Book Review: “The Little Prince” stands out for its simplicity

Book Title: The Little Prince, Author: Antoine de Saint- Exupery

For the readers who bank on normative epistemologies as the barometer for a “bestseller”—this book is definitely for you.

For some, “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint- Exupery is esoteric and convoluted, but if you read with your heart, you will meet an overearching epistemic of life that most polyglots don’t understand.  The book speaks of life and its simplicity and necessitates purity of understanding, of juvenile’s faith, of reception, and enthusiasm to make a complete suspension so that the author can translate his discursive stances on how people confuse life with problems.  It’s a trite subject, yes, but Antoine de Saint- Exupery’s creation stands out for its simplicity. 

The author, a French pilotm, who is yet considered a chieftain in the French and World literature, transcends the classic subject of aviation by way of a book that’s imbued with life’s philosophies that are really simple.  The Little Prince is a semblance of how people preoccupy themselves with life’s complexities that do not necessarily exist.  For the author, life is how you perceive it, whether you are the conceited individual, the drunkard, the businessman or the pilot, you must “look with your heart because the eye is blind”.

Exupery translates the story in semi-memoirs of his childhood years and how he was predisposed to put down his creativity in painting and dwell more on life’s greater picture of consequences.  He opens the plot with the classic transnational mores of nature in the light of a boa constrictor swallowing wholly his prey and how, when his innocence expressed it into drawing, can be confused into a hat when a “sensible” adult looks at it.  He was frustrated.

Due to the infectious adult cynicism, the author then grows to be an “adult” who has a tarnished memory of his childhood fantasies as a painter.  He has become a pilot who meets bad luck and crashes his airplane in the remorseless Sahara desert.  Trying to beat the immortal time, he fixes his engine before his only lifeline at the moment, his water supply, runs out. 

While working desperately to fix his engine, a child’s voice calls up to him in the sound of “If you please — draw me a sheep!” The author, surprised and twisted, sees a small boy who is apparently a prince of a distant asteroid B-612. Consistent with its enchanting plot, the book reveals the prince’s identity as a lonely little prince who seeks for a friend in his journey across the planets. The prince was driven to abandon his home due to a vain flower with exuding pride who happens to be his only recipient of love and adoration.  He then springs into a journey to discover the secret of life’s IMPORTANCE.

Be au fait with life is what the story aims to convey.  And the secret of life is expressed by a fox, a creature which most of us don’t necessarily give too much significance. The Little Prince, having discovered the secret, passes it to the pilot in the light of a new level of understanding. 

The book, in its unfathomable creativity, reveals the secret of how the agony of saying goodbye is worth it if it puts forward the dynamism of change in the way we perceive the world.  It also extends the knowledge of the sinew of love and how it mends the debauched which makes all things inimitable. 

So read the book and get hold of the experience of the immortalization of the words “what is essential is invisible to the eye”.