'Little Prince' for child in all of us
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E-mail shanghaidaily.com, August 8, 2016
About eighty years ago, French writer Antoine de St-Exupery wrote "The Little Prince."
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A book cover of "The Little Prince." |
From the very first, the story stresses the difference in the values held by adults and children. Adults fixate on money, status and the paraphernalia of rank and fashion; while children and the young-at-heart focus on relationships.
St-Exupery drew from his own life to depict the character of the Pilot. One night, the Pilot crash landed in the Sahara desert with drinking water to last eight days.
The next day, the Pilot was woken by a soft voice saying: "Please draw a lamb for me!"
Thus we see the start of the friendship between the Pilot, now stranded in the desert, and the Little Prince, who came to Earth from a planet no bigger than a house.
The Pilot and the Little Prince then spent the next few days together in the desert. The Little Prince described his travels through space, and also his impressions of the planet Earth.
The Little prince found Earth "dry and harsh, and people have no imagination." He walked into a rose garden, covered with five thousand roses. It reminded him of his own Rose, a flower unique in the whole universe.
Then a fox appeared and engaged the Little Prince in conversation and taught him a critical lesson: "If you tame me, my life will be filled with sunshine. I'll know the sound of your footsteps that will be different from all the rest. Other footsteps send me back underground. Yours will call me out of my burrow like music."
As the fox said goodbye, he gave the Little Prince a parting admonition: "Here's my secret... One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."
"For instance," the fox explained, "It's the time you spend on your rose that makes your rose so important…" So that was what the fox had meant by "taming" — that you care for and leave your mark on something and achieve a relationship.
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