The Journey of the Little Prince

The story "The Little Prince", describes the journey of a little boy, the little prince from his planet to the earth. Compare and Contrast essays topics begin when the narrator, a pilot, has a plane crash and lands in the Sahara desert. He is all alone in the desert but he is determined to repair his plane before he can trace his way home. The crash is however very intense that it takes him a lot of time to fix the problem. Meanwhile, he runs out of water and food and there is no one in the desert to offer him these. As he is stranded; not knowing what to do next, a little boy, the little prince, approaches him and asks him to draw a sheep. The pilot agrees to draw the sheep and a friendship begins (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 12). In the process, the pilot discovers that the little prince comes from a planet that is commonly referred to as Asteroid B-612 though the prince calls it Asteroid-325. He also learns that the prince is the only person living in that planet and he has since been taking care of it so as to ensure that no harmful plants or baobab trees grow in that planet. His fear is that the baobabs are very large and their roots can penetrate deep and crack the planet into pieces (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 24).
However, one day a rose plant sprouts in the planet and the little prince becomes in love with it that and as a result, he does not destroy it like the other plants. After some time, he finds out that this rose is not faithful in its words. It keeps saying that it loves him but the actions do not mean the words. The rose is ever complaining even after everything that the prince does to ensure that it is comfortable. The little prince thus becomes annoyed and decides to leave the rose alone. To cure his anger, he decides to leave and visit as many other planets as possible. He begins his journey and visits six planets before landing into the earth where he meets the pilot. In these planets, he finds lonely adults who are narrow minded and can not think of anything useful apart from their occupations. Among the adults he meets include a king, a hopeless man, a drunkard, an entrepreneur, a lamplighter and a geographer. They all sound lonely and preoccupied by their occupations. He however does not get any useful information from all these people apart from the geographer who tells him that flowers do not live forever.
After this, the little prince continues with his journey and he finally lands on earth, in the core of the Sahara desert. The first creature he meets is a snake which tells him that its poison can take him back to where he comes from therefore if he wishes so he can ask the snake to bite him (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 67). The little prince ignores the snake's offer and continues with his journey, climbing the tallest mountain he comes across and calling if there is any human being around. But all he hears is the echo of his own words and thinks that the adults living on earth do not know how to communicate back and the only thing they can do is to mimic his words. He eventually finds a garden of roses and he is at first surprised and happy but he suddenly becomes sad because he remembers the rose he left on his planet had told him that it was the only one of its kind (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 82).
He then finds a fox and in the middle of their conversation, the fox tells him that the things that are only visible to the heart are the ones that are most important in life. It is at this point that the little prince comes to realization that even though he saw many roses in the garden, it is the love he has for the rose that he left in the planet that makes it so special and unique from the others (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 80). At this, the little prince concludes his story by telling the pilot how he met a salesclerk and a railway switchman.
The pilot is in his eighth day in the desert and together with the little prince set off to look for a well because they can no longer endure the thirst. They find some water which quenches their bodies as well as their hearts (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 96). They both agree that a good number of people live without knowing what is truthfully significant in their lives; the invisible things. The little prince is thinking about his rose and he starts making arrangements on how he will go back to his planet. The two friends walk back to the first place the little prince landed i.e. where he first saw the snake. He tells the pilot not to worry because his body is useless to him at that moment. He asks the snake to bite him and he immediately falls on the ground with a loud sound (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 103). The pilot has also finished fixing his plane and he is also planning to go back home. The next day he goes to the place where the body of the little prince had fallen and finds that it is not there. He is convinced that is friend has gone back to his planet. He also finds comfort in the stars as he hears the little prince laughing as they had agreed.
The actual journey of the little prince begins when the rose annoys him. We realize that before the rose sprouts; the little prince is living alone but very happy since there is no one to bother him. He is the one to order and decides what to do at what time. When the rose comes to his life, it becomes a bother since it asks him to cover it by the day, water it and protect it from the sun (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 13). He however does this passionately only to realize that he is giving his attention to the wrong subject. The rose is not appreciative and claims to love him while it does not. His journey is actually accelerated by the presence of the rose in his planet.
Philosophically, this journey tends to describe the kind of people that the little prince encounters and how people who are inferior suffer because of the people that are on authority. The six planets are philosophically taken as six countries with different kinds of leadership. In the first planets he lands in, the prince finds a king who is living alone and very commanding. He thinks that he can rule over every person that comes his way. The little prince also realizes that the king is over possessed by his authority and in turn it has made him a narrow-minded person thinking that he can control everything (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 43).

Comments