The Little Prince — A Love Letter to an Era of Idyllic Purity.
Novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Translated by Richard Howard
We all murder a child in us when we abandon her or him as we grow up and spend the rest of our murderous lives wishing we hadn’t. Those who dance in the rain, watch the birds fly, spend time enjoying sunsets and walk back with a smile in their heart and with tears preserving the radiance of the sun, are happy souls with a crystal heart. They are the ones who actually live. We, we died with that child long ago and are waiting for someone to prove it. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella, The Little Prince (translated by Richard Howard), is that proof with a mirror to our hearts and a reflection of our innocence which we had lost in this desolated desert called life which is hiding a well of purity somewhere and which we have to find.
All grown-ups were once children- although few of them remember it.
Told in first-person narration by an adult pilot, who is reminiscing his six years prior experience of a plane accident in the Sahara desert, where he is stranded with no mechanic and only eight days of water supply, the book opens up with him describing the grown-ups as people with no imagination and how he was trained to be one, but finally settling to be a kid as the book ends. Hereupon, he meets a little boy with golden curls, a lovable laugh, and who repeats the questions until they are not answered. He nicknames him, ‘The Little Prince’, and soon learns his purpose of coming to earth, as apparently, he is from a small asteroid known as B 612. This fantastical and unrealistic journey of the Little Prince draws the readers into a world carefully and yet whimsically invented by Antoine, who in his sombre and plain tone, which I found similar to ‘Winnie the Pooh’s’ cartoon, echoes of a time long gone and of a time which had the sadness one feels while watching a sun dying for the last time.
The Little Prince too narrates his life on B 612, his love for a Rose, the troubling baobab trees which if not rooted out the moment they are recognised will overrun the planet. His want to explore the universe, parting from his queer Rose, his hoping from planets to planets and meeting different characters, finally landing on earth for a sheep and after wandering for a year on earth and coming across our adult pilot is told with a heart of a child. After he leaves the earth as softly as a petal falls on the ground, a thud drums in ourselves, shouting at us to connect with our little prince. This nostalgic tale departs by giving us a glimpse not into our memories of the past but into our mind of childhood which knew that dying of a rose was a matter of consequences than counting the money we had and that speculating the stars laughing or crying or drawing shapes in them was more important than owning them. This theme of living a life full of imagination, hope, love and respect for life itself is simply and evocatively produced by the author in front of us.
These mysteries, their beauty, their innocence are like a fragile flame that can be extinguished by a little puff of wind.
The deviation of human life from its mystery and beauty, towards materialism of thoughts and property, as life grows, is the running commentary of the story. These mysteries, their beauty, their innocence are like a fragile flame that can be extinguished by a little puff of wind. “All grown-ups were once children- although few of them remember it,” writes Antoine before starting the book which even if written in the form of a children novella, is a message to the grown-ups to protect not just the flames of innocence of the posterity, but in order to do so, to rekindle their own flame of the innocence in them. With his childlike writing method, Antoine dives into ideas that are of large scale.
The story of the Rose and the Little Prince and his efforts to protect her and her efforts for attention forms a beautiful love story that is one of its kind. Her being in his thoughts and ideas even if he is far away from her and her accepting his departure to explore the world breaks one’s heart. “Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies,” says the Rose who gives a message as important as written in Gita or any other religious book.
Likewise, there are many philosophical and inspirational dimensions in The Little Prince’s story that are easier to understand. The symbolism of the book is not composed to make it a profoundly confusing book, but is drawn as a simple engaging book with an acute sense of life. The speciality of a rose in thousands of roses, the taming and being tamed ideology which is opposite of detachment theory through Fox, the hardship of leaving someone for exploring the universe or for providing a safe life to the one we love, the want of people for owning something, to being followed by others, for being appreciated by others, to forget the pain by giving up to bad habits, and many more ideas are elementarily raised by Antoine. This is the biggest achievement of The Little Prince.
Antoine cares for his readers and more importantly, he cares for his memories.
Words tend to confuse and when there are thousands of words there are thousands of confusion. But Antoine delicately and dedicatedly crafts the story to talk what it precisely wants to say. For a book to speak on so many levels, one may find many ideas contradicting each other or one may find too many ideas to hold inside their brain. Antoine cares for his readers and more importantly, he cares for his memories. Thus he never waivers from his story which even though it moves in time and from one narrator to another. He has suffered too much grief to jot down his memories and wants it not to be taken carelessly. The illustrations add to enhance the “matter of consequence” of the author beautifully. One tends to drown in the illustrations along with the words.
“When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey,” writes Antoine when he meets the Little Prince. The same is true for the ending of the book. Like so many other mysteries of life, he leaves the end to be mysterious. Did the Prince die? If yes, then where is his body? If no, then how he went back to his planet? Did Snake venom had no effect on him? We can answer all the questions with our buried imagination and relive the story in our own hearts. If we do so, we are connecting with an imaginative child inside us who is still in awe with the wonders of what life can be, apart from a routine of waking up and sleeping down. Like seeds, imagination also holds the power to grow into a good or a bad plant. All we need is a heart to see the invisible beauty of a picture whether it being a hat or it being a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. As Antoine writes, “But seeds are invisible. They sleep deep in the heart of the earth’s darkness, until some one among them is seized with the desire to awaken,” same is true for a child in us.
This book dares to awaken the Little Prince in us.
