Memes are a thing these days, have you noticed? Some are funny, many are horrid, and once in a while you stumble across a gem that perfectly explains something in your life. This meme basically sums up The Little Prince:
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery is a short novel originally published in French in 1943. It chronicles the meeting of a pilot crashed in the desert and a strange little man who wants him to draw a sheep. Over the course of the novella we learn that the little man is a prince – not only a prince, but one from another planet. He’s had an incredible journey through the stars (by a flock of birds, no less) and much to say about “matters of consequence.”
I first read this book when I was in first grade. As a child myself, I found it an amusing story. To live on a planet the size of a house with only a rose as a friend? It was delightful. But there is so much more! When I was a senior in high school, I read the novella in French, followed by 2 or 3 essays also written in French. Because Honors French 4, right? I began to grasp some of the deeper life lessons. I also appreciated the beauty in the flow of the writing, some of which is lost in translation (French is an exceptionally beautiful language). My essays focused on the different grown ups the prince met in his travels and how empty their lives were. I’m pretty sure my teacher was trying to prepare us for college without saying trite things herself 😀
This time, while reading, I wept. I wept over the narrator’s lost art career (Can’t you tell it’s a boa?). I wept over the idea of taming each other – for “one only understands the things that one tames” (pg 85). I wept for the baobab seeds infesting the soil, and for what happens if you put off for tomorrow the work of removing them. And I have wept for the times I have been too much like the grown ups.
For of course, this book has tamed me, and “one runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed…” (p 99)
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This is my 8th entry in the 2016 Back to the Classics challenge, for the category of “Books in Translation.” The link up can be found here.
Gabi Sunshine 