The Little Prince (French: Le Petit Prince, pronounced [lə p(ə)ti pʁɛ̃s]) is a novella written and illustrated by French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published in English and French in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943 and was published posthumously in France following liberation; Saint-Exupéry’s works had been banned by the Vichy Regime. The story follows a young prince who visits various planets, including Earth, and addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss. Despite its style as a children’s book, The Little Prince makes observations about life, adults, and human nature.
The Little Prince became Saint-Exupéry’s most successful work, selling an estimated 140 million copies worldwide, which makes it one of the best-selling in history. The book has been translated into over 505 different languages and dialects worldwide, being the second most translated work ever published, trailing only the Bible. The Little Prince has been adapted to numerous art forms and media, including audio recordings, radio plays, live stage, film, cinema television, ballet, and opera.
Plot
The book begins with the six-year-old narrator. To determine if grownups are as enlightened as a child, the narrator shows them a picture depicting a boa constrictor that has eaten an elephant. The adults always reply that the picture represents a hat. Upon making a second drawing depicting the elephant inside the boa constrictor, the adults tell him to study things of “importance.” He learns to only talk of “reasonable” things to them, rather than the fanciful.
The narrator becomes an aircraft pilot, and one day, his plane crashes in the Sahara desert, far from civilization. The narrator must fix his airplane before his supply of water runs out. Here, he is greeted by a young boy named “the little prince.”
The prince asks the narrator to draw a sheep. The narrator first shows him the picture of the elephant inside the snake, which, to the narrator’s surprise, the prince interprets correctly. After three failed attempts at drawing a sheep, the frustrated narrator draws a crate, claiming the sheep is inside. Surprisingly, this drawing delights the little prince.
Over the course of days, while the narrator attempts to repair his plane, the prince recounts his life story. He used to live on a house-sized asteroid known on Earth as “B 612”. The narrator recounts a story of a Turkish astronomer who, after discovering asteroid B 612, gave a presentation on his findings, but was ignored. After dressing in European garments, however, his discoveries were accepted. The asteroid has three minuscule volcanoes (two active, and one dormant or extinct) and various plants.
The prince used to clean the volcanoes and weed unwanted seeds and sprigs that infested his soil, pulling out baobab trees that were constantly on the verge of overrunning the surface. The prince wants a sheep to eat the undesirable plants, but worries it will also eat plants with thorns.
The prince met a rose that grew on the asteroid. The rose exaggerated ailments to have the prince care for her. The prince made a screen and glass globe to protect her from the cold and wind, watered her, and kept the caterpillars off.
Despite falling in love with the rose, the prince also began to feel that she was taking advantage of him and resolved to leave the planet to explore the rest of the universe. Upon saying their goodbyes, the rose apologized for failing to show that she loved him. She wished him well and turned down his desire to leave her in the glass globe, saying she would protect herself. The prince laments that he does not understand how to love his rose while being with her.
The prince has since visited six other planets, each of which was inhabited by one adult. They include:
A king with no subjects, who only issues orders that will be followed, such as commanding the sun to set at sunset.
A conceited man who only wants to be the most admired person on his otherwise uninhabited planet.
A drunkard who drinks to forget the shame of drinking.
A businessman who is blind to the beauty of the stars and instead endlessly counts and catalogs them in order to “own” them all.
A lamplighter on a planet so small, a full day lasts a minute. He wastes his life following orders to extinguish and relight the lamppost every 30 seconds to correspond with his planet’s day and night. Despite this, the little prince notes that he wishes he could have stayed on his planet the most.
An elderly geographer who has never been anywhere, or seen any of the things he records. He persuades the prince to visit Earth next.
Since the prince landed in a desert, he believed that Earth was uninhabited. He then met a snake that claimed to have the power to return him to his home, if he ever wished that. The prince next met a flower, who said she had only seen a few men in that part of the world, and they had no roots, letting the wind blow them around and living hard lives. After climbing the highest mountain he had ever seen, the prince hoped to see the whole of Earth, thus finding the people; however, he saw only the desolate landscape. When the prince called out, his echo answered him, which he interpreted as the voice of someone boring who only repeats words.
The prince encountered a row of rosebushes, becoming downcast at having once thought that his rose was unique and thinking she had lied about being unique. He began to feel that he was not a great prince, as his planet contained only three tiny volcanoes and a flower he now thought of as common. He started weeping until a fox came along.
The fox desired to be tamed and taught the prince how to tame him. By being tamed, something goes from being ordinary or commonplace to being special and unique…but “what we tame, we are responsible for forever.”
From the fox, the prince learns that his rose was indeed special because she was the object of the prince’s love and time; he had “tamed” her, and now she was more precious than all of the other roses. Upon their departure, the fox says that important things can only be seen with the heart, not the eyes.
The prince then met two people from Earth:
A railway switchman who described how passengers constantly rushed from one place to another aboard trains, never satisfied with where they were and not knowing what they were after; only the children among them ever bothered to look out the windows.
A merchant who spoke about his product, a pill that eliminated the need to drink for a week, saving people 53 minutes.
Eight days after the plane crash, the narrator and the prince are dying of thirst. The prince becomes morose and longs to return home and see his flower.
The prince finds a well, saving them. The narrator later finds the prince talking to the snake, discussing his return home and his desire to see his rose again, worrying that she has been left to fend for herself. The prince bids farewell to the narrator and states that if it looks as though he has died, it is only because his body is too heavy to take with him to his planet. The prince warns the narrator not to watch him leave, as it will upset him. The narrator, realizing what will happen, refuses to leave the prince’s side. The prince says that the narrator only needs to look at the stars to think of the prince’s laughter and that it will seem as if all the stars are laughing. The prince then walks away and allows the snake to bite him, falling down.
The next morning, the narrator cannot find the prince’s body. Managing to repair his airplane, he leaves the desert. The narrator requests to be contacted by anyone in that area who encounters a boy like the prince.
Tone and writing style
The story of The Little Prince is recalled in a sombre, measured tone by the pilot-narrator, in memory of his small friend, “a memorial to the prince—not just to the prince, but also to the time the prince and the narrator had together.” The Little Prince was created when Saint-Exupéry was “an ex-patriate and distraught about what was going on in his country and in the world.” According to one analysis, “the story of the Little Prince features a lot of fantastical, unrealistic elements…. You can’t ride a flock of birds to another planet… The fantasy of the Little Prince works because the logic of the story is based on the imagination of children, rather than the strict realism of adults.”
An exquisite literary perfectionist, akin to the 19th century French poet Stéphane Mallarmé, Saint-Exupéry produced draft pages “covered with fine lines of handwriting, much of it painstakingly crossed out, with one word left standing where there were a hundred words, one sentence substitut[ing] for a page…” He worked “long hours with great concentration.” According to the author himself, it was extremely difficult to start his creative writing processes. Biographer Paul Webster wrote of the aviator-author’s style: “Behind Saint-Exupéry’s quest for perfection was a laborious process of editing and rewriting which reduced original drafts by as much as two-thirds.” The French author frequently wrote at night, usually starting at about 11 p.m. accompanied by a tray of strong black coffee. In 1942 Saint-Exupéry related to his American English teacher, Adèle Breaux, that at such a time of night he felt “free” and able to concentrate, “writing for hours without feeling tired or sleepy”, until he instantaneously dozed off. He would
