Who hasn't read Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince? Probably, there are very few such people, because everyone should read this unusual fairy tale in their life. At least that's what I think. The writer wrote a fairy tale that went far beyond the limits and canons of the genre, and when you read The Little Prince, thoughts constantly come into your head: what am I reading now? It seems to me that the work is like a parable, which leads us to thoughts about universal moral values and the secrets of being. The little prince is an amazing character. The writer created such a hero who combines the immediacy of a child, the straightforwardness of the soul and the ability to understand the true essence of things as they are. The last feature is usually famous for the wise old people.
The actions of the protagonist are striking in their originality. His touching care for a capricious rose that requires watering, closing with a screen or a glass cap is touching. After arriving on Earth, the Little Prince wonders why the rose is so dear to him, because she is not the only one on the planet. Then a friend of Foxes came to his aid, prompting the hero that only the heart is vigilant. And the truth is, you can't see the main thing with your eyes.
Thanks to these words, the golden-haired hero understands that the rose is the only one in the world, they became friends and filled each other's life with meaning. I am amazed at the accuracy of Lis's words! You will not see with your eyes how homey and cozy the house is, and how beautiful and attractive the stars are. To realize this, you need to have a sensitive heart, in which there is no place for anger, envy, hypocrisy, greed. Only the heart is able to internally feel the happiness and joy that is hidden behind the shell.
"The Little Prince" is a subtle fairy tale-story, almost a parable, about all sorts of relationships. To yourself. to your planet. To purity in every sense - internal, external. To a new, unfamiliar friend, for example, Fox. To the beloved, capricious and absurd at first glance, Rose, who had to be kept under a glass cap, but who did not let her down at the right time and turned out to be the “Girl What You Need”!
This story is also about the author himself, who disappeared without a trace from the planet somewhere in the desert. Saint-Exupery's plane crashed, probably over the desert, but exact data on this has not yet been found. More precisely, they are, but controversial. The writer himself refers to the snake bite. But in my opinion, the Snake is an allegory. In general, everything in a fairy tale is an allegory. But the most important thought of the author, it seems to me, is as follows: “You can’t see the most important thing with your eyes,” said the Fox ... Only the heart is vigilant! And therefore, my low bow to Antoine de Saint-Exupery for writing the greatest fairy tale that will help adults preserve the purity of the soul inherent in children.
Reading the works of A. de Saint-Exupery, you more sharply feel the beauty of the world and the power of human attraction to brotherhood. The writer and pilot died three weeks before the liberation of his native France (1944) - he did not return to base from a combat mission, but his books continue to help us better understand ourselves and the world around us.
The philosophical tale "The Little Prince" was written by Exupery shortly before his death. The wisdom of her hints cannot always be conveyed by formulas and words. Halftones and shades of allegorical images are as delicate as the elegant drawings with which the author illustrated his work.
The little prince, the main character of the tale, is shown to us on a journey, on the move, in search, although he understands that from time to time you need to stop and look back and around: if you go straight ahead, wherever your eyes look, you will not go far. On different planets, he meets with their adult inhabitants, who, by income figures, ambition, greed, have forgotten their human calling.
On Earth, the Little Prince finds himself in a garden full of roses. In this difficult moment for the baby, when he is thrilled by the thought that the rose was deceiving him, talking about its uniqueness, November appears. He speaks about the bottomlessness of the human heart, teaches the true understanding of love, which perishes in the hustle and bustle of life. Never talk sincerely, look inside yourself, think about the meaning of life. To have friends, you need to give them your whole soul, give the most precious thing - your time: "Your Rose is so dear to you because you gave her so much time." And the Prince understands: his Rose is the only one in the world, because he "tamed" her. Every feeling, including love, must be earned by tireless mental work. “Only the heart sees well. The most important thing is not visible to the eyes. One must be able to be devoted in friendship and love, one cannot be passive towards evil, because everyone is responsible not only for their own destiny.
Absorbing the moral lessons of a small but so capacious work in its content, one can agree with the opinion of A. Prasolov, a Russian poet: “Saint-Exupery wrote about the Little Prince shortly before his end ... perhaps human souls (individual, some) always give out their last swan-clean, parting cry ... ". This fairy tale is a kind of testament of a wise man to us who are left on this imperfect planet. And is it a fairy tale? Let's remember the desert where the pilot, who had an accident, meets the Little Prince. In any extreme situation, it happens that her whole life passes before a person. I remember the good, but more often - where and when you showed cowardice, dishonesty, dishonesty. A person “suddenly” sees and realizes something that he underestimated or did not pay attention to throughout his life, and therefore a prayer comes out of his mouth in these moments of truth and insight: “Lord! Take away trouble, and I will become better, more noble and generous "
Apparently, in the image of the Little Prince, his sinless childhood came to the narrator (“But you are innocent and came from the star,” the author says, referring to the Little Prince), his pure, unsullied conscience. So the little hero helped the pilot to take a sharper and more careful look at life, at his place in it, and evaluate it all in a new way. The narrator returns to his comrades as a completely different person: he understood how to make friends, what to value and what to fear, that is, he became wiser and less frivolous. The little prince taught him to LIVE. It is in the desert, far from the hustle and bustle, that it completely absorbs us and our souls, where alone the prophets and hermits learned great truths, the pilot, also alone, approached understanding the meaning of life. But the desert is also a symbol of human loneliness: “It’s lonely with people too…”.
A magical, sad parable, “disguised as a fairy tale” (A. Panfilov)! Moral and philosophical problems are revealed in it with the help of elegant aphorisms, which then accompany us in our lives, asking for moral guidelines: “It is much more difficult to judge oneself than others. If you manage to judge yourself correctly, you are actually wise”, “Popular people are deaf to everything except praise”, “But the eyes do not see. One must seek with the heart.”
This work makes us take a different look at the world around us and people. Each of the newborns seems to be the same mysterious and mysterious baby as the one who came to planet Earth from his tiny planet. These Little Princes came to know our world, to become smarter, more experienced, to learn to search and see with the heart. Each of them will have their own worries, each will be responsible for someone, for something and deeply aware of their duty - just as the Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery felt his duty to the one and only rose. And may they always be accompanied by victory over the terrible baobabs!
At the age of six, the boy read about how a boa constrictor swallows its prey, and drew a snake that swallowed an elephant. It was a drawing of a boa constrictor on the outside, but the adults claimed it was a hat. Adults always need to explain everything, so the boy made another drawing - a boa constrictor from the inside. Then the adults advised the boy to give up this nonsense - according to them, he should have done more geography, history, arithmetic and spelling. So the boy abandoned a brilliant career as an artist. He had to choose another profession: he grew up and became a pilot, but as before, he showed his first drawing to those adults who seemed to him smarter and more intelligent than the rest, and everyone answered that it was a hat. It was impossible to talk heart to heart with them - about boas, jungles and stars. And the pilot lived alone until he met the Little Prince.
It happened in the Sahara. Something broke in the plane's engine: the pilot had to fix it or die, because there was only water left for a week. At dawn, the pilot was awakened by a thin voice - a tiny baby with golden hair, unknown how he got into the desert, asked him to draw a lamb for him. The astonished pilot did not dare to refuse, especially since his new friend was the only one who managed to make out in the first drawing a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant. Gradually it turned out that the Little Prince came from a planet called "asteroid B-612" - of course, the number is only needed for boring adults who love numbers.
The whole planet was the size of a house, and the Little Prince had to take care of it: every day he cleaned three volcanoes - two active and one extinct, and also weeded out the sprouts of baobabs. The pilot did not immediately understand the danger baobabs pose, but then he guessed and, in order to warn all the children, he drew a planet where a lazy person lived, who did not weed out three bushes in time. But the Little Prince always put his planet in order. But his life was sad and lonely, so he loved to watch the sunset - especially when he was sad. He did this several times a day, simply by moving his chair to follow the sun. Everything changed when a wonderful flower appeared on his planet: it was a beauty with thorns - proud, touchy and ingenuous. The little prince fell in love with her, but she seemed to him capricious, cruel and arrogant - he was then too young and did not understand how this flower lit up his life. And so the Little Prince cleaned his volcanoes for the last time, pulled out the sprouts of baobabs, and then said goodbye to his flower, which only at the moment of farewell admitted that he loved him.
He went on a journey and visited six neighboring asteroids. The king lived on the first one: he so wanted to have subjects that he offered the Little Prince to become a minister, and the kid thought that adults were very strange people. On the second planet lived an ambitious person, on the third - a drunkard, on the fourth - a businessman, and on the fifth - a lamplighter. All adults seemed extremely strange to the Little Prince, and only he liked the Lamplighter: this man remained faithful to the agreement to light the lamps in the evenings and extinguish the lanterns in the mornings, although his planet was so reduced that day and night changed every minute. Don't be so small here. The little prince would have stayed with the Lamplighter, because he really wanted to make friends with someone - besides, on this planet you could admire the sunset one thousand four hundred and forty times a day!
On the sixth planet lived a geographer. And since he was a geographer, he was supposed to ask travelers about the countries where they came from in order to write down their stories in books. The little prince wanted to tell about his flower, but the geographer explained that only mountains and oceans are written in books, because they are eternal and unchanging, and flowers do not live long. Only then did the Little Prince realize that his beauty would soon disappear, and he left her alone, without protection and help! But the insult has not yet passed, and the Little Prince went on, but he thought only of his abandoned flower.
The seventh was the Earth - a very difficult planet! Suffice it to say that there are one hundred and eleven kings, seven thousand geographers, nine hundred thousand businessmen, seven and a half million drunkards, three hundred and eleven million ambitious people - a total of about two billion adults. But the Little Prince made friends only with the snake, the Fox and the pilot. The snake promised to help him when he bitterly regrets his planet. And Fox taught him to be friends. Everyone can tame someone and become his friend, but you always need to be responsible for those whom you have tamed. And the Fox also said that only the heart is vigilant - you cannot see the most important thing with your eyes. Then the Little Prince decided to return to his rose, because he was responsible for it. He went to the desert - to the very place where he fell. So they met the pilot. The pilot drew him a lamb in a box and even a muzzle for a lamb, although he used to think that he could only draw boas - inside and out. The little prince was happy, but the pilot felt sad - he realized that he was also tamed. Then the Little Prince found a yellow snake, whose bite kills in half a minute: she helped him, as promised. The snake can return everyone to where he came from - she returns people to the earth, and she returned the Little Prince to the stars. The kid told the pilot that it would only look like death, so there is no need to be sad - let the pilot remember him, looking at the night sky. And when the Little Prince laughs, it will seem to the pilot that all the stars are laughing like five hundred million bells.
The pilot repaired his plane, and his comrades were delighted with his return. Since then six years have passed: little by little he was comforted and fell in love with looking at the stars. But he is always excited: he forgot to draw a muzzle strap, and the lamb could eat the rose. Then it seems to him that all the bells are crying. After all, if the rose is no longer in the world, everything will be different, but no adult will ever understand how important this is.
The Little Prince is the most famous work of Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Published in 1943 as a children's book. The drawings in the book are made by the author himself and are no less famous than the book itself. It is important that these are not illustrations, but an organic part of the work as a whole: the author himself and the heroes of the tale all the time refer to the drawings and even argue about them. “After all, all adults were children at first, only few of them remember this” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery, from a dedication to the book. During the meeting with the author, the Little Prince is already familiar with the drawing "Elephant in a Boa". This is the story of the accidental landing of the writer himself and his mechanic Prevost in the desert.
Features of the genre of the work. The need for deep generalizations prompted Saint-Exupery to turn to the parable genre. The absence of concrete historical content, the conventionality characteristic of this genre, its didactic conditionality allowed the writer to express his views on the moral problems of the time that worried him. The genre of the parable becomes the implementer of Saint-Exupery's reflections on the essence of human existence. A fairy tale, like a parable, is the oldest genre of oral folk art. It teaches a person to live, instills optimism in him, affirms faith in the triumph of goodness and justice. Real human relationships are always hidden behind the fantastic nature of the fairy tale and fiction. Like a parable, moral and social truth always triumphs in a fairy tale. The fairy tale-parable "The Little Prince" was written not only for children, but also for adults who have not yet completely lost their childish impressionability, a childishly open view of the world and the ability to fantasize. The author himself possessed such childlike sharp eyesight. The fact that the "Little Prince" is a fairy tale is determined by the fairy-tale features in the story: the hero's fantastic journey, fairy-tale characters (Fox, Snake, Rose). The work of A. Saint-Exupery "The Little Prince" belongs to the genre of philosophical fairy tale-parable. Themes and problems of the tale. The salvation of mankind from the coming inevitable catastrophe is one of the main themes of the fairy tale "The Little Prince". This poetic tale is about the courage and wisdom of an artless child's soul, about such important "non-childish" concepts as life and death, love and responsibility, friendship and fidelity. The ideological idea of the tale.“Love does not mean looking at each other, it means looking in the same direction” - this thought determines the ideological concept of the story-tale. The Little Prince was written in 1943, and the tragedy of Europe in World War II, the writer's memories of a defeated, occupied France leave their mark on the work. With his light, sad and wise tale, Exupery defended the undying humanity, the living spark in the souls of people. In a sense, the story was the result of the writer's creative path, his philosophical, artistic comprehension. Only an artist is able to see the essence - the inner beauty and harmony of the world around him. Even on the planet of the lamplighter, the Little Prince remarks: “When he lights the lantern, it is as if one star or flower is still being born. And when he extinguishes the lantern, it is as if a star or a flower falls asleep. Great job. It's really useful because it's beautiful." The protagonist speaks to the inner side of the beautiful, and not to its outer shell. Human labor must make sense - and not just turn into mechanical actions. Any business is useful only when it is internally beautiful. Features of the plot of a fairy tale. Saint-Exupéry took the traditional fairy tale plot as a basis (The handsome prince leaves his father's house because of unhappy love and wanders along endless roads in search of happiness and adventure. He tries to gain fame and thereby win the unapproachable heart of the princess.), but rethinks it in a different way. his, even ironically. His handsome prince is just a child, suffering from a capricious and eccentric flower. Naturally, there is no question of a happy ending with a wedding. In his wanderings, the Little Prince meets not with fabulous monsters, but with people bewitched, like an evil spell, by selfish and petty passions. But this is only the outer side of the plot. Despite the fact that the Little Prince is a child, the true vision of the world is revealed to him, which is inaccessible even to an adult. Yes, and people with dead souls, whom the main character meets on his way, are much worse than fairy-tale monsters. The relationship between the prince and the Rose is much more complicated than the relationship between princes and princesses from folklore tales. After all, it is for the sake of the Rose that the Little Prince sacrifices his material shell - he chooses bodily death. There are two storylines in the story: the narrator and the theme of the world of adults associated with him and the line of the Little Prince, the story of his life. Features of the composition of the tale. The composition of the work is very peculiar. The parabola is the main component of the structure of the traditional parable. The Little Prince is no exception. It looks like this: the action takes place in a specific time and a specific situation. The plot develops as follows: there is a movement along a curve, which, having reached the highest point of incandescence, again returns to the starting point. The peculiarity of such plot construction is that, having returned to the starting point, the plot acquires a new philosophical and ethical meaning. A new point of view on the problem finds a solution. The beginning and end of the story "The Little Prince" are related to the hero's arrival on Earth or leaving the Earth, the pilot and the Fox. The little prince again flies to his planet to look after and raise a beautiful Rose. The time that the pilot and the prince - an adult and a child spent together, they discovered a lot of new things both in each other and in life. After parting, they took with them pieces of each other, they became wiser, learned the world of another and their own, only from the other side. Artistic features of the work. The story has a very rich language. The author uses a lot of amazing and inimitable literary techniques. A melody is heard in its text: “... And at night I like to listen to the stars. It's like five hundred million bells ... "It's simple - it's a child's truth and accuracy. Exupery's language is full of memories and thoughts about life, about the world and, of course, about childhood: "... When I was six years old ... I once saw an amazing picture ..." or: "... For six years now, how my friend left me with the lamb. The style and the special, mystical manner of Saint-Exupery, which is unlike anything else, is a transition from an image to a generalization, from a parable to morality. The language of his work is natural and expressive: “laughter, like a spring in the desert”, “five hundred million bells” It would seem that ordinary, familiar concepts suddenly acquire a new original meaning from him: “water”, “fire”, “friendship”, etc. d. Just as fresh and natural are many of his metaphors: “they (volcanoes) sleep deep underground until one of them decides to wake up”; the writer uses paradoxical combinations of words that you won’t find in ordinary speech: “children should be very condescending to adults”, “if you go straight and straight, you won’t go far ...” or “people don’t have enough time to learn something ". The narrative style of the story also has a number of features. This is a confidential conversation of old friends - this is how the author communicates with the reader. We feel the presence of the author, who believes in goodness and reason, in the near future, when life on earth will change. One can speak of a peculiar melodic narration, sad and thoughtful, built on soft transitions from humor to serious thoughts, on semitones, transparent and light, like watercolor illustrations of a fairy tale, created by the writer himself and being an integral part of the artistic fabric of the work. The phenomenon of the fairy tale "The Little Prince" is that, written for adults, it has firmly entered the circle of children's reading.
The Little Prince was born in 1943 in America, where Antoine de Saint-Exupery fled from Nazi-occupied France. An unusual fairy tale, equally well perceived by both children and adults, turned out to be relevant not only during the Second World War. Today, she still reads to her people who are trying to find in the "Little Prince" the answers to eternal questions about the meaning of life, the essence of love, the price of friendship, the necessity of death.
By form- a story in twenty-seven parts plot- a fairy tale that tells about the magical adventures of the Prince Charming, who left his native kingdom because of unhappy love, in terms of artistic organization - a parable - is simple in speech performance (it is very easy to learn French using The Little Prince) and complex in terms of philosophical content.
main idea fairy tales-parables are a statement of the true values of human existence. home antithesis- sensual and rational perception of the world. The first is characteristic of children and those rare adults who have not lost their childlike purity and naivety. The second is the prerogative of adults who are firmly rooted in the world of rules created by themselves, often ridiculous even from the point of view of reason.
The appearance of the Little Prince on Earth symbolizes the birth of a person who comes into our world with a pure soul and a loving heart, open to friendship. The return of the fairy-tale hero home occurs through real death, coming from the poison of a desert snake. The physical death of the Little Prince embodies the Christian idea of eternal life a soul that can go to Heaven only by leaving its body shell on earth. The annual stay of a fairy-tale hero on Earth correlates with the idea of the spiritual growth of a person who learns to be friends and love, take care of others and understand them.
image of the little prince based on fairy tale motifs and the image of the author of the work - a representative of an impoverished noble family, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who bore the nickname "The Sun King" in childhood. A little boy with golden hair is the soul of an author who never grew up. The meeting of an adult pilot with his childish self takes place at one of the most tragic moments of his life - a plane crash in the Sahara desert. Balancing on the verge of life and death, the author learns the story of the Little Prince during the repair of the aircraft and not only talks to him, but also goes together to the well, and even carries his subconscious in his arms, giving him the features of a real, different character.
The relationship between the Little Prince and the Rose is an allegorical depiction of love and the difference in its perception by a man and a woman. Capricious, proud, beautiful Rose manipulates her lover until she loses power over him. Gentle, timid, believing in what he is told, the Little Prince suffers cruelly from the frivolity of the beauty, not immediately realizing that it was necessary to love her not for words, but for deeds - for the wonderful aroma that she gave him, for all that the joy she brought into his life.
Seeing five thousand Roses on Earth, the space traveler becomes desperate. He was almost disappointed in his flower, but the Fox, who met him on the way in time, explains to the hero the truths long forgotten by people: that you need to look with your heart, not with your eyes, and be responsible for those who have been tamed.
Art fox image- an allegorical image of friendship born from habit, love and the desire to be needed by someone. In the understanding of an animal, a friend is one who fills his life with meaning: destroys boredom, allows him to see the beauty of the world around him (comparison of the Little Prince's golden hair with wheat ears) and cry when parting. The little prince learns well the lesson given to him. Saying goodbye to life, he thinks not about death, but about a friend. Fox image in the story it also correlates with the biblical Serpent-tempter: for the first time the hero meets him under an apple tree, the animal shares with the boy the knowledge about the most important life foundations - love and friendship. As soon as the Little Prince comprehends this knowledge, he immediately acquires mortality: he appeared on Earth, traveling from planet to planet, but he can leave it only by abandoning the physical shell.
In the story of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the role of fairy-tale monsters is played by adults, whom the author snatches out of the general mass and places each on his own planet, enclosing a person in himself and, as if under a magnifying glass, showing his essence. The desire for power, ambition, drunkenness, love of wealth, stupidity are the most characteristic features of adults. Exupery exposes a common vice for all, activity / life, devoid of meaning: the king from the first asteroid rules nothing and gives only those orders that his fictional subjects can fulfill; the ambitious man does not value anyone but himself; the drunkard is unable to get out of the vicious circle of shame and drinking; a business man endlessly adds up the stars and finds joy not in their light, but in their value, which can be written on paper and put in a bank; the old geographer is mired in theoretical conclusions that have nothing to do with the practical science of geography. The only reasonable person, from the point of view of the Little Prince, in this row of adults looks like a lamplighter, whose craft is useful to others and beautiful in its essence. Perhaps that is why it loses its meaning on a planet where a day lasts one minute, and electric lighting is already working with might and main on Earth.
The story about the boy who appeared from the stars is written in a touching and light style. She is all imbued with sunlight, which can be found not only in the hair and yellow scarf of the Little Prince, but also in the endless sands of the Sahara, wheat ears, the orange Fox and the yellow Snake. The latter is immediately recognized by the reader as Death, because it is she who is inherent in power, greater, "than in the finger of a king", possibility "carry farther than any ship" and ability to decide "all mysteries". The snake shares with the Little Prince her secret of knowing people: when the hero complains about being alone in the desert, she says that "among people too" happens "alone".
I really liked this book, so I decided to put on my website the most interesting analysis of the book. Semyon Kibalo
Problem-thematic analysis of the work
The story of the "Little Prince" itself originated from one of the plots of the "Planet of Humans". This is the story of the accidental landing of the writer himself and his mechanic Prevost in the desert. Exupery has key, favorite images-symbols. Here, for example, storylines lead to them: these are the search for water by thirsty pilots, their physical suffering and amazing salvation.
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The symbol of life - water, quenches the thirst of people lost in the sands, the source of everything that exists on earth, the food and flesh of everyone, the substance that makes it possible to resurrect.
In The Little Prince, Exupery will fill this symbol with a deep philosophical content.
The dehydrated desert is a symbol of a world devastated by war, chaos, destruction, human callousness, envy and selfishness. This is a world in which a person dies of spiritual thirst.
Another important symbol, to which almost the entire work is addressed, is a rose.
The rose is a symbol of love, beauty, femininity. The little prince did not immediately see the true inner essence of beauty. But after talking with the Fox, the truth was revealed to him - beauty only becomes beautiful when it is filled with meaning, content. “You are beautiful, but empty,” continued the Little Prince. “You don’t want to die for your sake. Of course, a random passerby, looking at my rose, will say that it is exactly the same as you. But for me, she is dearer than all of you…”
The salvation of mankind from the impending inevitable catastrophe is one of the main themes in the writer's work. He actively develops it in the work “Planet of People”. Exactly the same theme in The Little Prince, but here it gets a deeper development. Saint-Exupery did not write any of his works, and did not hatch for as long as the “Little Prince”. Often, motifs from The Little Prince are found in the writer's previous works.
What way of salvation does Antoine de Saint-Exupery see?
“Love does not mean looking at each other, it means looking in the same direction” - this thought determines the ideological concept of the story-tale. The Little Prince was written in 1943, and the tragedy of Europe in the Second World War, the writer's memories of the defeated, occupied France leave their mark on the work. With his light, sad and wise tale, Exupery defended the undying humanity, the living spark in the souls of people. In a sense, the story was the result of the writer's creative path, his philosophical, artistic comprehension.
“The Little Prince” is, first of all, a philosophical fairy tale. And, therefore, a seemingly simple and unpretentious plot and irony hide a deep meaning. The author touches upon in it an abstract form through allegories, metaphors and symbols of the theme of a cosmic scale: good and evil, life and death, human existence, true love, moral beauty, friendship, endless loneliness, the relationship between the individual and the crowd, and many others.
Despite the fact that the Little Prince is a child, a true vision of the world opens up to him, which is inaccessible even to an adult. Yes, and people with dead souls, whom the main character meets on his way, are much worse than fairy-tale monsters. The relationship between the prince and the Rose is much more complicated than the relationship between princes and princesses from folklore tales.
The story has a strong romantic tradition.
Firstly, this is the choice of the folklore genre - fairy tales. The fact that the "Little Prince" is a fairy tale is determined by the fairy-tale features in the story: the hero's fantastic journey, fairy-tale characters (Fox, Snake, Rose). Romantics turn to the genres of oral folk art not by chance. Folklore is the childhood of mankind, and the theme of childhood in romanticism is one of the key themes.
Saint-Exupery shows that a person begins to live only for the sake of the material shell, forgetting about spiritual aspirations. Only the soul of the child and the soul of the Artist are not subject to mercantile interests and, accordingly, Evil. Hence, the cult of childhood can be traced in the work of romantics.
But the main tragedy of the “adult” heroes of Saint-Exupery is not so much that they are subject to the material world, but that they “lost” all their spiritual qualities and began to exist senselessly, and not live in the full sense of the word.
Since this is a philosophical work, the author puts global topics in a generalized abstract form. He considers the topic of Evil in two aspects: on the one hand, it is “micro evil”, that is, evil inside a single person. This is the deadness and inner emptiness of the inhabitants of the planets, which personify all human vices. And it is no coincidence that the inhabitants of the planet Earth are characterized through the inhabitants of the planets seen by the Little Prince. By this, the author emphasizes how petty and dramatic the contemporary world is. But Exupery is by no means a pessimist. He believes that humanity, like the Little Prince, will comprehend the secret of being, and each person will find his guiding star that will illuminate his life path.
The second aspect of the theme of evil can be conditionally called "macro-evil". Baobabs are a spiritualized image of evil in general. One of the interpretations of this metaphorical image is connected with fascism. Saint-Exupery wanted people to carefully uproot the evil “baobabs” that threatened to tear the planet apart. “Beware of the baobabs!” - conjures the writer.
The tale itself was written because it was "terribly important and urgent." The writer often repeated that the seeds lie in the ground for the time being, and then they germinate, and from the seeds of the cedar - the cedar grows, and from the seeds of the blackthorn - the blackthorn. Good seeds need to sprout. “After all, all adults were children at first…”. People must preserve and not lose on the path of life everything that is bright, good and pure in the soul, which will make them incapable of evil and violence. Only a person with a rich inner world and striving for spiritual self-improvement has the right to be called a Personality. Unfortunately, the inhabitants of small planets and planet Earth have forgotten about this simple truth and have become like a thoughtless and faceless crowd.
Only the Artist is able to see the essence - the inner beauty and harmony of the world around him. Even on the planet of the lamplighter, the Little Prince remarks: “When he lights the lantern, it is as if one star or flower is still being born. And when he extinguishes the lantern, it is as if a star or a flower falls asleep. Great job. It's really useful because it's beautiful."
Saint-Exupery urges us to treat everything beautiful as carefully as possible and try not to lose the beauty within ourselves on the difficult path of life - the beauty of the soul and heart.
The Little Prince learns the most important thing about the beautiful from the Fox. Outwardly beautiful, but empty inside, roses do not evoke any feelings in a contemplative child. They are dead to him. The protagonist discovers the truth for himself, the author and readers - only that which is filled with content and deep meaning is beautiful.
Misunderstanding, alienation of people is another important philosophical theme. Saint-Exupery not only touches on the topic of misunderstanding between an adult and a child, but on the topic of misunderstanding and loneliness on a cosmic scale. The deadness of the human soul leads to loneliness. A person judges others only by the “outer shell”, not seeing the main thing in a person - his inner moral beauty: “When you say to adults:“ I saw a beautiful house made of pink brick, it has geraniums in the windows, and pigeons on the roofs, ”they don’t can't imagine this house. They need to be told: “I saw a house for a hundred thousand francs,” and then they exclaim: “What a beauty!”
Another key philosophical theme of the fairy tale “The Little Prince” is the theme of being. It is divided into real being - existence and ideal being - essence. Real being is temporary, transient, while ideal being is eternal, unchanging. The meaning of human life is to comprehend, to get as close as possible to the essence. The souls of the author and the little prince are not shackled by the ice of indifference and deadness. Therefore, a true vision of the world opens up to them: they learn the price of true friendship, love and beauty. This is the theme of “vigilance” of the heart, the ability to “see” with the heart, to understand without words.
The little prince does not immediately comprehend this wisdom. He leaves his own planet, not knowing that what he will look for on different planets will be so close - on his home planet.
People must take care of the cleanliness and beauty of their planet, jointly protect and decorate it, and prevent all living things from perishing. So, gradually, unobtrusively, another important topic arises in the fairy tale - ecological, which is very relevant for our time. It seems that the author of the fairy tale “foresaw” future ecological catastrophes and warned about careful attitude to the native and beloved planet. Saint-Exupery was acutely aware of how small and fragile our planet is. The journey of the Little Prince from star to star brings us closer to today's vision of space, where the Earth, through the negligence of people, can disappear almost imperceptibly. Therefore, the tale has not lost its relevance to this day; therefore its genre is philosophical, for it is addressed to all people, it raises eternal problems.
And one more secret is revealed by the Fox to the baby: “Only the heart is vigilant. You won’t see the most important thing with your eyes… Your Rose is so dear to you because you gave her all your soul… People have forgotten this truth, but don’t forget: you are forever responsible for everyone you tamed.” To tame means to bind oneself to another being with tenderness, love, a sense of responsibility. To tame means to destroy the facelessness and indifferent attitude towards all living things. To tame means to make the world significant and generous, for everything in it reminds of a beloved being. The narrator also comprehends this truth, and for him the stars come to life, and he hears the ringing of silver bells in the sky, reminiscent of the laughter of the Little Prince. The theme of “expansion of the soul” through love runs throughout the tale.
Together with the little hero, we rediscover for ourselves the most important thing in life, which was hidden, buried by all sorts of husks, but which is the only value for a person. The little prince learns what the bonds of friendship are.
Saint-Exupery also speaks of friendship on the first page of the story. In the author's system of values, the theme of friendship occupies one of the main places. Only friendship can melt the ice of loneliness and alienation, as it is based on mutual understanding, mutual trust and mutual assistance.
“It's sad when friends are forgotten. Not everyone has a friend,” says the hero of the tale. At the beginning of the tale, the Little Prince leaves his only Rose, then he leaves his new friend Fox on Earth. “There is no perfection in the world,” the Fox will say. But on the other hand, there is harmony, there is humanity, there is a person’s responsibility for the work entrusted to him, for the person close to him, there is also responsibility for his planet, for everything that happens on it.
A deep meaning is hidden in the image-symbol of the planet to which the Little Prince returns. It is a symbol of the human soul, a symbol of the home of the human heart. Exupery wants to say that each person has his own planet, his own island and his own guiding star, which a person should not forget. “I would like to know why the stars shine,” said the Little Prince thoughtfully. “Probably so that sooner or later everyone can find their own again.” The heroes of the fairy tale, having gone through a thorny path, found their star, and the author believes that the reader will also find his distant star.
The Little Prince is a romantic fairy tale, a dream that has not disappeared, but is kept by people, cherished by them, like something precious from childhood. Childhood walks somewhere nearby and comes in moments of the most terrible despair and loneliness, when there is nowhere to go. It will come up as if nothing had happened, as if it had not left us for these many years, it will squat next to it and ask, looking curiously at the broken plane: “What is this thing?” Then everything will fall into place, and that clarity and transparency, fearless directness of judgments and assessments, which only children have, will return to an already adult person.
Reading Exupery, we kind of change the angle of view on banal, everyday phenomena. It leads to the comprehension of obvious truths: you can’t hide the stars in a jar and it’s pointless to count them, you need to take care of those for whom you are responsible and listen to the voice of your own heart. Everything is simple and complex at the same time.
