What Does the Snake Represent in the Little Prince?
In The Little Prince, the snake represents resurrection.
Most of the time snakes are perceived as symbols of evil and betrayal. You don’t see snakes coming. When you hear them, it’s often too late. The poison they hold within themselves is fatal. Only one bite is enough to end a human life. These traits made snakes symbols of darkness and fall. However, The Little Prince shows us the other side of these creatures.
Can Snakes Be Good?
The Little Prince is the symbol of utter innocence and pure heart. And even the snake, which is supposed to be the vilest of all beings, refuses to go along with its nature and harm the boy. Instead, it acknowledges immediately that the Little Prince comes from a different place and offers to provide him with aid if it becomes too hard for him to live in this world. This gives a whole new meaning to the symbolism of the snake.
Snake as Resurrection
At the end of the first book, the Little Prince decides to go back home and reunite with his beloved flower. However, his body is too heavy. But it doesn’t matter for it is just a shell he must depart from in order to travel back to his home. The snake is there to help him. It bites the Little Prince who falls asleep. Since the Little Prince is coming to where he came from, to love and nurture his flower like he used to do, the snake who made it possible is the symbol of resurrection.
Yet there is an additional interpretation of the snake. It is based on the Untold Stories of the Little Prince.
The Snake Didn’t Send Him Home
What happened to the Little Prince is a very controversial question that ignited the creation of many theories and explanations. One of the answers is an aforementioned book “Untold Stories of the Little Prince,” which assumes the snake poison didn’t kill the Little Prince. Instead, the boy woke up in the desert and went on with his journey. The muse for such an interpretation was the fact that in the morning, the pilot couldn’t find the boy’s body. If he departed from this world, the Little Prince would leave an empty shell behind. So, did the snake really manage to kill him?
If it didn’t, then the snake could be perceived as a trickster and we could repel the idea of resurrection as a symbol. But what if the poison just wasn’t strong enough? However, the poison does manage to dazzle the boy who eventually stumbles upon a hidden forest in which his adventures start. It is important to note that after the snake bite, doubts and fears in the Little Prince start to increase. And the level of questioning everything rises. This could mean that the snake is actually a symbol of maturing.
