Literary Analysis Of The Little Prince

In a world where an ever-growing population creates an endless amount of competition, the pressure to achieve success academically has skyrocketed. As curriculums advance, they become more difficult and unload stress and anxiety onto students creating an tense atmosphere. It seems impossible to find time to relax, and live in the moment. Furthermore, it creates a routine in which students can become easily absorbed and forget to be mindful. The novel, The Little Prince, can help serve as a break from all of this. It incorporates a childlike exterior with meaningful content, providing a fun, but interesting read. The poetic writing style and illustrations excite the inner child in readers while at the same time delivering a philosophical message.

After leaving his rose and planet he crosses paths with 6 other meteorites, each of which features an odd grown up. Among them a lamplighter and a businessman each of whom the Little Prince finds strange in their own way. He cannot fathom why the lamplighter, whose planet has 1,440 sunsets every 24 hours, would immerse himself in the task of lighting and extinguishing the lamp to signify the night and day. Furthermore, he is puzzled by the businessman who insists on owning all of the stars despite having no use for them. In the context of a student’s life, it is easy to get caught up in these senseless thoughts and forget the purpose of them. With a daily routine consisting of going to class and then going home to study, the irrational roles of each of these meteorites’ inhabitants can become an unconscious reality for many. The meaningless routine that characterizes the lamplighter’s life draws a parallel to that of students where the act of going to school becomes so consuming that the importance of it, as well as the other aspects of life, are forgotten. By looking at this exaggerated case of pointless work, students are able to realize the analogous characteristics between the two situations, be mindful of the it and ask themselves “why?”. The reevaluation of the task can help remove the all-consuming routine and bring back the awareness that contributes to a feeling a satisfaction.

Throughout the book, both the Little Prince and the narrator from new ones and develop others. For the Little Prince, his newly founded friendship with the fox, help him to realize the importance of building trust, and furthermore, the rarity at the centre of his relationship with the rose. Comparatively, the development of the narrator’s kinship with the Little Prince teaches him how to deal with and accept a loss. From the beginning, the Prince and the rose have a complicated relationship. The prince dotes on the flower day and night, but eventually he becomes tired of her vanity and as a result, leaves the asteroid. Once on Earth, the Little Prince is stunned to see many roses that are identical to the one on his planet. This stuns him and makes him question what makes his rose so special in the first place. After contemplating this subject, he meets the fox. In contrast to the rose, the fox is extremely wise and humble. Through his process of taming, the fox is able to teach the prince that without a friendship between the two of them the fox is “nothing more than a fox like a hundred other foxes” (Saint Exupéry 80). Through this, the Little Prince is able to realize that it is not the vanity of his rose that makes her special, but the bond that they have. As students go through their academic career, and thereafter, relationships are built and destroyed. This particular lesson from the