Book Review: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
My previous book review was on the book “In Praise of Folly” by Desiderius Erasmus. This was also the last time that I read a book as part of a book club. Ironically, “The Little Prince” somehow was very similar in theme so I wanted to share my thoughts.
“In Praise of Folly” in summary was a Daily Show-esque, maybe even George Carlin style evisceration of everything wrong with society about 500 years ago. More specifically, Erasmus criticized the church and the general foolishness of people. Despite over 400 years going by, “The Little Prince” hit on the same character flaws of SERIOUS adults running the show.
The main character in the book, “The Little Prince,” is of course a little prince but is also an alien who came to Earth except without green screen and big weird eyes. He is a cute little prince drawn in the quintessential french style. Kind of like a cartoon version of the weird sculpture below which is probably some tourist trap in France I’m assuming.
Anyway… the prince travels to Earth after stopping by quite a few weird little planets or asteroids each containing one weird person. One is a businessman that can’t stop counting stars because he wants to “own” them, another is a drunk, one more is a geographer who has not drawn any maps because he doesn’t do any exploring himself, another is a very reasonable king who still commanded and finally there is a lamplighter. The prince only liked the lamplighter because he is the only that didn’t only think about himself. Each of the other weird guys was quite obsessed with themselves which was a good lesson learned. Too many people are extremely obsessed with themselves rather than thinking about other people.
Another theme of the novel was appreciating scarcity and uniqueness. The prince had a rose on his planet which he had a toxic relationship with and apparently was a metaphor for the author’s relationship with his wife in real life. Remind me to tell you more about this hero author. Anyway, the prince loved this rose however the rose was also very mean to the prince. That being said when the prince encounters many roses on earth he makes an observation that it is not possible for someone to love one rose when you have so many. This is a good observation in this day and age when everybody is trying to have as many connections as possible whether it is on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter or if you are a “businessman,” then LinkedIn. However, it is a slippery slope to the point that you have no real connections. I remember in high school when Facebook was first coming out, I’m old, everybody would almost compete with each other with how many friends they had a Facebook. They would try to get more and more and more friends but to what end?
After reading the book I did some research into the book and the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and came to realize the reality is stranger than fiction. First of all, this book is the second most translated novel in history; second only to the bible. Second, the author despite being French wrote it in the US. At this time it was WW2 and France became overrun with Nazis so Antoine de Saint-Exupéry fled to the US because he disagreed with the politics. While in the US he wrote The Little Prince and also his two other most famous novels; you can look it up. This is where he becomes a hero or rather maybe a martyr. He became so angry about what was going on that he joined the French opposition to fight the the Nazis and unfortunately died in a plane crash.
This relates to the book because Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a pilot and the other important character in the book is a pilot who crashed in Africa which mirrors ANOTHER time Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (thank god for copy and paste) crashed in Lybia. During my book club we observed the strange relationship between the pilot in the book and the prince as both relate to the author in very different ways. The pilot is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry when he crashed and almost died of thirst and hunger. The prince however is the part of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that not only abandoned his wife but also is still a child. The pilot in the book is a typical adult who is trying to survive and be practical. The prince is a child who asks “why? why? why?” all the time however has a good heart. By the end of the book, not much of a spoiler, the pilot and the prince form a beautiful relationship which means Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is forming a relationship with himself in a way OR RATHER Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is realizing something about himself while almost dying. He is realizing his wife that is really annoying and toxic maybe ain’t so bad. He is also realizing he needs to not be a self involved prick like a typical businessman.
I’m really curious your, the reader, thoughts about this book. If you haven’t read it you can actually download it for free as it is so old that it is open domain: