Thoughts on 'The Little Prince'

The Little Prince (1943) is one of my all time favourite books, but honestly, I didn’t feel much for it the first time I read it. It was only when I got older and had developed a deeper awareness for pain that I started to like the book more and more. Although it’s marketed as a children’s book, in my opinion, it is truly a book for adults. Specifically, it is a book for the adult who is searching for their inner child who had been lost and abandoned in an unforgiving adult world.

Supposedly, The Little Prince was written while Saint-Exupéry was severely depressed and in exile in the US. So, it is clear that the book is symbolic of his yearning for his inner child and the part of himself who wanted innocence to prevail over the desolation of adulthood. However, it was a scene at the ending of his memoir Wind, Sand and Stars (1939) that revealed to me how personal the Little Prince character was to the author’s outlook on life.

He concludes the memoir with ruminating thoughts of his time on a train full of impoverished Polish families who were being sent back home after working and residing in France. In front of him was an adorable young boy. He first imagines the “beautiful promise” life would give to the boy if he were to be protected like the “little princes in legends” or the roses that are tended to in a garden. But then, he resigns to the melancholic reality that “this little Mozart” would be condemned to the “stamping machine” of society.

In contrast, the ending of The Little Price is ambiguous. The prince dies, according to many theories, by suicide with the help of the snake. In other interpretations, he returns home in spirit. In parallel, Saint-Exupéry, also disappeared in a plane crash (presumably) a year after the book was published. Neither the prince's nor the author’s bodies were found in each of their worlds. So, what is the ultimate truth? Did they actually die?

The Little Prince has sold over 200 million copies worldwide. It is the most translated book after the Bible. Adaptations, quotes, images, and merchandise related to the story are cherished all over the world. So, in many ways “invisible to the eye,” the Little Prince and Saint-Exupéry lives on. We may not recognize it, but innocence has already prevailed over desolation. We just have to prove it to ourselves by protecting the little prince and his rose inside each of us so to not let the machine of a dispirited culture take away from our beautiful future.