The Little Prince was written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and first published in 1943. I read it for the first time this year and this post is about my interpretation of parts that resonated with me.

Before Sunrise

The Prince’s planet is so small than when he wishes to see a sunset, he only need move his chair and reposition himself so that the sun is again just setting over the horizon. I see this as a reminder of perspective, and to enjoy living in the moment.

Thorns

Despite evolving thorns, roses are still readily defeated and eaten by sheep. The narrator dismisses the significance of roses’ thorns, but the Prince sharply disagrees. He agues that they mustn’t have spent millions of years developing them for no reason, yet he’s perplexed at the inept protection that they provide. The Prince says “la guerre des moutons et des fleurs” meaning “the war of the sheep and of the flowers”. Perhaps it is the specific word “war” and the knowledge that M. de Saint-Exupery wrote this post WWII that it brings to my mind how life was so inconsequentially snuffed out by modern weapons.

The Rose

The rose represents woman. “One must never listen to flowers”, he exclaims, “one must look at them and smell them.” He feels manipulated by the rose, having been asked to fetch her water, protect her from animals, from the wind, from the cold.

Woman represents the mysterious unknown. The rose is temptation, like the Sirens; the Prince is enraptured by her. The rose is mysterious. Like Aphrodite springing from the sea, the rose came as a seed from an unknown place beyond the planet.

Eventually, the Prince says “I was too young to know how to love her.” He says he should have known to guess at her tenderness, beyond her ruses. It’s at this moment that the Prince clearly perceives the rose as a real being, and not as an illusive beauty.

By any other name…

The Prince learns from the fox that What makes the rose special isn’t that no other rose exists in the world, but that only that rose is the rose that the Prince cares for, has taken care of. It’s the relationship built with that rose that makes her unique, not whether or not she is the only rose in existence.

Questions, Questions

Le petit prince ne renonçait jamais une question, une fois qu’il l’avait posée. p19

Each individual that the Prince visits is completely self absorbed in their world. Hardly able to perceive and answer the Prince’s questions, they respond simply by reiterating their positions, the geographer, the lamp lighter, the businessman, the drunk. It’s a salient reminder to ask what are we really doing? Are we still living? Or just going through the motions of life?

The Snake

I interpret the snake bite as the death of the Prince. I don’t believe the Prince was tricked – at the end of their first encounter, he says “J’ai très bien compris, mais pourquoi parles tu toujours dans les énigmes?” meaning “I have understood very well, but why do you always speak in riddles?” to which the Snake responds that he always solves them. I take this to mean that the Prince understands that “return to the place from which they came” means that the Snake sends creatures to their death.

The narrator does go on to ask of the reader, should they encounter a young boy with golden hair in the Sahara to write him for he misses his friend very dearly. He points out that there is no body, so perhaps the Prince did indeed return to his home planet. I take this to be the narrator ruminating and keeping the Prince’s memory alive and not literally.

On a metaphorical level, I think the death of the Prince represents the moment when one becomes a “grande personne” or grown-up and loses their inner child. Therefore, I take the author asking the reader to be on the lookout for the Prince to mean that he is beseeching the reader to look within themselves for their inner child.