The Little Prince: a Rose, a Fox, and Seeing with Your Heart

In today's episode, we discuss The Little Prince, by Antoine Saint-Exupery. We talk a bit about what it means to be a "grown-up" and how the most important things in life can only be seen with the heart. 🦊⭐️🌹✨❤️

Join us as we discuss narrow mindedness, openness, relationships, and caring for the planet.

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Transcript

 So I'm 26, and I really thought that I would feel like a grownup by now, but I really don't,  and maybe that's a good thing.   Hi, and welcome to the Literary Lab Post podcast, where we analyze books and see what we can learn from them. I'm Caitlin. I'm a math grad student, but I love English and I love analyzing literature.

And I'm Ashley, an assistant editor for a magazine and a writer growing up. A good thing. But the innocence, openness, and imagination of childhood is something we can all work on maintaining. And that is shown in the book that we're talking about today. The Little Prince. The Little Prince, was published in April, 1943 by Antoine Saint Ex, uh, salt, salt ex superly, if you French.

Um, songs, song Exer or Saint Exupery. If you are, no, that just sounds so bad. If you're an Aussie trying to read it just as it is. Antoine Song, salt Exupery. There you go. Anyways, there we go. It's relatively short. You could read it in an hour. To be honest, it's not quite the children's book. . It's not quite an adult's book either.

I think it was initially written for children, but it's kind of one of those books where adults appreciate it more than children do. I remember reading it as a kid and same. Not quite, not really getting it following, not really getting what was going on and not really liking it very much. I just remember reading it like every few years as a, oh, am I gonna get it now?

It wasn't really until I was older that I actually appreciated. Some of the themes throughout it. Yeah. It's one of those books that has so much symbolism. It's kind of hard to grasp it the first time around, and you need to read it a few times to really understand what's going on. But when you do, it's just phenomenal.

It's beautiful. It's such amazing, a beautiful book, but it's good for all stages of life because as a kid, you read it, you might not understand it fully, but it reads like a fairy tale, and it's just a fun read. Maybe when you reach adolescence. You can start pulling out the themes of breaking free and journeying to find out who you are.

Adults might get the theme more of struggling to find what matters in a crazy world, and the elderly might read it more with the whole looking back, dealing with nostalgia and loss. So it's got something for everyone. And did you know it's actually the world's most translated non-religious book? It's been translated into 600 languages, and it starts off with the narrator who is a pilot crash landing in the desert.

And what's interesting is that the author actually crashed in a desert himself. He was attempting to break the speed record for a Paris Saigon flight, and he and his copilot crashed near the Nile Delta. They survived, but they struggled with the intense heat of the desert and dehydration. They only had a few grapes, a thermos of coffee, a single orange and some wine.

So only about a day's worth of liquid and. After a couple days, they started experiencing hallucinations, and on the fourth day, they were found and rescued by a veteran. And this experience is strongly featured in the book. The themes we're going to be looking at today are grownups versus children, worldview relationships, and caring for the planet.

So. Fair warning, we are going to be giving a summary of the whole book, so spoilers galore. So just be aware of that. But it's that kind of book where you know, the spoilers, you know what happens, but the book is not actually very plot focused. It's more ideas focused. So it's still worth reading. Even if you have it spoiled, there's not really all that much to spoil.

Yeah, he goes home in the end. That's kind of all that happens. So the book starts off with the narrator talking about an experience when he was six and he learned about BOA Constrictors eating their pre whole and it taking a long time to digest. And he attempts to illustrate this by drawing an elephant inside a boa constrictor.

And he shows the grownups this picture, and they laugh at him and say, why have you drawn a picture of a hat? Because all they can see is this flat thing with a lump in the middle that looks like a hat. And so he tries, again, drawing a cross section where you see the elephant inside the boa constrictor.

But the grownups laugh at him and tell him to abandon his art and focus on geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar. He sets up this idea of how he doesn't think very highly of grownups, and I think that when he talks about grownups, he's not actually talking about people who are adults. He's more talking about people who.

Think in this certain way. So that kind of sets the stage for this story. So then we fast forward many, many years and the pilot has crashed in the Sahara Desert, and there, while he's dehydrated, he meets this mysterious boy, the little prince who asks him to draw for him a sheep. Now the little prince is from a small planet.

Somehow they know the name of asteroid B six 12, where he cares for three volcanoes and a vein, but Beloved rose. So he's upset by his rose's behavior and his own feelings. We'll get into that later. And so the Prince leaves his planet to explore the universe. He visits six planets, each inhabited by an adult character who represents a flaw in human nature.

And these encounters highlight the irrational and superficial behavior of what. The narrated terms and grownups. Now, the last planet he visits is Planet Earth, where he meets a wise fox who teaches him about love and taming. He also meets other symbolic characters such as a railway, switchman, and a merchant.

In the end, the Prince decides to return to his planet and his rose with the sheep that the pilot has drawn for him, allowing a snake to bite him so his spirit can go home. Back to asteroid. B six 12. You can't think about it. Too hard. It just happens. Yeah, and his body disappears and the pilot is left transformed by the encounter, but he's unsure if it was all really real, but he was deeply moved by it nonetheless.

So our first theme, we're looking at grownups versus children, and it's really about narrow mindedness, how when we grow up, we start thinking in a certain way and slowly stop challenging things as we see them. Like we stop thinking outside the box and we start thinking that things are impossible, whereas a younger, more flexible thinker might not do so and.

Might then be able to go on and change the world simply because he has not accepted that something is impossible. The grownups tell the narrator to abandon his art focus on history, geography, arithmetic, grammar, and that actually reminds me a little bit of all the talk about how stupid and useless the arts degrees are.

Honestly, like studying things like literature. It's really important actually. Yeah, that's kind of the whole point of this podcast because it's, it's the study of ideas and history and it helps you think abstractly and critically and experience hypotheticals you wouldn't otherwise be able to. So you can read about something, an idea being implemented and see how it plays out in literature and go, Hmm, maybe that's not a good idea.

Maybe we shouldn't do that. But it also just. Lets you read about the way that things have gone down in history and allows you to learn from history and not repeat some of those same mistakes. Another thing that the narrator criticizes grownups for is only being concerned with numbers. He says, if you were to mention to grownups, I've seen a beautiful house built with pink bricks, with geraniums on the windowsill and doves on the roof, they would not be able to imagine such a house.

You would have to say to them. I saw a house worth a hundred thousand pounds and then they would exclaim. Oh, how lovely. So his criticism of grownups is that they only find things valuable in as much as they have the potential to make money. And something that I've seen happen just maybe in the last 10 years or so, is the way that this has been applied to.

Leisure activities and hobbies like dancing and art, all of these things are pretty fundamental to being human. Pretty much every culture has a form of dance. Even the earliest humans made art on the walls of caves, so it's a deeply human trait to make art and dance. And now it feels like you can't do it unless you're good at it, and you can share it on social media and you can make money off of it, which is actually really sad.

Because then that can steal some of the joy away from it. Another way that this whole being concerned with numbers shows up is the way that a lot of companies put profit over people. I mean, think about like Amazon workers who are forced to pee in bottles because they're not allowed to take bathroom breaks.

And we talked about this in an earlier episode, little women, that when it comes to a choice between morality and money, it seems that most people, and especially companies, will choose money. And so that's the trait of grownups that the narrator is critiquing here and. He says, every time he meets a grownup who seemed reasonably clear sighted, he shows them the first drawing of the elephant inside the boa constrictor to see if they can understand.

And he's always disappointed. And so this drawing kind of represents being able to think through things in an open-minded way and be able to challenge the way that quote unquote things have always been, and to be open to new ideas. And I think that that's really important. And we talked about it. This a little bit in our episode on Pride and Prejudice.

It's important to be able to. Change your opinions when you are confronted with better opinions. My father-in-law says, always assume that you could be wrong. And I think that that's a really great way of thinking, but it takes effort. It's not easy to admit that you could be wrong, but it's important to be open to the idea and to be challenging and testing your ideas and be open to other people's perspectives.

And it's hard. It's something that I think we all struggle with. I definitely do. When I think I'm right about something, it's really hard for me to stay open to other people's ideas. But I think it's really important. Another critique that the author has within this book is Judging by Appearances or judging through a different standard that adults judge people through a different standard that children do.

The narrator brings up the astronomer who first discovered the little Prince's asteroid. He wasn't taken seriously because of his Turkish attire, and only when wearing Western clothing did they take him seriously. That opens up a whole other discussion, which. We're not going to go into today, but the narrator says Grownups are like that.

Grownups also ask questions when you've made a new friend, like how much money does he have? How much does he weigh? Who is his brother? And not, what does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies? And so grownups kinda look at the measurable things, but ultimately the shallow things and.

Through this book, the narrator wants to show that children have an ability to get to the heart, to look at the small, seemingly meaningless things that actually mean a great deal and is not necessarily literal adults and children. I think that the author is using adults and children to frame these two qualities that can be found maybe more predominantly in adults versus children, but can be found and cultivated in all of us no matter our age.

Often in discussions about adults versus children, the, the debate of the ruin of the younger generation always seems to come up and a lot of older generations tend to complain about the younger generations. I know that a lot of people have complained about our generation, gen Z. Are we actually Gen Z, though?

We are, I feel like just older Gen ZI feel like I, I feel like we're kind of in between. I think the term is millennials. Yeah. Some people say that it's not really a thing. Technically we are Gen Z. Okay, fair enough. It's just that there are pretty wide differences between the younger Gen Z and the older Gen Z.

Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. But even I have seen online of my generation complaining about the next generation Gen alpha, the older generation has always complained about the younger generation. A 2001 Time magazine article said. They have trouble making decisions. They would rather hike in the Himalayas than climb a corporate ladder.

I think that's about the millennials. Mm-hmm. Then a 1993 Washington Post article said they're the first generation in American history to live so well and complain so bitterly about it. In 1951, a Fki Herald article said Many young people were so pampered nowadays that they had forgotten that they were such a thing as walking.

Oh my goodness. In 1925, the whole daily male said An attitude on the part of young folk, which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude, and utterly selfish. In 1843, there was a speech in the House of Commons, which stated girls who drive coal carts ride a stride upon horses, drinks, swear, fight, smoke, whistle, and care for nobody.

The morals of children are tenfold worse than formally. I would drive a coal cart in 1790 in the memoirs of the Blooms Grove family, the revered. Hitchcock said, the free access, which many young people have to romances, novels and plays, has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth.

And then in 1624, this was a book, I think by Thomas Barnes, the Wise Man's Forecast Against the Evil Time, I can't even pronounce the old English writing. But youth were never more. Saucy. Yay. Never more savagely saucy. The ancient are scorned. The honorable are condemned. Con, I'm guessing that means condemned.

The honorable are condemned. The magistrate is not dreaded. Oh, no, they don't. The younger generation doesn't dread the magistrate. And then all the way back to circa 20 BC book three of Ode by Horace. Who says, what a name man, Horace, who says that's name with a spider that lives in my, in my side view mirror.

Oh, have you named him? I have. Anyways. Horace says, our sis age was worse than our grand sis. We, their sons are more worthless than they, so in our turn, we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt. Then also Horace in first century BC says the Beardless youth does not foresee what is useful, squandering his money.

Yeah, so this has been a problem pretty much since forever. And I think that it does come from the fact that young people can do stupid stuff sometimes, and they're obviously gonna be less mature than the older generation. But also things change, society changes, and young people are a product of that change, and often the older generations don't want that change to come about, and they see that change manifesting in the younger people.

But this book shows that. There's no point in complaining about them. Sure, guide them, mentor them. But it's important to learn from younger people, from children because children will always have a wonder, an innocence and imagination that adults will lose and can never fully gain. But yet we should try because otherwise it's possible to get stuck.

Like a lot of the people, the little Prince met on his journey before reaching Earth. So the Prince meets a lot of different people on the various planets that he travels to as he journeys towards Earth. And here's a few that stand out. So the first one. Is a king and he is the only person on the planet.

His robes cover the entire planet because these planets are very small and he gives commands. That's all that he does, and the thing is, he only gives commands that he knows are going to be followed. For example, when the little prince yawns, the king orders him to stop yawning. When the little prince says that he can't help it, the king orders him to continue yawning.

And so. For this king, the power to command and be obeyed is actually a lot more important than the orders themselves because he keeps changing the orders to make sure that they're obeyed. So he's someone who craves power and control, but really rules over nothing. He wants power for the sake of power, not really because he wants to serve or make the world a better place.

And then we have a businessman who counts. Stars constantly counting stars, and he claims to own them, and then it makes him rich. He counts the stars, then writes them down. And then counts more in order to be able to own more, even though he can't do anything with them other than claim to own them and quote unquote put the number in the bank.

So he claims to own the stars, which make him rich so that he can buy more stars. And it actually reminds me of that song I. I do coke so I can work longer, so I can earn more, so I can do more Coke. It's a bit raunchy, so maybe don't listen to it with kids around, but it's quite funny. It's also absurdly stupid, and it actually highlights the way that this cycle with the stars and the businessman is absurdly stupid for all the counting.

All he can do with that number is put it in his desk, draw on a piece of paper. There's literally nothing else that he can do with those stars. It also highlights, you know how a lot of people want to make money climb the ladder, something that our society preaches that we all need to reach for, but in the end, it's meaningless and it's not something that brings joy or happiness.

And listen to our Little Women podcast if you want to hear more. But the Little Prince points out that his relationship to his planet and to his. Rows are meaningful and that there's no meaningful relationship between the businessman and the stars he owns. And then we have the lamp lighter who blindly follows orders.

Now his planet is very small. There's only room for the lamp and the lamp lighter himself. He puts out and turns on the lamp every minute as the planet revolves. So the days are basically one minute long, and even though it's nonsensical, he tells the little prince that he's following orders and the little prince feels a connection to this man who is doing his best and following orders.

But hasn't really realized that the orders are nonsensical and he hasn't questioned them. And it's important to question when we're given instructions. After all, just following orders was the excuse of Nazi officers at the Nuremberg trials and obviously a lamplight to lighting a lamp and turning it off is not the same here.

He's not doing any harm. But nonetheless, it's important to think about orders, not just follow them and not push the responsibility of your actions onto somebody else who is giving you orders. And then we have the geographer who never explores. He sits at his desk on his planet, which is bigger than the other planets, but doesn't know anything about it, and he's excited because he thinks the little prince is an explorer and can tell him things about his planet.

The little prince is confused as to why the geographer won't explore it himself. . The geographer prizes, facts and data, but doesn't want to engage with life. He has no curiosity and he just cares about the secondhand knowledge. He also doesn't care about impermanent things.

He's not interested in the little prince's flower. Because in his words, it won't last long and it's easy to miss the beauty and meaning found in things that don't necessarily last if you're always looking for things that are permanent. 'cause the reality is that things on this earth are not permanent, and some of the best things are fleeting.

That doesn't make them any less good. And there's a couple other characters on the Little Prince's journey that you can go and read about, but we are now going to move on to some of the core relationships in this book. So the first major relationship is between the Little Prince and his rose. The rose grew out of a seed that was randomly blown onto the soil of his planet, and since it started growing, he has cared for it and shielded it from the elements and made sure it grows beautifully.

And he loves his rose. He lrs his attention on her, but she's very vain and fickle, even sometimes cruel. She does talk, by the way, talking roses in this book. He also doesn't really fully understand her needs, and so they argue, they do reconcile, but the little prince still leaves his planet. He goes on a bit of a journey of self discovery.

Visiting all these other planets, trying to understand his own feelings and why the rose is the way she is. And when he gets to earth, he finds a whole garden of roses. And the book says he was overcome with sadness. His flower had told him that she was the only one of her kind in all the universe, and he were 5,000 of them all alike in one single garden.

So that really throws his understanding of his relationship with his flower. But then he meets the fox, the fox. Shows him a very different type of relationship to his relationship with the Rose, and he uses the word, the concept of taming, which you know, is perhaps a strange word. I wonder what it was in the original French.

But once you understand what the author means, it makes sense and it's a really cool way of looking at it. The fox says to the little Prince. To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who was just like a hundred thousand other little boys, and I have no need of you and you on your part. Have no need of me to you.

I'm nothing more than a fox, like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me. You'll be unique in all the world to you. I shall be unique in all the world. I'm beginning to understand said the little prince there is a flower. I think that she has tamed me. So this idea of taming is really about taking the time to know somebody in this equal relationship of respect based on mutual love and trust.

And it requires empathy and sensitivity. And the fox tells the little prince. Now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye, and basically the fox explains through this concept that love requires time and investing, and also that you have a responsibility to those that you have a relationship with.

And through this, the little Prince realizes that his rose was unique because of the relationship that they had, and he realizes that he has a responsibility to her and that she is special because she is his. And then we have the relationship between the little prince and the narrator, the pilot who's crashed in the desert.

This whole story is written from the pilot's perspective, and at the end he says that he's writing this down because he doesn't want to forget the story he says. I try to describe him. Here it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. Not everyone has had a friend, and if I forget him, I may become like the grownups who are no longer interested in anything but figures.

So we have this theme coming up again about how grownups only care about figures and they don't care about friendships and these meaningful encounters. So this theme really does run through the whole book and the author. Emphasizes that relationships are what is most important and that human need for connection and imagination and those heart qualities versus just cold heart logic and facts and figures is really important.

We talked a little bit about logic versus emotion back in our pride and prejudice. Episode, and I think that too often people will prioritize logic over everything. And I think that in doing so, you miss a very important part of being human. And some of these most important things in life cannot be physically seen.

They cannot be calculated, they cannot be mapped out. Tangibly things like love, trust, relationships, and imagination. And even the absence of something can be filled with meaning, like the little prince's love for his rose was strengthened while he was on his journey. Absence makes the heart grew fonder.

Yes, and the memory of the Little Prince was really important for the narrator. It says at the end that he listens to the stars and he remembers. Another thing that seems to really matter to the author is caring for the planet. So the little prince cares greatly for his own little planet. He keeps the volcanoes dormant by raking them.

Remember, they're very, very small volcanoes in the illustrations. They're about the size of a pile of leaves, and he keeps the baobab trees from growing, and that's why he wants the sheep at the very beginning. To eat the baobab trees and keep them under control. Spoiler alert, the sheep is not a real sheep, it's a drawing, but to the little prince is real.

It somehow works. I'm not quite sure why, but it somehow works. Anyway, read the book people, so the baobabs start out small, but if you don't get on top of them, they end up these huge trees. I don't know if you've ever looked up pictures of baobab trees. They grow in Africa and they are enormous. And if the baobab trees grew too big, they'd destroy the planet by ticking up all the resources and eventually leading.

The planet to explode. Here's little planet, not planet Earth, by the way. No, these are very small little planets. And it's an interesting metaphor in context of using the resources of the planet because it's not necessarily a bad thing to use those resources. But if you let the things that take the resources grow too large, they can destroy the planet.

And one thing that comes to mind for me is actually the fossil fuel companies who knew in the 1970s that climate change was going to happen because of their internal modeling that was done by the scientists working for them. But food. Decades covered it up and denied that climate change was going to be a problem.

And these companies have become so bloated, exploiting the planet's resources and have been a major contributor to the misinformation and disinformation around climate change, which scientific consensus. Overwhelmingly supports. They are like the baobab trees, which have grown so large, they are destroying the planet.

And we talked about this concept of taming in the context of relationships, but that idea of you are responsible for what you have, tamed can also be applied to the planet. Humans have changed the planet, they've used its resources and they've harmed it in various ways. And we have to remember that we actually have a responsibility to take care of our natural resources.

We have tamed the planet. It is ours. Therefore, we need to treat it with respect and take care of it. And at the end of the day, there's really nothing bad that can happen from taking better care of the planet. I think we can all agree that we need to take better care of this beautiful planet that we live in.

In the end of the story, the little Prince, he's on earth with the pilot and he really wants to go home to his rows. He's gone on this journey where he's realized that the most important things are his little planet and his rows, and so. He goes home back to his planet and the pilot is left with the memory of him not really sure whether or not it happened.

And he's telling this story and he's not sure that people are going to believe him that it happened. And he says, look, I can't really offer you proof that this happened, but this was my experience and it obviously had a really deep impact on him. So really throughout the book, the Little Prince. Anine. I feel really dumb saying that name because I don't speak French.

I'll just say the author. The author throughout the book, the author really reinforces this idea of narrow mindedness and not being open with your heart to things. Not a good thing. And if as adults we can preserve that childlike wonder and innocence and openness, we're doing really, really well. The author of this book actually died in a plane crash.

They found the wreckage of the plane, but they never found his body. Who knows, maybe he went to asteroid B six 12. So what do you think about the ideas in this book? Should we strive to be more childlike in the way we approach ideas? Do you agree with what the little Prince learned about relationships and intangible things being the things that matter most?

And also, is there a difference between being childish and childlike? Hmm. That's something to think about. Anyway, we challenge you to read this book if you haven't already. It has some really intriguing insights to life that we haven't covered in this episode, and it can help dislodge some of your grownup type thinking.

This book challenges the way things are and the way things have always been, and wants you to look at things in a different light. So maybe take a look at some of your ideas about life and think about them the way a kid would. Sometimes. They then seem a whole lot simpler and remember what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Those things invisible to the eye. Are the things that need to be prioritized most in our lives. We're going to end with a quote from Lily Danziger, which we think really well summarizes a main message of this book, and that is, I don't care that much about wrinkles and gray hair. I'm more worried about keeping my worldview flexible enough that when I'm older, I don't condescendingly tell young people to play by the rules that worked in my day.

With no concern for whether or not those  📍 rules still apply. And on that note, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Literary Lamp Post. Join us on Instagram, share your thoughts with us. We post some community things throughout the week, so keep an eye out on our posts and our story.

We'd love to hear what you think. We'd also love it if you joined us for conversations in our Discord server. The link for that is in our description. Share this podcast with someone you think would enjoy it. And stay tuned for next episode in which we will be talking about Hal's Moving Castle. Make sure to follow us on YouTube too at the literary lamppost, as well as subscribing on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast platform to make sure that you don't miss any of our new episodes.

Thanks for listening and see you next time.  This podcast includes brief excerpts from literary works for the purpose of commentary, criticism, and analysis, which we believe constitutes fair use under copyright law. Our theme music was created by Joshua Ibit for exclusive use by the literary Lamppost podcast.

Amen sis.