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The Little Prince

The Little Prince

NovellaFolkloreLiterary Fiction
Pages
144
Published
1943
Language
English

Synopsis

A pilot crash-lands in the Sahara Desert, hundreds of miles from any help, and there he meets a small boy who asks him, without preamble, to draw a sheep. The boy is a prince who has come from a tiny asteroid, B-612, where he tends three volcanoes and cares for a single, vain, beloved rose. As the pilot works to repair his plane and stay alive, the little prince tells him about his journey across the planets and the strange grown-ups he met along the way.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's 1943 fable is deceptively simple: a children's story on its surface, and beneath it a meditation on love, loss, loneliness, and the way adults forget what truly matters. Its most famous lesson — that "what is essential is invisible to the eye" — is delivered by a fox the prince befriends and then must leave behind.

One of the most translated and best-loved books ever written, The Little Prince is gentle, sad, and quietly profound, illustrated with the author's own watercolors.

Prose complexity
7/10

Vibe

Thought-ProvokingReflectivePhilosophicalIntellectualWhimsicalMelancholicBittersweetHeartwarming
Coming of AgeFish Out of Water

Genres

Folklore Literary Fiction Young Adult Classics Drama Fairy Tales Adventure Children's Books Fantasy Middle Grade

About the author

A
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (29 June 1900—31 July 1944) was a French writer and aviator. He is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince), and for his books about aviation adventures, including Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars. He was a successful commercial pilot before World War II, joining the Armée de l'Air (French Air Force) on the outbreak of war, flying reconnaissance missions until the armistice with Germany. Following a spell of writing in the United Stat...

Characters

The Pilot (The Little Prince)Protagonist

The unnamed aviator-narrator, stranded in the Sahara Desert after an engine failure, who befriends the little prince and relays his story.

The Little Prince (The Little Prince)Protagonist

A boy from the tiny asteroid B-612 who leaves his home, his rose, and travels from planet to planet before arriving on Earth, where he questions the strange priorities of the adults he meets.

The Fox (The Little Prince)Supporting

A fox the prince tames on Earth; he teaches the prince that "it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye," and that taming something makes you responsible for it forever.

The Rose (The Little Prince)Supporting

The prince's proud, coquettish rose, left behind on his home asteroid; her vanity and inability to express her love drive him to leave, though he later realizes his devotion to her makes her irreplaceable.

The King (The Little Prince)Supporting

The first grown-up the prince visits: a lonely monarch on an otherwise empty planet who claims dominion over the stars and insists everyone obey him, though he has no real subjects.

All characters in The Little Prince

Frequently asked questions

  • Is The Little Prince a children's book?

    It was published ambiguously — Reynal & Hitchcock marketed the 1943 first edition simply as "the new book by Saint-Exupéry" rather than filing it as a children's title. Early reviewers called it a fable for grown-ups that also has passages children respond to, and it's read both ways today: a simple adventure story on the surface, with a meditation on love, loss and what adults forget layered beneath it.

  • Why wasn't The Little Prince published in France until after the war?

    Saint-Exupéry wrote it in New York while in exile, and Reynal & Hitchcock published the first English and French editions there in April 1943. His works were banned in France under the Vichy regime, so the book wasn't officially published there until after the Liberation in 1945 — by which point Saint-Exupéry himself had disappeared while flying a reconnaissance mission in July 1944 and never saw a French edition in print.

  • What does "what is essential is invisible to the eye" mean?

    It's the fox's central lesson to the little prince: that the things that matter most — love, connection, the time spent caring for someone — can't be seen or measured, only felt. The fox teaches that "it is only with the heart that one can see rightly," which is the book's answer to the adults in the story who judge everything by numbers and appearances.

  • Was the rose based on a real person?

    Many Saint-Exupéry scholars read the prince's proud, fragile rose as a portrait of his wife, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, a Salvadoran writer and artist. Their marriage was stormy, but by his own account he stayed devoted to her — much as the prince realizes he loves his difficult rose precisely because of the time he spent caring for her.

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