The Little Prince: Unearthing Our True Selves

All grown-ups were once children–– although few of them remember it. This is the depicted message in The Little Prince, where Antoine de Saint-Exupéry unites a pilot, the narrator, and the little prince under his pen, guiding the readers through an astonishing journey that brings us back to our true selves. In the book, the little prince maintains the naiveness, which enables him to penetrate the glitz and perceive the essence; whereas the narrator is being shaped by society, obliterating his creativity. The collision between children’s innocence and grown-ups’ sophistication and philistinism absorbs me into the story and triggers me to cogitate about the changes in mind I’ve gone through.

The little prince travels to different asteroids and encounters people with distinct characteristics: the king, who enjoys authority; the conceited man, who never hear anything but praise; the tippler, who avoids tackling the problem itself and gets trapped in a labyrinthine; the businessman, who is fascinated by meaningless calculations; the bull-headed lamplighter, who is like many white-collars in the society; the geographer, who only fights on paper. These characters are the epitomes in society who confine themselves to trifles, but forget the true meaning of life–– to see the world as it is, and to love it. For a long time we have stopped asking “why” to satisfy our curiosities and getting trapped in repetitive works; we have covered what we truly love inside our hearts and let them withered, caring too much about others’ comments.

Fortunately, there is someone— the Little Prince— who still maintains his genuineness, and helps the narrator to recuperate the lost inventiveness and true self. On the eighth day since the little prince met the narrator, there is little water left, therefore, they set out to look for water. On their way, the little prince says, “what makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well” (Saint-Exupéry 102). Everyone lives with a goal, shaped by social values and taboos, which disguisedly forbid youngsters to pursue what they are truly passionate about: the narrator could be a magnificent painter, but the grown-ups told him to learn arithmetic and geography to become a pilot. When we get lost in the “desert”, the hardships and barriers we face in real life, the belief that encourages us go on is the “well” in everyone's heart; even if it takes some effort to get water out of the well, as long as it's something we truly love, we'd appreciate it. This is what makes the sands and the paths we’ve walked through beautiful. “All men have the 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. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent” (de Saint-Exupéry 111). Everyone's aspirations and passions are not the same, but should be valued equally without a set of criteria. Only by returning to simplicity can we discover the world with the brightest eyes.

Through illustrating the little prince’s journey, Saint-Exupéry sculpts two distinct figures: the narrator and the little prince, who are the representatives of grown-ups and children respectively. If philosophy is like salt, then The Little Prince is an appetizing delicacy: every connoisseur can appreciate the rich philosophical lessons it contains. Perhaps some people forget what is the rose they truly love when growing up. Yet, we used to be children. With Saint-Exupéry, together we have a tour cleansing our hearts and retrieving our true selves.