transcripts
This is the best known line in a book that celebrates the curiosity
and open-mindedness that comes naturally to children, and laments the dullness, fixed ideas,
and lack of imagination, that come naturally if not inevitably to "Grand Personnes" - to adults.
It idealises Purity and simplicity, and exposes the futility of modern adult life, or indeed
pretty much any adult life in any age. But the essential meaning of The Little Prince is far
from Clear. Early reviews of the book suggest that readers were bewildered and puzzled.
With time it has become a classic, recognised as a beautiful and Urgent Parable. Translated
into 345 languages, it is one of the biggest selling and most widely translated books of all time.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born in 1900 into an aristocratic French family.
The third of five children. Before his fourth birthday his father died,
leaving the family finances in a precarious State. At the age of 17 he tended
to his blond-haired younger brother francois, through his death from rheumatic fever.
He wrote at the time that as his brother died: "He did not cry out - he fell as gently as a young
tree falls", a line he would later use to describe the death of The Little Prince. Antoine went to
a Naval Academy but twice failed the exams, before beginning his military service in a
Cavalry Regiment. But this was the dawn of the age of flight. The Wright brothers made powered
flight a reality in 1903, and by 1912 Saint-Exupéry had taken his first airplane ride, and decided
he wanted to become a pilot. So he took private flying lessons and eventually transferred from
the Army to the Air Force, beginning A Love Affair (amounting to an obsession) with flying that would
last for the rest of his life. It must be said that he wasn't always the safest of pilots, and
crashed a number of planes before he left the Air Force and began a career as a pioneer of postal
flights, in Africa and South America. That was was when he began publishing his writings about his
experiences. In 1931 he published the book "Night Flight" to Great acclaim, and it would
become an international bestseller. That same year he also married the writer and
artist Consuelo Suncin. It was a tempestuous marriage that would find expression in the
little Prince's Rose. The only female character in the book, and a representation of capricious
and demanding lovers everywhere, but especially of Consuelo.
Despite his Fame, he craved adventure, and in December 1935, Saint-Exupéry and his mechanic
Navigator, crashed badly in the Libyan Desert, while trying to break the Paris to Saigon speed record.
Miraculously they survived the crash, but had little idea of where they were, and their only
supplies were some fruit, a flask of coffee, a bit of chocolate, and a bottle of white wine.
They were discovered half dead on the fourth day, dehydrated and hallucinating, by a passing Bedouin,
who gave them water and saved their lives. The experience would become the central event in
his 1939 Memoir, and he would use this adventure as background to The Little Prince, in which an
aviator is forced to land in the desert and encounters a young boy wandering alone.
After France signed an Armistice with Germany and the country was overrun by Nazis,
Saint-Exupéry went into Exile in North America escaping through Portugal.
He wrote and illustrated The Little Prince while living in New York in mid to late 1942.
Like his Prince, the author and pilot was a soul in Exile. No surprise then
that this is a story of love and loss, of loyalty and separation, and of sacrifice.
But flying was what he did, and despite a host of injuries, he was desperate to fight with the
free French, but was too old. So he petitioned relentlessly for exemption, until it was finally
granted by General Dwight Eisenhower, and he flew reconnaissance missions. Saint-Exupéry was
by now a famous International figure, and his participation in free French military efforts
had enormous publicity value. The Little Prince was published in the states in April 1943 but
the book was banned in France by the Vichy regime, a government that collaborated with Nazi Germany.
All the illustrations in the book are integral to the story and were drawn by Saint-Exupéry.
One character whose image doesn't actually appear, is that of the pilot narrator. Saint-Exupéry did
this drawing of him, beside his plane, but he cut it from the final publication. Probably because
all the other characters are part of the little Prince's Own Story, and to include the narrator
would be to break the fourth wall, as it were, between fantasy and reality. This book was written
as much for adults as for children, and the author probably rightly figured that mixing the fantasy
characters with the grounded experience of the protagonist, might be unacceptable to his grown-up readers.
The Little Prince begins with an account of how the pilot drew a picture
when he was a child. His picture (he called it drawing number one), shows an elephant swallowed
by a boa constrictor. Perfectly logical to him, but to adults it was just a drawing of a hat, and they
roundly mocked him. When his plane crash lands in the desert and the Little Prince appears at
his side asking him to draw a sheep - and then declaring himself unsatisfied with the results,
the pilot brings out his childhood drawing number one.
And this, the pilot tells us, is how he finally found someone who understood his drawing, and how he made the acquaintance of The Little Prince.
The Little Prince and the pilot/Aviator are both in crisis. The Aviator will die if he doesn't
repair his engine, and the boy had to leave his Planet because of a misunderstanding with a rose.
They swap stories and Ponder issues of how to "be" in this world. The prince tells the pilot
that he left his tiny native Planet "asteroid b612" and traveled to six other miniature worlds before
coming to the planet Earth. The characters he encounters in his travels, build a comprehensive
(if incomplete), catalogue of human failings. The king without subjects to reign over. The conceited man,
alone but revelling in flattery. The drunkard, drinking to forget the shame of being drunk. The businessman,
who claims ownership of all the stars he can count. The Lamplighter yearning for rest, but
hurrying to keep up with the sunrises and sunsets, on a planet that rotates once every minute, And the
geographer who should know everything, but has yet to receive trustworthy data from the explorers who
must provide him with the information. And then, the stranded Aviator - the author - who is only able to
escape his predicament thanks to the intervention and Ultimate Death (perhaps even self-sacrifice)
of The Little Prince. The Little Prince had taken diligent care of his planet, and on the morning of
his departure he carefully cleaned out his knee high volcanoes - two active and one extinct - which
he sweeps anyway because "you never know". He weeded the invasive Baobob trees, whose Roots threaten the
prince's Planet - seen as a metaphor for the threat of Nazism and Fascism, and one of the reasons
the Vichy government banned the book. The Little Prince also cared deeply for a single rose, whose
manipulative personality drives him to leave and discover other worlds, so he hitches a ride with a
flock of migrating birds, and visits six other planets, each one even smaller than or barely
larger than his own, before finally coming to Earth. He arrives in the Sahara Desert and is met only by
a very enigmatic snake, so he assumes that Earth is uninhabited.
The prince then climbs a mountain to find nothing but Rocky Peaks as far as the eye
can see, echoing his own voice. He finds himself in a garden planted with countless roses and
realises that, though identical to the Rose he left behind, they mean nothing to him. This leaves him
devastated, reliving his conflictual relationship with his rose on asteroid b612. It takes a fox, the
most intelligent character in the story, apart of course from The Little Prince himself, to
articulate our need for building relationships and our obligation to towards those we "tame".
The fox sends The Little Prince to visit the Roses again, and Promises
to make him a present of "a secret" when he returns. Contemplating the mass of roses, The Little Prince
realises that the most important part of a relationship is its uniqueness. Its value is a reflection of what we invest in it.
Finally, The Little Prince encounters a merchant selling pills that quench thirst, and eliminate the need to drink water.
For The Little Prince, there is joy, and fulfillment, and quality, in all of life's tasks, even the most
mundane, and for him, time-saving devices do little to improve our quality of life. Back in the desert
the pilot/narrator is encouraged by The Little Prince to leave his stricken aircraft, to go in
search of water. They find a well, and The Aviator is saved, at which point The Little Prince declares
that it's time for him to leave. Knowing that he cannot take his body on the journey to the Stars,
The Little Prince negotiates his own death. He allows himself to be bitten by a venomous snake.
When the pilot returns to the spot the next day the little Prince's body is nowhere to be seen.
The Little Prince has become a classic philosophical Fable, for both young and old,
which shows us that having true wisdom means understanding that there is no easy solution
to Life's problems, and yet even the most hopeless of circumstances can bring hope. As well as being
a meditation on the meaning of beauty and life, it is also a book about grief and loss. The book isn't
afraid of suggesting that there is inherent sadness in the world, or of pointing out the
meaningless lives so many lead.
All grown-ups were children once, but most of us have forgotten. For Saint-Exupéry curiosity and exploration are vital and
it is imperative that we ask questions of ourselves just as The Little Prince does.
In April 1943 after publication of The Little Prince, Saint-Exupéry joins an American Convoy,
and sailed to Algiers to join the free French Air Force, flying reconnaissance missions, reporting
on German troop movements. On the 31st of July 1944, he took off from Corsica in an
unarmed Lockheed P38, and never returned. Like his little prince he vanished Without a Trace. He was
44 years old when he died, a biographical detail, that lends eerie poignancy to the
fact, that one one day sitting on his little planet, The Little Prince watched the sunet exactly 44 times
eye
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