The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Warning: spoilers ahead

Rating

4.5/5: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Review

“The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is a classic that escaped my radar for a long time. My main motivation for adding it to my lengthy to-be-read list was to understand what made it so timeless, but it wasn’t until I visited Paris this summer did I finally pick this book up.

I admit I knew nothing about “The Little Prince” before reading it. I knew of it, whether it was from related merchandise in bookstores or some other sources that unconsciously left an impression on me. I even knew the front cover like the back of my hand, but nothing of what lay within. Until I began reading it, I did not even realize that this book was categorized as “childrens” and “middle grade.” Yet I was aware that people of all ages have read it; personally, I do not think I would have appreciated this book if I were any younger. Even now, I do not think I have appreciated this book as much as I will in the future. “The Little Prince” did not seem like a book for children, but rather a book for adults who remember being children. Like the opening paragraphs, perhaps that was the intended effectーwas the pilot’s drawing actually depicting an elephant hidden inside a boa constrictor, or was it really just a hat?

There are a few things I took away from the story. For example, the little prince’s rose was important because of the time he spent on taking care of her. It's the same in reality: what’s important is the time you spend and how you spend it. It's also important to keep the child in us alive, for it allows us to appreciate the little things we have and carry the present with an optimism that everything will be alright in the end. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry makes this distinction that grown-ups are unimaginative and superficial, while children are sensitive to the beauty and mysteries of the world. Even if we are stranded in a desert, we should be optimistic that we will find a drinking well at death’s door. However, the book doesn't say that physical age determines whether one is a child or a grown-up, as shown by the pilot who has aged enough to forget how to draw, but child enough to understand and befriend the little prince. All of these themes and their implications have perhaps never been so profound during these times.

Reading this book during the summer of 2021 did not just align with the pandemic, but also my repairing relationship with my mother. My love towards her is like the little prince’s love for the rose, which was likewise inspired by Antoine’s love for his wife Conseulo. The little prince and his rose were brought together by a shared loneliness, but overtime, they became estranged and resentful of each other. When my relationship with my mother was particularly bad, I also resented the fact that I was not old enough to leave home and independently support myself. With a certain childish innocence, I yearned to become an adult. Like the little prince who left his planet to flee from his rose, I am also fleeing home to become my own person in college. But that is not the ending or the moral of the little prince’s story, or mine. Because in the end, the little prince realized that despite his rose’s vanity and naivety, he still loved her deeply because of the time they had spent together. It is the same for me and my mother. After months of silence, we slowly began to reconnect through phone calls before she invited me to go to Paris with her. I realized that my mother, even though she was an adult I had looked up to my entire life, was not as strong as I thought her to be. She had her own insecurities, struggles, and uphill battles. I also realized that becoming an adult did not mean that all my problems would go away or that I would be able to have control over everything, whether that was over my relationship with other people or myself. Like the little prince, I wanted to reconcile with my mother because I too realized that my source of love was my sense of responsibility towards her.

That brings me to the reason why I think this book is so timeless. It might be a fun and entertaining book to read as a child, who might see this as a simple fairy tale about a little prince, his proud rose, the silly grownups he encountered on various planets, the fox he tamed, the pilot he befriended, and the snake who finally sent him back home. But the adults who revisit or visit this book for the first time may see this story in an entirely different, more solemn light. They might realize that they have become one of those silly grownups, whose contradictions and shortcomings were deftly exposed by the little prince, much to their ignorance. (This reminded me of the videos of Jordan Klepper interviewing people at different rallies). They might realize that the prince did not go back to his own planet, after all, but that his death on Earth symbolized the death of childhood. “The Little Prince” was written in 1942, but people can still relate to it today. Many adults get frustrated by children because we have lost the child within us, but many also adore children because we are tired of meeting people who speak “matters of consequence.” In fact, we would love to encounter a little prince from the tiny planet of Asteroid B-612 ourselves, one who talks animatedly about sunsets and ignites the child inside of us. But like the pilot, we can never truly go back to those times. We can only look at the night sky and laugh, hoping we hear the stars laugh in return.