Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements in English 4

Elijah T. Cabanatan

Prof. Ernie D. Rosales Jr.

January 11, 2010

I. Book Data

A. Book Title

The Little Prince

B. Author

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

C. Publisher
Reynal & Hitchcock, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
(U.S. edition, both French and English);
Gallimard (French edition)

D. Date Released
1943
 II. Genealogy

The Fox Pilot

The Rose The Snake

The Little Prince

g The Drunkard The Astronomer The Businessman The Lamplighter

Switchman The Geographer The Salesclerk The Flower w/ 3 petals The Roses

The Vain Man

 III. Literary Map

III. Climax

nce realizes the value of his rose and the lessons that the prince have learned from the fox then the little prince decides to go back to his

II. Complication IV. Denouement

of view of the little prince and the contrast beliefs or the
The denouement ofnarrow-mindedness of thethe
the story happens when adult
littleworld
princeofmeets
the narrator.
the narrator and the little prince w

I. Exposition V. Epilogue
n rejected by his rose, he then travels to the nearby planets and eventually lands on Earth and wanders through the Sahara desert.
The little prince knew how to return to his planet and the pilot thought that the little prince have returned home because he w
 II. Characters

IV. Characters

A. Major Characters

a. The Little Prince

The title character of the Little Prince is an innocent
traveler from the outer space whom encountered in
the Sahara desert by the narrator.

b. The Narrator
The narrator is a lonely pilot who befriends the little
prince while he is stranded in the Sahara desert.

c. The Rose
The rose is a flirt flower that consequently drives the
little prince away. Although it appears only in a few
parts of the story, her character is still important to
the flow of the story.

d. The Fox
The fox serves as a teacher to the prince because of
the lessons it gives.

B. Minor Characters

a. The King
The King is a just ruler who gives commands
rationally and due to a good reason.

b. The Snake
The snake is the one who sends the prince back to
the heavens by biting him.

c. The Vain Man

The vain man is melancholic and is longing for
admiration from all who pass by.
V. Summary

A pilot stranded in the desert awakes one morning to see,

standing before him, the most extra ordinary little fellow. “Please,”

asks the stranger, “draw me a sheep.” And the pilot realizes that when

life’s events are too difficult to understand, there is no choice but to

succumb to their mysteries. He pulls out pencil and paper…And thus

begins this wise and enchanting fable that, in teaching the secret of

what is really important in life, has changed forever the world for its

readers.
 "When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey." (Chapter
2) I think that it is the mystery of The Little Prince. I just like this idea
because it’s really true that sometimes one must pay attention to temptation
without considering or regardless of the consequences. This novel for me has
an extraordinary power to portray some of the many roles of aspects in life
such as fear, hate, love, compassion, honesty, regret and loneliness which
are represented and really emphasized by this classic book.
One of my favorite part of it is when the little prince meets the
merchant selling pills, which he claims will quench thirst, saving a calculated
fifty-three minutes from every week spent drinking, he asks, ‘And what do I
do with those fifty-three minutes’ ‘Anything you like…’ ‘As for me,’ said the
little prince to himself, ‘if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I
should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.’ From that, the
first important theme I have learned from this novel is not to let all the new
developments and material things to deceive us. Our society has been
rapidly developing and because of that, it has to offer taking away
something which has been the most important in life. People in our modern
society have developed such things that the advertising or publicity claims to
make people’s lives easier and more efficient. Most of the people eat pre-
packaged or instant meals, drink bottled water and they would much rather
prefer taking diet pills or diet drinks than exercising off to lose pounds of
weight. If we had the chance to talk with the little prince, most of us would
probably reply to the little prince’s desire to use those extra minutes to walk
to a fresh spring is, “How old fashioned”. This kind of technologically
dependent attitude of our modern society is what may very well lead us to
be a sign of melancholy.
 “And 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.”

This quotation I have read by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the author of the

novel itself, is closely related to the second main theme I have learned from

the little prince. That is simply to see things with our heart and imagination

rather than with our own naked eyes, facts and information. The author is

portraying an illustration of adults, through this, the adults that the little

prince met are so lost and alone without even knowing so because they rely

only on figures to prove something, whereas in the children’s world,

emotions are viewed upon with imagination and a relative understanding like

something we don’t need to see to know that it exist. Yet another important

thing that I have learned that is related somehow to the themes is the

extreme importance of preserving true friendship in our lives which

nowadays, is quickly fading. In my 16 years of existence, I have realized

that being a friend will give a perfect uniqueness and undying value to life

that no one else can imitate. I remembered one part of the book that is

during a conversation with the fox, the little prince learns that “Men have no

more time to understand everything. They buy things all readymade at the

shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship and so

men have no friends anymore…” As I look at my high school environment, it

is as if the most dramatic change has occurred but I am not referring to

mine but to all the students in the world. Beauty, wealth and social status
has so greatly outdated the original qualities that the people once looked for

in a friend, such as trust and concern. When the little prince encountered the

many thousands of roses, contradictory to what his single beloved rose told

him on his planet, he did not give up that love for his rose, even though

there were so many that looked like her. He simply told them about his fox

friend: “…He was only a fox like a hundred thousand foxes. But I have made

him my friend, and now he is unique in the entire world. And the roses were

very much embarrassed. ‘You are beautiful, but you are empty,’ he went on.

‘One could not die for you…but in herself alone [his rose] she is most

important than all the hundreds of you other roses...’” It was like a field of

beautiful women the little prince could easily have given to, but the little

prince much preferred his one rose to all the hundreds of them. This kind of

friendship and love is so rare to find because as said earlier, “…there is no

shop anywhere where one can buy friendship…” and is one of the few things

people have left yet to survive on.

I do simply agree to with what happened to the main character, the

little price and the narrator. Based on the information I have gathered, the

author of the story was also a pilot who was stuck in the desert after his

plane crashed. Looking into this, we may conclude that everything happen in

the book could actually have happened to the man who wrote it. But still, we

don’t have any proof yet. At the end of the story, I agree that the snake bit
the Little Prince because maybe this was the only way he could go back

home, to his own planet. On the other hand, The Narrator is rescued shortly

after. I can say that the narrator was justified to have a good heart. I say

this because when he was rescued, he worries at first that he forgot to draw

a muzzle for the sheep, which might eat the flowers, but then again, he tries

to reassure himself, thinking that the Prince will take great care of his

beloved rose.

Concerning about this book review, I actually consult a help to my

cousin before I read the book to fully understand every flow of the story to

each chapters. Then the impact of this book for me as a reader is that it

really captures my heart I learned a lot although I must admit that at first-

read of the book, I thought that it was really just a typical children’s book

but as I continue to read it during the Christmas vacation, it then winds up

my mind that it really have meaningful stories showing lessons in life that

may be apply to everyday life. That’s how I interpreted it although I know

that there would be different meanings or representations from the different

readers of this book. As the little prince had said the most famous line from

this book, "One cannot see well except with the heart. The essential is

invisible to the eyes." I’m rating it 5/5 stars for now since I really didn’t read

it on one sitting only so I found myself always going back a few pages just

to check and remember the last thing that happened every time I have free
time to read it. And I’ve been really analyzing the stories and not reading it

too literally so that was a real challenge for me as a student because I am

really not a reader of a book like The Little Prince in that long. So I think this

book must be read in just one sitting to get the full effect of it. And it

shouldn’t be that difficult since it’s a really short book that after you have

read it, you will realize that it’s all worthwhile reading the book. New

windows to read, to read and to read have opened for me after undergoing

on this project. It really encouraged me to read more books so I could learn

more, manage my time accordingly to finish all of the work in an allotted

time and learning to set aside my laziness. My English teacher was right.

Reading will surely help and makes you more knowledgeable in a lot of

things that we can dissect in everything that it has in its stories.

In my own opinion, the point of view of the narrator or the author

itself is that it is told through first-person due to the first-person pronouns or

words that is being narrated by the author although sometimes it tends to

sound like an omniscient point of view or a third-person point of view, a

literary term that I have just recently learned from my cousin. An example

to that is when the Little Prince ventures from the various asteroids, the

telling of these experiences is based on what the narrator has learned while

he is with the Little Prince himself.