There are works that can be read and reread many times. Book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery " A little prince" is one of these. Since its first edition in 1943, it has been one of the most widely read in the world. Its author, a French pilot and writer, is an adult who remains a child at heart. The book “The Little Prince” tells about an extraordinary meeting between a pilot (due to engine problems, the pilot had to land the plane in the desert) with the Little Prince, a guest from another planet. This work is included in the 6th grade literature program.
“The Little Prince” is a story in form and a fairy tale in plot, a narration in a language that everyone can understand about serious and eternal questions: love, friendship, loyalty and responsibility for loved ones. In order to present meaning and main idea story, we suggest reading a summary of “The Little Prince” chapter by chapter online.
Main characters
Narrator- a pilot who made an emergency landing in the Sahara, an adult who remained a child at heart.
A little prince- a boy who lives on a small planet and one day goes on a journey. He meets different adults who seem so strange - he himself sees the world completely differently.
Other characters
Rose– the favorite flower of the Little Prince, a capricious and proud creature.
King– a ruler for whom the main thing in life is power. He considers all people his subjects.
Ambitious- an inhabitant of one of the planets, who considers himself the best, smartest and richest, and all people as his admirers.
Drunkard- an adult who drinks, trying to forget that he is ashamed of what he drinks.
Business man- a person who constantly counts the stars. He thinks that it is enough to be the first to call himself the owner of the stars in order to really be one.
Lamplighter- an inhabitant of the smallest planet that the Little Prince visited, lights and extinguishes his lantern every second.
Geographer- a scientist who knows nothing about his beautiful planet, because he never leaves his office. Records stories of travelers.
Snake- the first living creature seen by the Little Prince on Earth. It seems to him that the snake speaks in riddles. Offers to help the boy when he starts missing his home.
Fox- a friend who revealed to the Little Prince many secrets of life. The fox teaches him friendship and love.
Chapter 1
As a child, the narrator drew his first picture: a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant. The adults who saw the drawing decided that it depicted a hat and advised the boy to study geography and other sciences instead of drawing. Because of this, the child lost faith in himself.
He chose the profession of a pilot and flew around almost the whole world. He dated various adults. As soon as it seemed that the person spoke “the same language” with him, he showed him his children's drawing- the same one with the boa constrictor and the elephant - but everyone, without exception, saw only a hat in the drawing. And then the narrator had no choice but to talk with them about politics, ties and other things that they lived by. There was no one to talk heart to heart with.
Chapter 2
So the narrator lived alone until one day a breakdown in the engine forced him to land the plane in the desert. At dawn, the sleeping pilot was awakened by a little man who had come from nowhere. He asked me to draw him a lamb. The hero drew the only picture he could. Imagine his amazement when the boy exclaimed that he did not need an elephant in a boa constrictor!
Trying over and over again to draw the kind of lamb the kid was waiting for, the pilot lost patience and drew a box. The kid was very pleased - after all, he was able to see his lamb there.
This was the narrator’s acquaintance with the Little Prince.
Chapters 3-4
The kid asked many questions, but when the pilot asked about himself, he pretended not to hear. From the scraps of information received, it became clear that the child was from another planet, and this planet was very small. After thinking, the pilot decided that his home was asteroid B612, seen through a telescope only once - it was so small.
Chapter 5
Little by little the pilot learned something about the life of the Little Prince. So, one day it became known that there were also troubles in the baby’s house. Among the plants, baobabs are often found. If you do not distinguish their sprouts from others in time and do not weed them out, they will quickly destroy the planet, tearing it apart with their roots.
To prevent this from happening, the Little Prince had a firm rule: “Get up in the morning, wash your face, put yourself in order - and immediately put your planet in order.”
Chapter 6
Gradually it became clear that the baby was often sad on his planet. If “it becomes very sad, it’s good to watch the sun go down,” said the Little Prince. There was a day when the boy looked at the sky more than forty times...
Chapter 7
On the fifth day of their acquaintance, the pilot learned the secret of the Little Prince. On his planet there lived an extraordinary flower, which no one else in the world had. He was afraid that someday the lamb that destroys the baobab sprouts would eat his favorite plant.
Chapter 8
Soon the narrator learned more about the flower. The Little Prince once had a tiny sprout, unlike other flowers. Over time, a bud grew on it, which did not open for a long time. When all the petals opened, the baby saw with admiration a real beauty. She turned out to have a difficult character: the guest was a subtle and proud person. The boy, who took everything the beauty said to heart, felt unhappy and decided to run away and go on a journey.
Telling the story about the flower, the Kid already understood that “it was necessary to judge not by words, but by deeds” - after all, the beauty filled the planet with fragrance, but he did not know how to enjoy this and “did not know how to love.”
Chapter 9
Before the trip, the boy carefully cleaned his planet. When he said goodbye to his beautiful guest, she suddenly asked for forgiveness, wished him happiness and admitted that she loved the Little Prince.
Chapters 10-11
There were several asteroids very close to the baby’s planet, so he decided to go there and learn something.
On the first planet there lived a king. The monarch gave only feasible orders. For this reason, it was necessary to wait for the exact time to see the sun set. The little prince became bored - he needed to see the sunset whenever he wanted, at the call of his heart.
On the second planet there lived an ambitious man who thought that everyone admired him. The ambitious man's desire to be smarter, more beautiful and richer than everyone else seemed strange to the boy.
Chapters 12-13
The third planet belonged to a drunkard. The little prince was perplexed to hear that he drank to forget how embarrassed he was about drinking.
The owner of the fourth planet was a business man. He was always busy: counting the stars in the confidence that he owned them. According to the hero, there was no benefit from him.
Chapters 14-15
On the smallest planet there lived a lamplighter who lit and extinguished the lantern every moment. His occupation was useful, according to the kid, because the lamplighter thought not only about himself.
The hero also visited the geographer’s planet. The scientist wrote down the stories of travelers, but he himself had never seen seas, deserts or cities.
Chapters 16-17
The seventh planet on which the Little Prince found himself was Earth, and it was huge.
At first, the baby saw no one on the planet except the snake. From her he learned that not only in the desert, but also among people it can also be lonely. The snake promised to help him on the day when the boy became sad about his home.
Chapter 18
While wandering through the desert, the hero met a small, unattractive flower. The flower did not know where to look for people - in his entire life he had seen only a few of them and thought that they were carried by the wind, because people did not have roots.
Chapter 19
Having climbed a mountain along the way, the Little Prince hoped to see the whole Earth and all the people. But instead I saw only rocks and heard an echo. "Strange planet!" - the kid decided, and he felt sad.
Chapter 20
Somehow little hero I saw a garden with many roses. They looked like his beauty, and the baby stopped, amazed. It turned out that his flower is not the only one in the world and not special at all. It was painful to think about it, he sat down in the grass and cried.
Chapter 21
At that moment the Fox appeared. The little prince was going to make friends, but it turned out that the animal had to be tamed first. Then “we will need each other... My life will be illuminated as if by the sun,” said the Fox.
The fox taught the baby that “you can only learn those things that you tame,” and “to tame, you need to be patient.” He revealed an important secret to the boy: “Only the heart is vigilant. You can’t see the main thing with your eyes” and asked to remember the law: “you are forever responsible for everyone you have tamed.” The little prince understood: the beautiful rose is more valuable than anything, he gave her all his time and energy, and he is responsible for the rose - after all, he tamed it.
Chapter 22
Walking further, the Little Prince met a switchman who was sorting passengers. The kid asked him where people go and why, what are they looking for? No one knew the answer, and the hero decided that “only children know what they are looking for.”
Chapter 23
Then the boy saw a merchant who was selling improved pills. Thanks to this, you could save almost an hour a week; you take one pill and you don’t have to drink for a week. If the baby had so many free minutes, he would simply go to a living spring...
Chapter 24
The pilot drank the last of his water. Together, a boy and an adult set off on a journey in search of a well. When the baby was tired, he was consoled by the thought that somewhere there was his flower, and the desert was beautiful because springs were hidden in it. After the baby’s words about the desert, the narrator realized what kind of mysterious light he saw over the sands: “Whether it’s a house, the stars or the desert, the most beautiful thing about them is what you can’t see with your eyes.”
At dawn, the pilot with the boy in his arms reached the well.
Chapter 25
The pilot gave the baby something to drink. The water was “like a gift to the heart,” it was “born from a long journey under the stars, from the creaking of a gate, from the efforts of hands.”
Now the friends spoke the same language and both knew that very little was needed to be happy.
The main character realized that the baby wanted to return home.
Chapter 26
Having repaired the engine, the pilot returned to the well the next evening and saw that the Little Prince was talking to the snake. The pilot became very scared for the baby. After being told that he would be able to return home at night and protect the rose, the boy became very serious. He promised to give it to his adult friend special stars. “Every person has his own stars” - the pilot’s stars will be able to laugh.
Very soon a snake flashed near the Little Prince, biting him, and he fell silently and slowly.
Chapter 27
The pilot never told anyone about the Little Prince. He knew that the baby had returned to his home, because the next morning he was not on the sand. And now the narrator loves to watch and listen to the stars; they either laugh quietly or cry.
Conclusion
Talking about the hero's journey, the author talks to us about eternal human values, about the importance of preserving childlike purity and naivety in life, about the real perception of the world. Having studied brief retelling“The Little Prince”, having become acquainted with the plot and characters, you can move on: read full text and feel the life-affirming beginning of a fairy tale, where the adult hero began to hear the stars and see the world in a new way.
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Antoine de Saint-Exupery
A little prince
1
Leon Vert.
I ask the children to forgive me for dedicating this book to an adult. I'll say in justification: this adult is my most best friend. And one more thing: he understands everything in the world, even children's books. And finally, he lives in France, and it’s hungry and cold there now. And he really needs consolation. If all this does not justify me, I will dedicate this book to the boy who was once my adult friend. After all, all adults were children at first, but few of them remember this. So I am correcting the dedication:
Leon Vert,
when he was little
I
When I was six years old, in a book called " True stories", where they talked about virgin forests, I once saw an amazing picture. In the picture, a huge snake - a boa constrictor - was swallowing a predatory animal.
The book said: “The boa constrictor swallows its victim whole, without chewing. After this, he can no longer move and sleeps for six months straight until he digests the food.”
I thought a lot about the adventurous life of the jungle and also drew my first picture with a colored pencil. This was my drawing No. 1. I showed my creation to adults and asked if they were scared.
- Is the hat scary? - They objected to me.
And it wasn't a hat at all. It was a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant. Then I drew a boa constrictor from the inside so that adults could understand it more clearly. They always need to explain everything. This is my drawing N2.
The adults advised me not to draw snakes, either outside or inside, but to be more interested in geography, history, arithmetic and spelling. That's how it happened that I gave up six years brilliant career artist. Having failed with drawings No. 1 and No. 2, I lost faith in myself. Adults never understand anything themselves, and for children it is very tiring to endlessly explain and explain everything to them.
So, I had to choose another profession, and I trained to be a pilot. I flew around almost the whole world. And geography, to tell the truth, was very useful to me. I could tell the difference between China and Arizona at a glance. This is very useful if you get lost at night.
In my time I have met a lot of different serious people. I lived among adults for a long time. I saw them very close. And, to be honest, this didn’t make me think any better about them.
When I met an adult who seemed to me more intelligent and understanding than others, I showed him my drawing N1 - I saved it. But they all answered me: “It’s a hat,” and I no longer talked to them about boa constrictors, or about the jungle, or about the stars. I applied myself to their concepts. I talked to them about playing bridge and golf, about politics and about ties. And the adults were very pleased that they met such a sensible person.
- 2
II
So I lived alone, and I had no one to talk to heart to heart. And six years ago I had to make an emergency landing in sugar. Something broke in my plane's engine. There was no mechanic or passengers with me, and I decided that I would try to fix everything myself, even though it was very difficult. I had to fix the engine or die. I barely had enough water for a week.
So, the first evening I fell asleep on the sand in the desert, where there was no habitation for thousands of miles around. A man who was shipwrecked and lost on a raft in the middle of the ocean would not be so alone. Imagine my surprise when at dawn someone’s thin voice woke me up. He said:
- Please... Draw me a lamb!
- A?..
- Draw me a lamb...
I jumped up as if thunder had struck above me. He rubbed his eyes. I started looking around. And I see some extraordinary little kid standing and looking at me seriously. Here is the best portrait of him that I have since been able to draw. But in my drawing, of course, he is not nearly as good as he really was. It is not my fault. When I was six years old, adults convinced me that I would not be an artist, and I learned to draw nothing except boa constrictors - outside and inside.
So, I looked with all my eyes at this extraordinary phenomenon. Remember, I was a thousand miles from human habitation. And yet it didn’t look at all like this little guy was lost, or tired and scared to death, or dying of hunger and thirst. There was no way to tell from his appearance that he was a child lost in an uninhabited desert, far from any habitation. Finally my speech returned and I asked:
- But... What are you doing here?
And he again asked quietly and very seriously:
- Please... Draw a lamb...
All this was so mysterious and incomprehensible that I did not dare refuse.
No matter how absurd it was here, in the desert, on the verge of death, I still took out a sheet of paper and an eternal pen from my pocket. But then I remembered that I studied more geography, history, arithmetic and spelling, and I told the kid (even a little angrily) that I couldn’t draw. He replied:
- Doesn't matter. Draw a lamb.
Since I had never drawn rams in my life, I repeated for him one of the two old pictures that I only know how to draw - a boa constrictor outside. And he was very surprised when the baby exclaimed:
- No no! I don't need an elephant in a boa constrictor! The boa constrictor is too dangerous and the elephant is too big. Everything in my house is very small. I need a lamb. Draw a lamb.
And I drew.
He looked carefully at my drawing and said:
- No, this lamb is quite frail. Draw someone else.
I drew.
My new friend smiled softly, condescendingly.
- 3
“You can see for yourself,” he said, “this is not a lamb.” This is a big ram. He has horns...
I drew it differently again.
But he refused this drawing too:
- This one is too old. I need a lamb that will live a long time.
Here I lost patience - after all, I had to quickly disassemble the motor and scratched the box.
And he said to the baby:
- Here's a box for you. And your lamb sits in it.
But how surprised I was when my stern judge suddenly beamed:
- This is what I need! Do you think he eats a lot of grass?
- And what?
- After all, I have very little at home...
- He's had enough. I'm giving you a very small lamb.
“Not so small...” he said, tilting his head and looking at the drawing. - Check this out! My lamb fell asleep...
This is how I met the little prince.
III
It took me a while to understand where he came from. The little prince bombarded me with questions, but when I asked about something, he didn’t seem to hear. Only little by little, from random, casually dropped words, everything was revealed to me.
So, when he first saw my plane (I won’t draw a plane, I still can’t handle it), he asked:
- What is this thing?
- It's not a thing. This is a plane. My plane. He is flying.
And I proudly explained to him that I can fly. Then the baby exclaimed:
- How! Did you fall from the sky?
“Yes,” I answered modestly.
- That's funny!..
And the little prince laughed loudly, so that I was annoyed: I like my misadventures to be taken seriously. Then he added:
- So you also came from heaven. And from what planet?
“So this is the answer to his mysterious appearance here in the desert!” I thought and asked directly:
- So you came here from another planet?
But he didn't answer. He shook his head quietly, looking at my plane:
- Well, you couldn’t have flown from far away...
And I thought about something for a long time. Then he took the lamb out of his pocket and plunged into the contemplation of this treasure.
You can imagine how my curiosity was piqued by his half-confession about “other planets.” And I tried to find out more:
- Where did you come from, baby? Where is your home? Where do you want to take the lamb?
He paused thoughtfully, then said:
- It’s very good that you gave me the box, the lamb will sleep there at night.
- Well, of course. And if you're smart, I'll give you a rope to tie him up during the day. And a peg.
- 4
The little prince frowned:
- Tie? What is this for?
“But if you don’t tie him up, he’ll wander off into an unknown place and get lost.”
Here my friend laughed cheerfully again:
- Where will he go?
- You never know where? Everything is straight, straight, wherever your eyes look.
Then the little prince said seriously:
- It’s okay, because I have very little space there. - And he added, not without sadness:
- If you keep going straight and straight, you won't get far...
IV
So I did one more important discovery: his home planet is the size of a house!
However, this didn’t surprise me too much. I knew that, in addition to such large planets as earth, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, there were hundreds of others that were not even given names, and among them were so small that it was difficult to see them even in a telescope. When an astronomer discovers such a planet, he does not give it a name, but simply a number. For example: asteroid 3251.
I have good reason to believe that the little prince came from a planet called asteroid b-612. This asteroid was seen through a telescope only once, in 1909, by a Turkish astronomer.
The astronomer then reported his wonderful discovery at the International Astronomical Congress. But no one believed him, and all because he was dressed in Turkish. These adults are such a people!
Fortunately for the reputation of asteroid B-612, the ruler of Turkey ordered his subjects, on pain of death, to wear European dress. In 1920, that astronomer again reported his discovery. This time he was dressed latest fashion- and everyone agreed with him.
I told you in such detail about asteroid B-612 and even told you its number only because of the adults. Adults love numbers very much. When you tell them that you have a new friend, they will never ask about the most important thing. They will never say: “What’s his voice like? What games does he like to play? Does he catch butterflies?” They ask: "How old is he? How many brothers does he have? How much does he weigh? How much does his father earn?" And after that they imagine that they recognize the person. When you tell adults: “I saw beautiful house made of pink brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof,” they just can’t imagine this house. They need to be told: “I saw a house worth a hundred thousand francs,” and then they exclaim: “What a beauty!” "
In the same way, if you say: “here is proof that the little prince really existed - he was very, very nice, he laughed, and he wanted to have a lamb.
And whoever wants a lamb, of course, exists,” if you say so, they will only shrug their shoulders and look at you as if you were an unintelligent baby.
But if you tell them: “he came from a planet called asteroid b-612,” this will convince them, and they will not bother you with questions. These are the kind of people these adults are. You shouldn’t be angry with them. Children should be very lenient towards adults .
- 5
But we, those who understand what life is, we, of course, laugh at numbers and numbers! I would gladly begin this story as fairy tale. I'd like to start like this:
"once upon a time there was a little prince. He lived on a planet that was slightly larger than himself, and he really missed his friend...". Those who understand what life is would immediately see that this is much more like the truth.
Because I don’t want my book to be read just for fun. It’s too painful to remember, and it’s not easy for me to talk about it. It's been six years since my friend left me with the lamb. And I'm trying to talk about it so as not to forget it. It's very sad when friends are forgotten. Not everyone had a friend. And I'm afraid of becoming like adults who are not interested in anything except numbers. That’s also why I bought a box of paints and colored pencils. It’s not so easy to start drawing again at my age, if in my entire life I’ve only drawn a boa constrictor from the outside and inside, and even then at the age of six! Of course, I try to convey the likeness as best as possible. But I’m not at all sure that I will succeed. One portrait comes out well, but the other is not at all similar. The same goes for height: in one picture my little prince is too big, in another he’s too small. And I don’t remember well what color his clothes were. I try to draw this way and that, at random, with little effort. Finally, I may be wrong in some important details. But you won’t exact it. My friend never explained anything to me. Maybe he thought I was just like him. But, unfortunately, I don’t know how to see the lamb through the walls of the box. Maybe I'm a little like the adults. I guess I'm getting old.
V
Every day I learned something new about his planet, how he left it and how he wandered. He talked about it little by little when it came to the word. So, on the third day I learned about the tragedy with the baobabs.
This also came about because of the lamb. It seemed that the little prince was suddenly overcome by grave doubts, and he asked:
- Tell me, is it true that lambs eat bushes?
- Yes its true.
- That's good!
I didn't understand why it was so important that lambs eat bushes. But the little prince added:
- So they eat baobabs too?
I objected that baobabs are not bushes, but huge trees, as tall as a bell tower, and even if he brings a whole herd of elephants, they will not eat even one baobab.
Hearing about the elephants, the little prince laughed:
- They would have to be placed on top of each other...
And then he said judiciously:
- Baobabs are very small at first, until they grow.
- It's right. But why does your lamb eat small baobabs?
- But of course! - He exclaimed, as if we were talking about the simplest, most elementary truths.
And I had to rack my brains until I figured out what it was all about.
On the planet of the little prince, like on any other planet, useful and harmful herbs grow. This means that there are good seeds of good ones there, useful herbs and harmful seeds of bad weeds. But the seeds
- 6
invisible. They sleep deep underground until one of them decides to wake up. Then it sprouts, straightens out and reaches for the sun, at first so cute and harmless. If it's a future radish or rose bush, let it grow healthy. But if it is some kind of bad herb, you need to pull it out by the roots as soon as you recognize it. And on the planet of the little prince there are terrible, evil seeds... These are the seeds of baobabs. The entire soil of the planet is contaminated with them. And if the baobab is not recognized in time, then you will no longer be able to get rid of it. He will take over the entire planet. He will penetrate it right through with his roots. And if the planet is very small, and there are a lot of baobabs, they will tear it to shreds.
“There is such a firm rule,” the little prince told me later. - Get up in the morning, wash your face, put yourself in order - and immediately put your planet in order. It is imperative to weed out baobabs every day, as soon as they can already be distinguished from rose bushes: their young shoots are almost identical. It's very boring work, but not difficult at all.
One day he advised me to try and draw such a picture so that our children would understand it well.
“If they ever have to travel,” he said, “this will come in handy.” Other work can wait a little, there will be no harm. But if you give free rein to the baobabs, trouble will not be avoided. I knew one planet, a lazy person lived on it. He didn't weed out three bushes on time...
The little prince described everything to me in detail, and I drew this planet. I hate preaching to people. But few people know what the baobabs threaten, and the danger that anyone who lands on an asteroid is exposed to is very great - which is why this time I decide to change my usual restraint. “Children!” I say. “Beware of the baobabs!” I want to warn my friends about the danger that has been lurking for them for a long time, and they don’t even suspect about it, just as I didn’t suspect it before. That's why I worked so hard on this drawing, and I don't regret the labor spent. Perhaps you ask: why are there no more impressive drawings in my book like this one with baobabs? The answer is very simple: I tried, but it didn’t work out. And when I painted baobabs, I was inspired by the knowledge that this was terribly important and urgent.
VI
O little prince! Little by little I also realized how sad and monotonous your life was. For a long time you had only one entertainment: you admired the sunset. I learned about this on the morning of the fourth day when you said:
- I really love the sunset. Let's go watch the sun go down.
- Well, we'll have to wait.
- What to expect?
- So that the sun goes down.
At first you were very surprised, and then you laughed at yourself and said:
- It still seems to me that I’m at home!
Indeed. Everyone knows that when it is noon in America, the sun is already setting in France. And if you were to transport yourself to France in one minute, you could admire the sunset. Unfortunately, it is very, very far from France. And on your planet, all you had to do was move your chair a few steps. And you looked at the sunset sky again and again, you just had to want...
- Once I saw the sun set forty-three times in one day!
- 7
And a little later you added:
- You know... When it becomes very sad, it’s good to watch the sun go down...
- So, on that day when you saw forty-three sunsets, you were very sad?
But the little prince did not answer.
VII
On the fifth day, again thanks to the lamb, I learned the little prince's secret. He asked unexpectedly, without preamble, as if he had come to this conclusion after long silent discussions:
- If a lamb eats bushes, does it also eat flowers?
- He eats everything he can get his hands on.
- Even flowers that have thorns?
- Yes, and those with thorns.
- Then why the spikes?
I didn't know this. I was very busy: one nut stuck in the engine, and I tried to unscrew it. I felt uneasy, the situation was becoming serious, there was almost no water left, and I began to fear that my forced landing would end badly.
- Why do we need spikes?
Having asked any question, the little prince did not give up until he received an answer. The stubborn nut was making me impatient, and I answered at random:
- The thorns are not needed for anything, the flowers release them simply out of anger.
- That's how it is!
There was silence. Then he said almost angrily:
- I don’t believe you! The flowers are weak. And simple-minded. And they try to give themselves courage. They think that if they have thorns, everyone is afraid of them...
I didn't answer. At that moment I told myself: if this nut still doesn’t give in, I’ll hit it with a hammer so hard that it will shatter into pieces.
The little prince interrupted my thoughts again:
- Do you think that flowers...
- No! I don't think anything! I answered you the first thing that came to mind. You see, I'm busy with serious business.
He looked at me in amazement:
- Seriously?!
He kept looking at me: stained with lubricating oil, with a hammer in my hands, I bent over an incomprehensible object that seemed so ugly to him.
- You talk like adults! - He said.
I felt ashamed. And he mercilessly added:
- You're confusing everything... You don't understand anything!
Yes, he was seriously angry. He shook his head, and the wind tousled his golden hair.
- I know one planet, there lives such a gentleman with a purple face. He had never smelled a flower in his entire life. I never looked at a star. He never loved anyone. And he never did anything. He is busy with only one thing: adding numbers. And from morning to night he repeats one thing: “I am a serious man! I am a serious man!” - Just like you. And he's literally swelled with pride. But in reality he is not a person. He's a mushroom.
- What?
- 8
- Mushroom!
The little prince even turned pale with anger.
- Flowers have been growing thorns for millions of years. And for millions of years, lambs still eat flowers. So isn't it a serious matter to understand why they go out of their way to grow thorns if the thorns are of no use? Is it really not important that lambs and flowers fight each other? But isn’t this more serious and important than the arithmetic of a fat gentleman with a purple face? What if I know the only flower in the world, it grows only on my planet, and there is no other like it anywhere else, and one fine morning a little lamb suddenly picks it up and eats it and won’t even know what he’s done? And this, in your opinion, is not important?
He blushed deeply. Then he spoke again:
- If you love a flower - the only one that is no longer on any of the many millions of stars, that’s enough: you look at the sky and feel happy. And you say to yourself: “My flower lives there somewhere...” But if the lamb eats it, it’s the same as if all the stars went out at once! And this, in your opinion, does not matter!
He couldn't speak anymore. He suddenly burst into tears. It got dark. I quit my job. I forgot to think about the ill-fated nut and hammer, about thirst and death. On a star, on a planet - on my planet, called earth - the little prince was crying, and it was necessary to console him. I took him in my arms and began to cradle him. I told him: “The flower you love is not in danger... I will draw a muzzle for your lamb... I will draw armor for your flower... I...” I didn’t know what else to tell him. I felt terribly awkward and clumsy. How to call so that he can hear, how to catch up with his soul, which is eluding me? After all, it is so mysterious and unknown, this country of tears...
VIII
Very soon I got to know this flower better. On the planet of the little prince, simple, modest flowers always grew - they had few petals, they took up very little space and did not bother anyone. They opened in the grass in the morning and withered in the evening. And this one sprouted one day from grain brought from nowhere, and the little prince did not take his eyes off the tiny sprout, unlike all the other sprouts and blades of grass. What if this is some new variety of baobab? But the bush quickly stopped stretching upward, and a bud appeared on it. The little prince had never seen such huge buds and had a presentiment that he would see a miracle. And the unknown guest, hidden within the walls of her green room, kept getting ready, kept preening. She carefully selected the colors. She dressed up slowly, trying on the petals one by one. She did not want to come into the world disheveled, like some kind of poppy. She wanted to appear in all the splendor of her beauty. Yes, she was a terrible coquette! Mysterious preparations continued day after day. And then one morning, as soon as the sun rose, the petals opened.
And the beauty, who had put so much effort into preparing for this moment, said, yawning:
- Oh, I woke up forcibly... Please excuse me... I’m still completely disheveled...
The little prince could not contain his delight:
- How beautiful you are!
- Yes its true? - There was a quiet answer. - And note, I was born with the sun.
- 9
The little prince, of course, guessed that the amazing guest did not suffer from an excess of modesty, but she was so beautiful that it was breathtaking!
And she soon noticed:
- Looks like it's time for breakfast. Be so kind as to take care of me...
The little prince was very embarrassed, found a watering can and watered the flower with spring water.
It soon turned out that the beauty was proud and touchy, and the little prince was completely exhausted with her. She had four thorns, and one day she said to him:
- Let the tigers come, I'm not afraid of their claws!
“There are no tigers on my planet,” objected the little prince. And then, tigers don't eat grass.
“I’m not grass,” the flower quietly remarked.
- Excuse me...
- No, tigers are not scary to me, but I am terribly afraid of drafts. Don't have a screen?
“The plant is afraid of drafts... Very strange,” thought the little prince. “What a difficult character this flower has.”
- When evening comes, cover me with a cap. It's too cold here. A very uncomfortable planet. Where I came from...
She didn't finish. After all, she was brought here when she was still a seed. She could not know anything about other worlds. It's stupid to lie when you can be caught so easily! The beauty was embarrassed, then coughed once or twice so that the little prince felt how guilty he was before her:
- Where is the screen?
- I wanted to go after her, but I couldn’t help but listen to you!
Then she coughed harder: let his conscience still torment him!
Although the little prince fell in love beautiful flower and was glad to serve him, but soon doubts awoke in his soul. He took empty words to heart and began to feel very unhappy.
“I shouldn’t have listened to her,” he told me trustingly one day. You should never listen to what flowers say. You just have to look at them and breathe in their scent. My flower filled my entire planet with fragrance, but I did not know how to rejoice at it. This talk about claws and tigers... They should have moved me, but I got angry...
And he also admitted:
- I didn’t understand anything then! It was necessary to judge not by words, but by deeds. She gave me her scent and illuminated my life. I shouldn't have run. Behind these pitiful tricks and tricks I should have guessed tenderness. The flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young, I didn’t know how to love yet.
IX
As I understand it, he decided to travel with migratory birds. On the last morning, he tidied up his planet more diligently than usual. He carefully cleaned active volcanoes. It had two active volcanoes. They are very convenient for warming up breakfast in the morning. In addition, he had another extinct volcano. But, he said, you never know what can happen! Therefore, he cleaned out the extinct volcano too. When you carefully clean the volcanoes, they burn evenly and quietly, without any
- 10
eruptions. A volcanic eruption is like a fire in a chimney when soot ignites. Of course, we people on earth are too small and cannot clean out our volcanoes. That's why they give us so much trouble.
Then the little prince, not without sadness, tore out the last sprouts of the baobabs. He thought he would never return. But that morning, his usual work gave him extraordinary pleasure. And when he's in last time watered it and was about to cover the wonderful flower with a cap, he even wanted to cry.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Leon Vert.
I ask the children to forgive me for dedicating this book to an adult. I’ll say this in justification: this adult is my best friend. And one more thing: he understands everything in the world, even children's books. And finally, he lives in France, and it’s hungry and cold there now. And he really needs consolation. If all this does not justify me, I will dedicate this book to the boy who was once my adult friend. After all, all adults were children at first, but few of them remember this. So I am correcting the dedication:
Leon Vert,
when he was little
I
When I was six years old, in a book called “True Stories,” which told about virgin forests, I once saw an amazing picture. In the picture, a huge snake - a boa constrictor - was swallowing a predatory beast.
The book said: “The boa constrictor swallows its prey whole without chewing. After that, he can no longer move and sleeps for six months straight until he digests the food.”
I thought a lot about the adventurous life of the jungle and also drew my first picture with a colored pencil. This was my drawing No. 1. I showed my creation to adults and asked if they were scared.
- Is the hat scary? - They objected to me.
And it wasn't a hat at all. It was a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant. Then I drew a boa constrictor from the inside so that adults could understand it more clearly. They always need to explain everything. This is my drawing N2.
The adults advised me not to draw snakes, either outside or inside, but to be more interested in geography, history, arithmetic and spelling. This is how it happened that for six years I gave up my brilliant career as an artist. Having failed with drawings No. 1 and No. 2, I lost faith in myself. Adults never understand anything themselves, and for children it is very tiring to endlessly explain and explain everything to them.
So, I had to choose another profession, and I trained to be a pilot. I flew around almost the whole world. And geography, to tell the truth, was very useful to me. I could tell the difference between China and Arizona at a glance. This is very useful if you get lost at night.
In my time I have met a lot of different serious people. I lived among adults for a long time. I saw them very close. And, to be honest, this didn’t make me think any better about them.
When I met an adult who seemed to me more intelligent and understanding than others, I showed him my drawing N1 - I saved it. But they all answered me: “It’s a hat,” and I no longer talked to them about boa constrictors, or about the jungle, or about the stars. I applied myself to their concepts. I talked to them about playing bridge and golf, about politics and about ties. And the adults were very pleased that they met such a sensible person.
II
So I lived alone, and I had no one to talk to heart to heart. And six years ago I had to make an emergency landing in sugar. Something broke in my plane's engine. There was no mechanic or passengers with me, and I decided that I would try to fix everything myself, even though it was very difficult. I had to fix the engine or die. I barely had enough water for a week.
So, the first evening I fell asleep on the sand in the desert, where there was no habitation for thousands of miles around. A man who was shipwrecked and lost on a raft in the middle of the ocean would not be so alone. Imagine my surprise when at dawn someone’s thin voice woke me up. He said:
- Please... Draw me a lamb!
- A?..
- Draw me a lamb...
I jumped up as if thunder had struck above me. He rubbed his eyes. I started looking around. And I see some extraordinary little kid standing and looking at me seriously. Here is the best portrait of him that I have since been able to draw. But in my drawing, of course, he is not nearly as good as he really was. It is not my fault. When I was six years old, adults convinced me that I would not be an artist, and I learned to draw nothing except boa constrictors - outside and inside.
So, I looked with all my eyes at this extraordinary phenomenon. Remember, I was a thousand miles from human habitation. And yet it didn’t look at all like this little guy was lost, or tired and scared to death, or dying of hunger and thirst. There was no way to tell from his appearance that he was a child lost in an uninhabited desert, far from any habitation. Finally my speech returned and I asked:
- But... What are you doing here?
And he again asked quietly and very seriously:
- Please... Draw a lamb...
All this was so mysterious and incomprehensible that I did not dare refuse.
No matter how absurd it was here, in the desert, on the verge of death, I still took out a sheet of paper and an eternal pen from my pocket. But then I remembered that I studied more geography, history, arithmetic and spelling, and I told the kid (I even said a little angrily) that I couldn’t draw. He replied:
- Doesn't matter. Draw a lamb.
Since I had never drawn a sheep in my life, I repeated for him one of the two old pictures that I only know how to draw - a boa constrictor outside. And he was very surprised when the baby exclaimed:
- No no! I don't need an elephant in a boa constrictor! The boa constrictor is too dangerous and the elephant is too big. Everything in my house is very small. I need a lamb. Draw a lamb.
And I drew.
He looked carefully at my drawing and said:
- No, this lamb is quite frail. Draw someone else.
I drew.
My new friend smiled softly, condescendingly.
“You can see for yourself,” he said, “this is not a lamb.” This is a big ram. He has horns...
I drew it differently again.
But he refused this drawing too:
- This one is too old. I need a lamb that will live a long time.
Here I lost patience - after all, I had to quickly disassemble the engine and scratched the box.
And he said to the baby:
- Here's a box for you. And your lamb sits in it.
But how surprised I was when my stern judge suddenly beamed:
- This is what I need! Do you think he eats a lot of grass?
- And what?
– After all, I have very little at home...
- He's had enough. I'm giving you a very small lamb.
“Not so small...” he said, tilting his head and looking at the drawing. - Check this out! My lamb fell asleep...
This is how I met the little prince.
III
It took me a while to understand where he came from. The little prince bombarded me with questions, but when I asked about something, he didn’t seem to hear. Only little by little, from random, casually dropped words, everything was revealed to me.
So, when he first saw my plane (I won’t draw a plane, I still can’t handle it), he asked:
-What is this thing?
- This is not a thing. This is a plane. My plane. He is flying.
And I proudly explained to him that I can fly. Then the baby exclaimed:
- How! Did you fall from the sky?
“Yes,” I answered modestly.
- That's funny!..
And the little prince laughed loudly, so that I was annoyed: I like my misadventures to be taken seriously. Then he added:
“So you also came from heaven.” And from what planet?
“So this is the answer to his mysterious appearance here in the desert!” I thought and asked directly:
- So you came here from another planet?
But he didn't answer. He shook his head quietly, looking at my plane:
- Well, you couldn’t have flown from far away...
And I thought about something for a long time. Then he took the lamb out of his pocket and plunged into the contemplation of this treasure.
You can imagine how my curiosity was piqued by his half-confession about “other planets.” And I tried to find out more:
- Where did you come from, baby? Where is your home? Where do you want to take the lamb?
He paused thoughtfully, then said:
“It’s very good that you gave me the box, the lamb will sleep there at night.”
- Well, of course. And if you're smart, I'll give you a rope to tie him up during the day. And a peg.
The little prince frowned:
- Tie? What is this for?
“But if you don’t tie him up, he’ll wander into an unknown place and get lost.”
Here my friend laughed cheerfully again:
- Where will he go?
- You never know where? Everything is straight, straight, wherever your eyes look.
Then the little prince said seriously:
– It’s okay, because I have very little space there. - And he added, not without sadness:
– If you keep going straight and straight, you won’t get far...
IV
So I made another important discovery: his home planet was as big as a house!
However, this didn’t surprise me too much. I knew that, in addition to such large planets as earth, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, there were hundreds of others that were not even given names, and among them were so small that it was difficult to see them even in a telescope. When an astronomer discovers such a planet, he does not give it a name, but simply a number. For example: asteroid 3251.
I have good reason to believe that the little prince came from a planet called “asteroid b-612”. This asteroid was seen through a telescope only once, in 1909, by a Turkish astronomer.
The astronomer then reported on his remarkable discovery at the International Astronomical Congress. But no one believed him, and all because he was dressed in Turkish. These adults are such a people!
Fortunately for the reputation of asteroid B-612, the ruler of Turkey ordered his subjects, on pain of death, to wear European dress. In 1920, that astronomer again reported his discovery. This time he was dressed in the latest fashion - and everyone agreed with him.
I told you in such detail about asteroid B-612 and even told you its number only because of the adults. Adults love numbers very much. When you tell them that you have a new friend, they will never ask about the most important thing. They will never say: “What’s his voice? What games does he like to play? Does he catch butterflies? They ask: “how old is he? How many brothers does he have? How much does he weigh? How much does his father earn?” And after that they imagine that they recognize the person. When you tell adults: “I saw a beautiful house made of pink brick, there are geraniums in the windows, and pigeons on the roof,” they cannot imagine this house. You have to tell them: “I saw a house for a hundred thousand francs,” and then they exclaim: “What a beauty!”
In the same way, if you say: “here is proof that the little prince really existed - he was very, very nice, he laughed, and he wanted to have a lamb.
And whoever wants a lamb, of course, exists,” - if you say so, they will only shrug their shoulders and look at you as if you were an unintelligent baby.
But if you tell them: “he came from a planet called asteroid b-612,” this will convince them, and they will not bother you with questions. These are the kind of people these adults are. You shouldn't be angry with them. Children should be very lenient towards adults.
But we, those who understand what life is, we, of course, laugh at numbers and numbers! I would gladly begin this story as a fairy tale. I'd like to start like this:
“Once upon a time there was a little prince. He lived on a planet that was slightly larger than himself, and he really missed his friend...” Those who understand what life is would immediately see that this is much more like the truth.
Because I don’t want my book to be read just for fun. It’s too painful to remember, and it’s not easy for me to talk about it. It's been six years since my friend left me with the lamb. And I'm trying to talk about it so as not to forget it. It's very sad when friends are forgotten. Not everyone had a friend. And I'm afraid of becoming like adults who are not interested in anything except numbers. That’s also why I bought a box of paints and colored pencils. It’s not so easy to start drawing again at my age, if in my entire life I’ve only drawn a boa constrictor from the outside and inside, and even then at the age of six! Of course, I try to convey the likeness as best as possible. But I’m not at all sure that I will succeed. One portrait comes out well, but the other is not at all similar. The same goes for height: in one picture my little prince is too big, in another he’s too small. And I don’t remember well what color his clothes were. I try to draw this way and that, at random, with little effort. Finally, I may be wrong in some important details. But you won’t exact it. My friend never explained anything to me. Maybe he thought I was just like him. But, unfortunately, I don’t know how to see the lamb through the walls of the box. Maybe I'm a little like the adults. I guess I'm getting old.
V
Every day I learned something new about his planet, how he left it and how he wandered. He talked about it little by little when it came to the word. So, on the third day I learned about the tragedy with the baobabs.
This also came about because of the lamb. It seemed that the little prince was suddenly overcome by grave doubts, and he asked:
- Tell me, is it true that lambs eat bushes?
- Yes its true.
- That's good!
I didn't understand why it was so important that lambs eat bushes. But the little prince added:
- So they eat baobabs too?
I objected that baobabs are not bushes, but huge trees, as tall as a bell tower, and even if he brings a whole herd of elephants, they will not eat even one baobab.
Hearing about the elephants, the little prince laughed:
– They would have to be placed on top of each other...
And then he said judiciously:
– Baobabs are very small at first, until they grow.
- It's right. But why does your lamb eat small baobabs?
- But of course! – He exclaimed, as if we were talking about the simplest, most elementary truths.
And I had to rack my brains until I figured out what it was all about.
On the planet of the little prince, like on any other planet, useful and harmful herbs grow. This means that there are good seeds of good, healthy herbs and harmful seeds of bad, weedy grass. But the seedsinvisible. They sleep deep underground until one of them decides to wake up. Then it sprouts, straightens out and reaches for the sun, at first so cute and harmless. If it's a future radish or rose bush, let it grow healthy. But if it is some kind of bad herb, you need to pull it out by the roots as soon as you recognize it. And on the planet of the little prince there are terrible, evil seeds... These are the seeds of baobabs. The entire soil of the planet is contaminated with them. And if the baobab is not recognized in time, then you will no longer be able to get rid of it. He will take over the entire planet. He will penetrate it right through with his roots. And if the planet is very small, and there are a lot of baobabs, they will tear it to shreds.
“There is such a firm rule,” the little prince told me later. – Get up in the morning, wash your face, put yourself in order – and immediately put your planet in order. It is imperative to weed out baobabs every day, as soon as they can be distinguished from rose bushes: their young shoots are almost identical. It's very boring work, but not difficult at all.
One day he advised me to try and draw such a picture so that our children would understand it well.
“If they ever have to travel,” he said, “this will come in handy.” Other work can wait a little, there will be no harm. But if you give free rein to the baobabs, trouble will not be avoided. I knew one planet, a lazy person lived on it. He didn’t weed out three bushes on time...
The little prince described everything to me in detail, and I drew this planet. I hate preaching to people. But few people know what the baobabs threaten, and the danger that anyone who lands on an asteroid is exposed to is very great - which is why this time I decide to change my usual restraint. "Children! - I say. “Beware of the baobabs!” I want to warn my friends about the danger that has been lurking for them for a long time, and they don’t even suspect about it, just as I didn’t suspect it before. That's why I worked so hard on this drawing, and I don't regret the labor spent. Perhaps you ask: why are there no more impressive drawings in my book like this one with baobabs? The answer is very simple: I tried, but it didn’t work out. And when I painted baobabs, I was inspired by the knowledge that this was terribly important and urgent.
VI
O little prince! Little by little I also realized how sad and monotonous your life was. For a long time you had only one entertainment: you admired the sunset. I learned about this on the morning of the fourth day when you said:
– I really love sunsets. Let's go watch the sun go down.
- Well, we'll have to wait.
– What to expect?
- So that the sun goes down.
At first you were very surprised, and then you laughed at yourself and said:
– It still seems to me that I’m at home!
Indeed. Everyone knows that when it is noon in America, the sun is already setting in France. And if you were to transport yourself to France in one minute, you could admire the sunset. Unfortunately, it is very, very far from France. And on your planet, all you had to do was move your chair a few steps. And you looked at the sunset sky again and again, you just had to want...
– I once saw the sun set forty-three times in one day!
And a little later you added:
- You know... When it becomes very sad, it’s good to watch the sun go down...
- So, on that day when you saw forty-three sunsets, you were very sad?
But the little prince did not answer.
A little prince. Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Book. Read online. 16 Sep 2017 admin
1
One day, when I was six years old, I saw a strange picture
in the book "True Stories about Nature", which told about
pristine forests. The picture showed a boa constrictor swallowing some kind of animal.
Look, here is a copy of this picture:
And the book said: “This is a boa constrictor; it swallows prey
entirely, without chewing it, and then loses the ability to move and falls into
hibernate for six months to digest food."
Then for the first time I thought about the jungle, generous with its adventures, and, diligently
After working with a colored pencil, I finally managed to make my first
drawing. My Drawing Number one. And he looked like this:
I showed my masterpiece to adults and asked if they were scared to look at it.
him.
But the adults answered:
- What's so scary about some hat?
Of course, I didn't draw a hat at all. I portrayed a boa constrictor who
digests an elephant. But the adults could not understand this, and then I
I made another drawing: I drew the insides of a boa constrictor, yes,
so that adults can certainly see everything. Adults always need
explain what's what.
This is what my Drawing Number Two was:
This time the adults advised me to quit drawing
boa constrictors - no matter from the inside or outside - and diligently engage
studying geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. That's why at six
years, I gave up a career as a painter, which, quite possibly, could
turned out just brilliantly. After the failure with Drawing Number One and the complete
After the failure of Drawing Number Two, I completely lost heart. Adults never care about anything
they get it with their own minds, and children quickly get tired of explaining to them one thing or another.
And then I chose a different career for myself and learned to fly airplanes. To me
I had the opportunity to fly over all parts of the world a little, and I must admit,
Geography really turned out to be a very useful science. Now I'm from the first
I can tell the difference between China and Arizona at a glance. A very valuable skill, especially
when you wander in the night.
In my time I have met a great many serious people. I'm long
lived surrounded by adults. I saw them at close range, looked at them
emphasis And this did not improve my opinion of them at all.
Every time I met an adult who seemed even more or less
smart, out of curiosity I showed him my Drawing Number One,
which he kept and always carried with him. So I hoped to determine
whether this person is able to understand the essence of things. But he or she will certainly
They said: “But it’s a hat.” And after that I never spoke to
them about boa constrictors, primeval forests or stars; I was just getting down
to their level and talked about bridge, golf, politics and ties.
“The Little Prince” is childish, but at the same time a thoughtful work. Antoine de Saint-Exupery placed in the lungs and a little fairy tale a reflection of the real adult world with its advantages and disadvantages. In places it is satire, myth, fantasy and tragic story. Therefore, the multifaceted book appeals to both small and large readers.
"The Little Prince" was born during the Great Patriotic War. It all started with Exupery’s drawings, in which he depicted that very “little prince”.
Exupery, being a military pilot, once got into a plane crash, this happened in 1935 in the Libyan desert. Opening old wounds, memories of the disaster and news of the outbreak of the World War inspired the writer to create the work. He thought about the fact that each of us is responsible for the place where he lives, be it a small apartment or the whole planet. And the struggle calls this responsibility into question, because it was during that fierce battle of many countries that lethal force was first used nuclear weapon. Alas, many people did not care about their home, since they allowed wars to bring humanity to such extreme measures.
The work was created in 1942 in the USA; a year later it became available to the reader. The Little Prince became the author's final creation and brought him worldwide fame. The author dedicated his book to his friend (Leon Werth), moreover, to the boy his friend once was. It is worth noting that Leon, who was a writer and critic, being a Jew, suffered from persecution during the development of Nazism. He also had to leave his planet, but not of his own free will.
Genre, direction
Exupery talked about the meaning of life, and in this he was helped by the genre of the parable, which is characterized by a clearly expressed morality in the finale and an edifying tone of the narrative. A fairy tale as a parable is the most common crossing of genres. Distinctive feature fairy tales can be called because they have a fantastic and simple plot, but at the same time they are instructive in nature, helping young readers to form moral qualities, and adults to think about their views and behavior. Fairy tale - reflection real life, but reality is presented to the reader through fiction, no matter how paradoxical it may sound. Genre originality The work suggests that “The Little Prince” is a philosophical fairy tale-parable.
The work can also be classified as a fantasy story.
Meaning of the name
The Little Prince is a story about a traveler who travels throughout the universe. He does not just travel, but is in search of the meaning of life, the essence of love and the secret of friendship. He learns not only the world around him, but also himself, and self-knowledge is his the main objective. It is still growing, developing and symbolizing an immaculate and tender childhood. Therefore, the author called it “small”.
Why a prince? He is alone on his planet, it all belongs to him. He takes his role as a master very responsibly and, despite his modest age, has already learned to care for her. Such behavior suggests that this is a noble boy who rules his domain, but what should we call him? A prince, because he is endowed with power and wisdom.
The essence
The plot begins in the Sahara Desert. The pilot of the plane, having made an emergency landing, meets the same Little Prince who arrived on Earth from another planet. The boy told his new acquaintance about his journey, about the planets he had visited, about his old life, about the rose that was his faithful friend. The little prince loved his rose so much that he was ready to give his life for it. The boy loved his home, he liked to watch sunsets, it’s good that on his planet they could be seen several times a day, and for this the Little Prince only had to move his chair.
One day, the boy felt unhappy and decided to go in search of adventure. Rose was proud and rarely gave her patron her warmth, so she did not withhold him. During his journey, the Little Prince met: a Ruler who is confident in his absolute power over the stars, an Ambitious man for whom the main thing is to be admired, a Drunkard who drinks out of guilt for alcohol abuse, no matter how paradoxical it may sound. The boy even met Business man, whose main occupation is counting stars. The little prince encountered the Lamplighter, who lit and extinguished the lantern on his planet every minute. He also met the Geographer, who in his entire life had never seen anything except his planet. Last place The traveler's position became planet Earth, where he found a true friend. All the main events are described by us in summary books for a reader's diary.
The author's main idea becomes clear immediately after reading the work. He managed to create fairy tale story, in which he conveyed to the reader in simple language complex things, on the understanding of which world peace depends. The author says that people must learn to trust each other and take responsibility for everything they love. The meaning of the book lies in the phrase:
Loving does not mean looking at each other, it means looking in the same direction.
A person should take care of his home, and not tear it apart by wars into bloody, lifeless parts. This idea was especially relevant then, during the Second World War. The little prince cleaned his planet every day, preventing the baobabs from growing to alarming proportions. If the world had been able to unite in time and sweep away the National Socialist movement led by Hitler, then the bloodshed could have been prevented. For those who love the world should have taken care of it, and not locked themselves on their little planets, thinking that the storm will pass by. Because of this disunity and irresponsibility of governments and peoples, millions of people have suffered, and the writer calls to finally learn to faithfully and responsibly love the harmony that only friendship provides.
What does it teach?
The story of the Little Prince is surprisingly heartfelt and instructive. Exupery's creation tells how important it is to have true friend nearby and how important it is to bear responsibility for those you have “tamed.” The fairy tale teaches love, friendship, and warns against loneliness. In addition, you should not lock yourself in your small territory, fencing yourself off from the whole world around you. You need to get out of your comfort zone, learn new things, look for yourself.
Exupery also encourages the reader to listen not only to his mind when making decisions, but also to his heart, because you cannot see the main thing with your eyes.
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