‘The Little Prince’ offers a deeply insightful look into the human condition – the central emotions of conflict.

Personally, what is most striking about the story to me is the statement “Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them” – which often becomes a rote formulae and an absence of observation. While many novels present children as naive creatures who grow by learning from adults and their experiences, very few books or writers focus on how much children have to offer to adults.

The basic bones of the story are: an aviator, downed in the desert and facing long odds of survival, encounters a strange young person, neither man nor really boy, who, it emerges over time, has travelled from his solitary home on a distant asteroid, where he lives alone with a single rose. The rose has made him so miserable that, in torment, he has taken advantage of a flock of birds to convey him to other planets. He is instructed by a wise if cautious fox, and by a sinister angel of death, the snake.

Imagination is often presented as almost inherent in children and instead of celebrating it, our every effort seems to be guided towards quelling it. ‘The Little Prince’ is brilliant in this regard for it showcases a man who boldly states that adults lack imagination and an eye to see things truly, which often leads to him lowering himself to the level of adults by talking about mundane banal things.

This is essential for us to understand because Saint-Exupery’s entire effort seems to deliver us the idea that in order to gain a true understanding of the world and to form lasting bonds, and retain the childlike innocence in each one of us that has been sadly forgotten by many needs to be preserved. With our eyes cloaked by misguided efforts of fixed obsessive traditionalism, it is perhaps only with the heart that adults can truly see any longer lest all that is essential would be lost to us.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1998). The Little Prince (Classic Fiction). Wordsworth Editions Ltd.