The Little Prince

Summary

The Little Prince is told by a pilot who, as a boy of six, drew a boa constrictor digesting an elephant; every grown-up who saw Drawing Number One took it for a hat, and he gave up art for flying. Years later his engine fails in the Sahara, a thousand miles from anyone, with water for about a week. At daybreak a small boy with golden hair wakes him and asks him to draw a sheep. Every sheep the pilot draws is wrong, until he draws a box and says the sheep is inside, which pleases the boy completely. Over the following days the narrator learns the little prince's story. He comes from a house-sized planet, which the narrator identifies as asteroid B-612, first seen by a Turkish astronomer who was believed only when he lectured in European dress. There the prince rakes out his volcanoes, pulls up baobab seedlings before their roots split the planet, and once watched the sunset forty-four times in a day because he was sad. A proud, coughing rose sprouts on his planet; he tends her, puts her under a glass globe and a screen, but is hurt by her vanity and her small lies, and he leaves on a flight of migrating birds. Their parting shows that she loved him all along. On six nearby asteroids he meets a king who rules everything and commands only what is reasonable, a conceited man who wants only admiration, a tippler who drinks to forget his shame at drinking, a businessman counting the stars he believes he owns, a lamplighter whose tiny world now turns once a minute, and a geographer who has never explored his own planet and sends the prince to Earth. In the African desert the prince meets a snake that offers to send him home whenever he wishes, a three-petalled flower, an echo on a mountain, and a garden of five thousand roses just like his own, which makes him weep. Then a fox asks to be tamed, teaches him that taming makes one creature unique to another, and tells him a secret about seeing with the heart before they say goodbye. He also meets a railway switchman and a merchant selling pills that quench thirst. On the eighth day, with the water gone, the pilot and the prince walk until they find a well. A year after his arrival, the prince lets the snake bite him; he falls gently in the sand, and at daybreak his body is gone. Six years later the narrator writes, asking readers to tell him if they meet the boy. Written and illustrated in the United States in 1942, the book was published in New York by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943, in French and in Katherine Woods's English translation; Gallimard first issued it in France in 1945.

Plot or Argument

• Dedication and the drawings (Ch. I-II)

  The book is dedicated to Léon Werth when he was a little boy. The narrator recalls Drawing Number One and Two, crashes in the Sahara, and meets the boy who asks for a sheep.

• Asteroid B-612 and the baobabs (Ch. III-VII)

  The prince's home, the astronomer's lecture, the danger of baobabs, the forty-four sunsets, and the quarrel over whether sheep eat flowers with thorns.

• The rose and the departure (Ch. VIII-IX)

  The rose's arrival, her demands and vanity, the glass globe, and the prince's leave-taking by a flight of wild birds.

• The six asteroids (Ch. X-XV)

  Visits to the king, the conceited man, the tippler, the businessman, the lamplighter and the geographer, who recommends the planet Earth.

• Arrival on Earth (Ch. XVI-XX)

  The snake in the desert, the desert flower, the echoing mountain, and the garden of five thousand roses.

• The fox (Ch. XXI)

  The fox teaches the meaning of taming, the rites of friendship and the secret of what is essential, and sends the prince back to look at the roses.

• Switchman, merchant and the well (Ch. XXII-XXV)

  The railway switchman and the pill merchant; the pilot's water runs out and the two walk through the night to a well.

• The snake and the stars (Ch. XXVI-XXVII)

  The prince keeps his appointment with the snake on the anniversary of his fall to Earth; the narrator's grief, the forgotten strap for the muzzle, and the final drawing of the empty desert.

Characters

• The narrator (the aviator), narrator

  A pilot stranded in the Sahara who never stopped thinking like a child and tells the prince's story six years later.

• The little prince, protagonist

  A golden-haired boy from asteroid B-612 who never lets go of a question once he has asked it.

• The rose, the prince's flower

  A proud, coughing, beautiful flower whom the prince loves and leaves.

• The fox, teacher and friend

  A desert fox who asks to be tamed and teaches the prince what love and responsibility mean.

• The snake, messenger of death

  A yellow snake, thin as a finger, who speaks in riddles and offers to send the prince home.

• The king, asteroid dweller

  A monarch with no subjects who gives only orders that will be obeyed anyway.

• The conceited man, asteroid dweller

  A man who hears nothing but praise and raises his hat for applause.

• The tippler, asteroid dweller

  A drinker caught in a circle of drinking and shame.

• The businessman, asteroid dweller

  A busy counter of stars who thinks owning them makes him rich.

• The lamplighter, asteroid dweller

  A faithful man lighting and putting out a lamp every minute, the only adult the prince could have befriended.

• The geographer, asteroid dweller

  A scholar who records explorers' reports but never leaves his desk.

Lessons

• Taming and responsibility

  The fox teaches that friendship is made by patient time spent together, coming at the same hour and sitting a little closer each day. Once tamed, a friend becomes unlike any other in the world, and the prince learns that his rose is unique because of the care he gave her, not because no other roses exist.

  • Why does the garden of five thousand roses make the prince cry, and why does it no longer hurt him after the fox speaks?
  • What does the fox mean when he says the wheat fields will now remind him of the prince's hair?
  • Who in your life have you tamed, or been tamed by?

• Seeing what matters

  Grown-ups in the book see a hat where there is a snake swallowing an elephant and trust an astronomer only when he wears a suit. The prince keeps asking what things are for. The book asks readers to look past numbers and appearances to what is essential.

  • Why do the grown-ups always want to know how much a house cost instead of what it looks like?
  • Why is the sheep in the box the best sheep of all?

• The foolish grown-ups

  Each asteroid holds one adult shut up in a single concern: power, praise, drink, money, duty or learning without seeing. Their small planets are pictures of small lives. The lamplighter alone earns the prince's respect because he serves something beyond himself.

  • Which grown-up on the asteroids is the saddest, and why?
  • Why does the prince think the lamplighter's work is useful while the businessman's is not?
  • Is there a little of each of these grown-ups in us?

• Love that asks for patience

  The prince runs away from his rose because her words hurt him, and only later understands that he should have judged her by her deeds and her fragrance. The book shows how hard it is to love someone who is proud and fragile, and how leaving can teach what staying would have.

  • What does the rose do at their parting that shows she loved the prince?
  • Why does the prince decide he was too young to know how to love her?

Context

Saint-Exupéry wrote the book in exile after the fall of France in 1940, while living in New York and on Long Island. Its desert setting comes from his years flying mail across the Sahara and from his 1935 crash in the Libyan desert, which he had described in Wind, Sand and Stars. The dedication to Léon Werth, a friend who was then living in hiding in occupied France, says that this grown-up needs comforting.

Composition

He wrote and illustrated it in 1942, much of it at Bevin House in Asharoken, Long Island, painting his own watercolours. Reynal & Hitchcock published it in New York in April 1943 in both French and Katherine Woods's English translation. It did not appear in France until Gallimard's edition of 1945, after the end of the German occupation and after its author's disappearance in July 1944.

Reception

It became Saint-Exupéry's most famous work and one of the best-selling books ever published, with sales estimated at around 140 million copies and translations into hundreds of languages and dialects. Woods's translation remained the standard English text for decades and is still widely read beside later versions.

Comparisons

• the-velveteen-rabbit

  The Skin Horse's account of becoming Real through long love is close kin to the fox's teaching on taming: both books say that love makes a thing unique and that it takes time.

• the-phantom-tollbooth

  Milo, like the prince, travels from one small kingdom to another and meets rulers and figures who each embody a single folly of adult thinking.

• gullivers-travels

  Swift's voyages also satirize human pride through a series of visits to strange lands; the prince's six asteroids are a gentle, child-sized version of the same method.

• alices-adventures-in-wonderland

  Both books set a clear-eyed child among adults whose reasoning makes no sense, though Alice's world is comic nonsense and the prince's ends in grief.

• peter-pan

  Barrie's boy who will not grow up and Saint-Exupéry's narrator who never stopped thinking like a child both question what is lost in becoming a grown-up.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• Drawing Number One in Chapter I, the boa constrictor that grown-ups call a hat, and the box with the sheep inside in Chapter II.
• The rose's glass globe and screen, and what she says at the prince's leaving in Chapter IX.
• The six grown-ups on the asteroids in Chapters X-XV, and the one the prince thinks he could have been friends with.
• The fox's lessons on taming in Chapter XXI and the prince's second visit to the garden of roses.
• The snake's first words in Chapter XVII, which prepare the ending in Chapter XXVI.

Key terms and names

Asteroid B-612

The prince's tiny planet, with three volcanoes and a rose. The narrator gives its number because grown-ups love numbers.

Baobab

A huge tree whose seedlings the prince must pull up every day; left alone they would split his small planet apart.

To tame

The fox's word for making ties with someone through patient time together, so that each becomes unique to the other.

The lamplighter

The man on the fifth asteroid who keeps his orders though his planet now turns every minute; the prince admires his faithfulness.

Grown-ups

The narrator's name for adults who care about figures and appearances and need children to explain things to them.

The well

The village-style well the pilot and prince find in the desert in Chapter XXV, whose water tastes good because of the walk and the friendship.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What did the grown-ups think Drawing Number One showed, and what did it really show?
2. Comprehension Why does the prince leave his planet and his rose?
3. Comprehension Name the six grown-ups the prince meets on the asteroids. What does each one spend his time doing?
4. Interpretation The fox says taming makes the prince's rose different from all the roses in the garden. How can one rose be special when there are five thousand like her?
5. Interpretation Why does the prince think the lamplighter is the only grown-up who is not ridiculous?
6. Interpretation Why does the water from the well taste so good to the pilot and the prince?
7. Big Question The prince says he should have judged his rose by what she did and not by what she said. Is it true that people show love more by deeds than by words?

Faith Connections

• 1 Samuel 16:7 (Scripture)

  The Lord tells Samuel that man looks on the outward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart. The fox's secret, that what is essential cannot be seen with the eyes, says the same about how we should look at one another.

• 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (Scripture)

  Love is patient and kind and bears all things. The prince learns too late to be patient with his proud, fragile rose, and the fox teaches him that love grows by patient, faithful care.

• Matthew 18:3 (Scripture)

  Jesus says that unless we become like little children we shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. The narrator keeps the child's way of seeing that the grown-ups on the asteroids have lost.

• C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, ch. 4 (Friendship) (Great Conversation)

  Lewis describes friendship as two people discovering they see the same truth. The fox's taming and the pilot's days with the prince at the well show friendship born from shared time and shared wonder.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Grown-ups judge by numbers, possessions and appearances, and so each lives on a small planet of one concern. But a thing becomes precious through the time and care we give it, as the fox, the rose and the well show. Therefore what is essential cannot be measured or seen with the eyes, and only someone who keeps a child's heart can see it.

Rhetorical device: allegory. The six asteroids of Chapters X-XV each hold one grown-up who stands for a single folly: the king for power, the conceited man for vanity, the tippler for drink, the businessman for owning, the lamplighter for duty, the geographer for knowing without seeing.

Debate: Resolved: The prince was right to leave his rose.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Choose two of the grown-ups on the asteroids and explain what each one has forgotten that the fox teaches the prince in Chapter XXI.

Comparison with The Velveteen Rabbit: The Skin Horse tells the Rabbit how toys become Real, and the fox tells the prince how friends are tamed. Compare the two lessons and explain which one shows better what love costs.

Medical Lens

Medicine is not a subject of the book, but two episodes reach a clinical reader. The tippler's planet (Chapter XII) is a famous one-page picture of a self-perpetuating cycle: he drinks to forget that he is ashamed, and he is ashamed of drinking. It is a fable, not a case history, but it is often cited in talk about the shame cycle in alcohol use. The frame story draws on Saint-Exupéry's own 1935 desert crash and his days of thirst; the pilot's dwindling water and the walk to the well, and the pill merchant whose tablets save fifty-three minutes a week of drinking, play on thirst and its remedies. The ending treats the prince's death by snakebite gently, as a return home, and the narrator's continuing grief six years later frames the whole book.

• Chapter XII

  The tippler explains that he drinks to forget his shame, and that he is ashamed of drinking.

  Alcohol Addiction
• Chapters XXIII-XXV

  The merchant's thirst-quenching pills; the pilot's water runs out and he and the prince walk to the well.

  Starvation Nutrition
• Chapters XXVI-XXVII

  The snake's bite, the prince's quiet fall, and the narrator's grief in the years afterward.

  Death Dying Grief

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Draw your own small planet with one grown-up living on it, like the king or the lamplighter, and write two sentences about the one thing that grown-up cares about.

• Fiction

  Write the story of the rose on asteroid B-612 after the prince has gone, told by the rose herself.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation in which the prince visits a seventh asteroid and meets a grown-up the book leaves out.

Further Reading

• Wind, Sand and Stars, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

  Includes his account of the 1935 crash in the Libyan desert.

• Night Flight, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

• Saint-Exupéry: A Biography, Stacy Schiff