magical books
cliché to say The Little Prince is one of my fave books, but "all grown-ups were once children..."
summary
I try to re-read The Little Prince regularly because it’s easy to read as a short book and it reminds me to reset my mindset about life.1
full
I’m going through the Gotham’s Writers’ Workshop: Writing Fiction book and the first task is to “choose a work of fiction that you cherish.”2 Difficult to choose just one, but I’m going to have to go with the children’s classic, The Little Prince (1943) by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.3
⚠️ Warning: spoilers ahead.
If you haven’t read it yet, it’s a story told from the POV of a pilot whose plane crashes in the middle of the desert and he’s trying to fix it. He talks about his childhood briefly and how he became a pilot because he was discouraged by adults to be an artist.
While trying to fix his plane, he encounters a young boy who turns out to be a prince from another planet. He was the only person on his planet and he took care of it, including this beautiful rose that he loved deeply.
One day, the prince had a falling out with the rose and decided to explore the universe by visiting other planets and meeting other people. He encounters a lot of adults and finds their behaviors bizarre. Eventually, he lands on Earth where he meets a fox that he develops a deep relationship with, and finally, he meets the narrator (the pilot), who is telling his story.
“In a single sentence, try to state the major reason why you love reading this work.”
Every time I read this book, I feel like my brain rewires the way I think about life, and it makes me feel a full spectrum of human emotions, from love to loss.
“List several ways with which you think the author achieved this effect. Tune in to the source of the magic.”
This is what I personally noticed from the book (which could differ a lot from others!):
- It’s written for children in a humorous and adventurous way, but it’s also very sad. It seems like the themes go much deeper and are felt more personally as I grow older, and hopefully wiser.
It’s humorous to adults because it’s in the perspective of how children feel about grown-ups who don’t seem to understand what the truly important things are in life: “I gave up mentioning boa constrictors or primeval forests or stars. I would bring myself down to his or her level and talk about bridge, golf, politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be very pleased to have met such a sensible person.”
The author Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a commercial pilot until WWII when he joined France’s Air Force to do recon missions, and once France fell to Germany, he was exiled to the US, which is when he published The Little Prince. It’s likely that a lot of the philosophical and sad themes of the book stemmed from world and personal events at the time.
- I love that there are drawings! It makes sense as a children’s book, but the illustrations are only in the parts of the story that truly need them.
- There are a lot of literary techniques employed like repetition, similes, juxtaposition, and foreshadowing to keep the story engaging and easy to follow.
- The story is mysterious and incredulous in the first half, and obviously fictional, but the themes are relatable and truth-seeking, and the more I progress in the story, the less far-fetched it seems to get.
- I like how he inserts a lot of random facts, like the Sahara Desert or the baobab trees, making it more fun. I feel like a kid again when I read the story.
- The narrator switches between talking about the prince in third person to talking to the prince in second person, keeping the emotion very real between wanting to share a good story to his audience (who are children) vs how much he misses the prince (or perhaps who he once was).
All these elements encourage me to question what is considered “normal” in the way I see things, while also making me feel certain things more deeply, and I think the best literature books have these effects.
Thank you for reading! Btw I shuttered munchies because I originally thought I would post more often, but I want to avoid posting fatigue (for both me and you) so I’m bringing all my posts back to my original Substack and won’t be publishing that frequently.
I have a Google form where you can share ideas or feedback. Let me know if you noticed anything else in The Little Prince that I didn’t mention, or if there’s a book you cherish and can share some of its magic too ✨
I say “try” because sometimes, there’s just not enough time due to busy schedules and life events (like having a baby), but actually, those should be the best times to read it! Each time I re-read it again, it seems to get more sad though, maybe in part because I get older and further away from being a child.
The exact prompt: “Choose a work of fiction that you cherish. In a single sentence, try to state the major reason why you love reading this work. Then list several ways with which you think the author achieved this effect. The reasons don’t have to employ any fancy terms and they don’t have to make sense to anyone but you. You’re simply trying to tune in to the source of the magic.”
The original is written in French but I read the English version.