The Little Prince. Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Brief Biography of Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The reflection in her true essence of beauty, the meaning of life. The salvation of mankind from the impending inevitable catastrophe as one of the themes in the works of the writer. The tale by Saint-Exupery.

Рубрика Литература
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Язык английский
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The Little Prince. Antoine De Saint-Exupery

“All grown-ups were children once (but most of them have forgotten).”

Brief Biography of Antoine de Saint-Exupйry

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was born on the 29th of June in 1900 in Lyon, France. Born into an aristocratic family, Antoine de Saint-Exupйry was the third of five children and one of two sons in the family. After failing his final exams at the preparatory Naval Academy, Saint-Exupйry enrolled in the Йcole des Beaux-Arts as an auditor to study architecture for 15 months, before dropping out again to take odd jobs and eventually to become an aviator.

During his years as a pilot, Saint-Exupйry began writing, and several years later, with the publication of his novel Vol de nuit (Night Flight), he was established as a rising star in the literary world.

Saint-Exupйry continued to fly, joining the French Air Force upon the beginning of World War II. However, after the Fall of France, Saint-Exupйry and his wife Consuelo Suncin fled to New York, where he would eventually write and illustrate The Little Prince. Following the publication of The Little Prince in 1943, Saint-Exupйry decided to return to war to fight with the Allies. In 1944, during his final reconnaissance mission in the Rhone Valley, however, his aircraft disappeared dramatically, without a trace.

He sadly didn't live to see his little book become an international publishing success. To date, it has been translated into over 180 languages and has sold over 80 million copies worldwide.

While you are looking though Key Facts about The Little Prince I,d like to draw attention to the point of view in the fable. The narrator gives a first-person account, although he spends large portions of the story recounting the little prince's own story of his travels.

Saint-Exupery's language is more poetic and straightforward than most novels of this reading level, partially because of his writing style and partly a result of the translation from the French. He presents his themes rather openly through the dialogue and narration, he never feels forced. When describing his surreal, touching encounter with the little prince, the narrator's tone is bittersweet. When describing the adult world, the narrator's tone is matter-of-fact and often regretful.

Main Characters of the novella

The Pilot/Narrator

The narrator is really the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupйry. The reader hears his voice throughout the book as he relates the story of the Little Prince and of his own friendship with him. The narrator says plainly that he is a romantic who does not like adults, whom he finds too practical; instead, he prefers children, whom he finds natural and delightful. The narrator writes this story of his encounter with the Little Prince in order to deal with the sorrow of losing his precious friend.

The Little Prince

The novel is named after the Little Prince, who is a mystical and loveable person. The prince is described as having golden hair, a scarf, and a lovable laugh. He is the sole inhabitant of a small planet, which the narrator refers to as B-612. The Prince leaves his planet to visit other places and finally lands on Earth. Though the prince is sociable and meets a number of characters as he travels, he never stops loving and missing the rose on his home planet. In the Sahara Desert, he meets the narrator and befriends him. Frequently perplexed by the behavior of grown-ups, the prince symbolizes the hope, love, innocence, and insight of childhood that lie dormant in all of us.

The Rose/Flower

The rose is the object of the little prince's affection. She is beautiful and vain, given to telling dramatic lies, which prompts the little prince to leave his planet and set off on his journey. She apologizes right before he leaves, but he decides to go anyway--eventually, he feels sorry for leaving her and tries to return to his planet to protect her.

The Fox -Although the fox asks the little prince to tame him, the fox is in some ways the more knowledgeable of the two characters, and he helps steer the prince toward what is important in life.

The Snake- The first character the prince meets on Earth, who ultimately sends the prince back to the heavens by biting him. A constant enigma, the snake speaks in riddles and evokes the snake of the Bible, which incites Adam and Eve's eviction from Eden by luring them into eating the forbidden fruit.

The Lamplighter

The fifth and The most complex figure the prince encounters before landing on Earth. At first, the lamplighter appears to be yet another ridiculous character with no real purpose, but his selfless devotion to his orders earns him the little prince's admiration. Of all the adults the little prince encounters before reaching Earth, the lamplighter is the only one the prince thinks he could befriend.

The Geographer

The sixth and final character the little prince encounters before he lands on Earth. Although the geographer is apparently well-read, he refuses to learn about his own planet, saying it is a job for explorers. He recommends that the little prince visit Earth, and his comments on the ephemeral nature of flowers reveal to the prince that his own flower will not last forever.

The Little Prince Summary

The story begins when the narrator depicts his childhood, when he drew many creative pictures and showed them to adults but was disheartened by their crude comments. He says he then gave up his potential career of an artist and putting his creativity to use, and instead became a pilot, because it was what the adults believed was sensible.

One day, his plane crashes and lands in the middle of the Sahara Desert. He attempts to fix his engine, knowing that he only has a limited supply of food and water. He wakes one morning at daybreak to a little voice asking him to …”Please, will you draw me a little lamb!” It is the Little Prince. After making several attempts at drawing the sheep, he settles on sketching a box--he tells the little prince that the box contains a sheep, and to the pilot's astonishment, the little prince is delighted.

The Little Prince comes from a planet a long way away that the little prince calls Asteroid 325, but that people on Earth call Asteroid B 612. It is a very small planet, no bigger than a house, and he looks after it all by himself. He sweeps the chimneys of his three little volcanoes every day and weeds the ground from invasive baobab plants. One day, a new seed comes up through the soil and he watches it grow and develop and get bigger, looking more and more unusual, until it finally blooms into a beautiful, yet thorny flower. The Little Prince gets talking to the flower and it becomes quite a bossy, vain, demanding and opinionated little flower; demanding water and wind shields and a glass dome to protect it from the cold. The Little Prince loves this precious flower but he doesn't know how to handle her over-sized ego, so he makes his escape from his beloved planet and sets off an adventure.

The little prince first encounters a king who claims to rule over everything, including the stars. He has no subjects on his own planet to rule, however, and the little prince grows bored and leaves. The second person the little prince meets is a conceited man who enjoys applause and admiration. The third is a tippler who says that he drinks to forget that he is ashamed of drinking. The fourth grownup is a businessman who is busy counting the stars so that he may own them.

At this point, the little prince finds all the grownups very strange, and he continues onto the planet of the lamplighter, who lights a lamp on his planet when night falls and puts it out again when the sun rises. The little prince finds the lamplighter to be the least ridiculous of all the grownups because he thinks of something other than himself. little prince saint exupery

The little prince then comes across a geographer who tells the little prince that his rose is "ephemeral," or in other words, "in danger of speedy disappearance." This alarms the little prince and makes him regret leaving his rose. Nevertheless, he continues on his journey to the planet Earth.

The little prince lands in the middle of the Sahara desert, where he encounters a snake. The snake speaks in riddles, hinting that he has a powerful poison that can take the little prince back to his planet. The little prince continues to travel on Earth, however, eventually discovering a bed of roses, all identical to his own rose on asteroid B-612, making him question his own rose's contention that it is unique.

He then meets a fox, who teaches the little prince what it means to tame--or to establish ties--with another. The little prince realizes that his rose has tamed him, making her unique in the universe, even if she's outwardly identical to all the other roses on Earth.

From the fox, he learns: “People no longer have the time to understand anything. They buy things that are ready-made from the shops. But as there are no shops selling friends, people no longer have any friends.”

The fox tells him his secret: “You only see clearly with your heart. The most important things are invisible to the eyes. You mustn't forget this simple truth. You are responsible for ever for those you have tamed.”

The little prince goes on to meet a railway switchman and a merchant before returning to the Sahara where he meets the pilot. By the end of his story, the little prince and the pilot are both very thirsty, and they decide to walk and find water. They discover a well around daybreak, and together they savor the drink as well as their time together.

The little prince explains that the next day is the anniversary of his descent to Earth. He sends the pilot away to fix his plane and tells him to come meet him at the same spot the following evening. The pilot fixes his engine and returns the next evening to find the little prince conversing with the poisonous snake. The little prince warns the pilot that he must return to his planet and that it will "look a little as if I were dying." The little prince allows the snake to poison him, and he falls gently to the sand.

The narrator takes comfort when he cannot find the prince's body the next day and is confident that the prince has returned to his asteroid. The narrator is also comforted by the stars, in which he now hears the tinkling of his friend's laughter. Often, however, he grows sad and wonders if the sheep he drew has eaten the prince's rose. The narrator concludes by showing his readers a drawing of the desert landscape and by asking us to stop for a while under the stars if we are ever in the area and to let the narrator know immediately if the little prince has returned.

My opinion

If you asked me on who should read this book, I probably would say that this book is not intended for children but for the young-adult and adult who remembers being a child and feels nostalgic about it. And by the way, I think the young kids will not fully understand the true meaning of this book if they had a chance to read it.

It is a beautiful story, simply told and illustrated, and with a gentle philosophy in the tradition of the best moral tales such as Aesop's Fables and the Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen. The author gently attacks the stupidity or short-sightedness of adults throughout the book, leaving us to wonder how we lose the inquisitiveness and unrestricted views of childhood.

The story also teaches us the importance of friendship and responsibility. I loved this book so much and now I think that this story is still being taught to students even though it was published years ago. It's a masterpiece, a treasure and a story that I highly recommend you to read.

“If you appreciate the simple things in life, if you want to know what is it that makes children find so much joy out of life, read this book and you'll treasure its simple but deep wisdom”

“All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.”

In each one of us there is a dormant child that we never remember to bring up to live again. The innocence is lost in the grown-ups world.

“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched; they are felt with the heart.”

The most beautiful things in life are not the material things, but the things that have touched our hearts, our feelings.

I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them.

“Where are the people?” resumed the little prince at last. “It's a little lonely in the desert…” “It is lonely when you're among people, too,” said the snake.”

It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom.

"Well, I must endure two or three caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies"

"The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words."

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