Everyone Eventually is Consoled: Part I

The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint Exupery (author and illustrator)
Translated by: Richard Howard
2001
ISBN: 0156012197

Note: Chapter numbers are denoted in parentheses.

Published in 1943, The Little Prince is a singular work of literature. Admired by children and adults, the classic has garnered perhaps as many detractors as admirers. Its enduring popularity owes as much to its blend of form and narrative styles, as it does to the mythic life of its author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Though often considered to be a 'simple' child's tale, The Little Prince is a multi-layered and far-reaching story. Saint-Exupery deftly deals with his major themes-exploration, taming, and the differences between children and adults-by using naively drawn images and a natural, sympathetic voice. The Little Prince is written as a series of twenty-seven short chapters (perhaps vignette is a better description), beginning 'six years ago' when the narrator, an aviator, crashes in the Sahara Desert and meets a little prince. Borrowing from traditions of memoirs and mythical parables, the story of the little prince's journey is doubled by the aviator's own narrative of meeting, loving, and losing the mysterious child in the desert.

The book begins with a drawing of a boa eating an elephant, which to a grown-up looks exactly like a hat. As a child, the aviator showed his drawing to adults who would not see the elephant inside the snake. When he showed adults the same drawing from the inside, he lamented, "The grown-ups advised me to...apply myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar. That is why I abandoned, at the age of six, a magnificent career as an artist." (I) When the aviator crashes in the desert, he is astounded to meet a little prince who appears unharmed and unfazed at being alone in the middle of the Sahara. When the little prince insists that the aviator draw a picture of a sheep, he does so, succumbing to the "overpowering mystery". (II) The little prince rejects the first attempts at a suitable sheep, but surprises the aviator by accepting a drawing of a crate. The little prince is delighted, for he sees a sheep fallen asleep inside the crate. The drawings that the aviator continues to make for the prince are as real as the desert around them; the sheep will be at home on the prince's home planet. Thus begins the aviator's extraordinary journey from the insularity of adulthood to the imaginative, open-minded world of childhood.

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