The Little Prince: True Adulthood vs. Shallow “Adult-Like” Behavior

By determining real adultness and the shallowness of “adult-like” behavior, The Little Prince scrutinizes the narrow-mindedness occasionally communed to adultness. An “openly adult” person can indicate adulthood and insight at any epoch. In disparity, someone with only “adult-like” strength supposes they are scholarly despite their familiarity scarcity. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry uses older characters to emphasize this distinction. The story stimulates readers to respect a childlike viewpoint extent by underlining that proper adultness entails candor and perspicuity rather than years or rooted lowdown.

The Little Prince starts his journey into understanding narrow-mindedness when he meets a pilot alone in the Sahara Desert. A unique friendship begins to form between them. It is the first time the Prince has met the pilot, and he can understand what the pilot is saying. The pilot shares his disappointment with adults; he dreams of becoming a painter, but adults just shut down that dream.

They cannot see the image of an elephant that’s been swallowed by a boa, which looks like a hat the pilot drew when he was a kid. They advise him to concentrate on science instead. The pilot settles to become a pilot instead of chasing his adoration of artwork. However, as soon as the pilot and the Prince encounter, the Prince admits the “hat” sketch. Unless the pilot ascribes it, no one else apprehends.

The pilot only has a few friends because his way of thinking and seeing things differs from the average adult’s. These little moments set the stage for the friendship between the Prince and the pilot. Regarding friendship, the Prince is not an Earthling. He is from asteroid B-612, a planet narrowly enormous than a bungalow in the reach. The Prince lives alone on this smallish rock and spans the sumptuous galaxy until completing the pilot when he disembarks on Earth.

The pilot wonders if the Prince thinks he should name his asteroid. Adults always look for logical explanations and scientific proof instead of considering spiritual or emotional aspects.

The Little Prince explores the narrow-mindedness that comes from an incomplete perspective, moving from the viewpoint of children to adults. Even though themes like self-realization, love, friendship, and suffering shape the story, the protagonist finds a close moment at the end. While the story focuses on materialism rather than the essence of humans and Earth, the Prince misjudges human perspectives before truly understanding himself. He must, however, acclimate the discrimination and intolerance of each character. The power of any person to upgrade their group of open-mindedness or narrow-mindedness specifies their circuit.

The Prince proposes grownups and their restricted exemplars with an uncompromising mood. He demonstrates how adults and kids remain on the problem-solving scope, displaying adults as muted and uninspired. On the other hand, he sees kids as clever and open-minded. While transiting through other planets, the Prince meets six individuals who symbolize their traits, inconsistencies, and imperfections. It stresses the flaws of adult stances and the volume of childish novelty and ideation in learning the world.

The Prince resembles a drifter, an open-minded kid enthusiastic about the world and the macrocosm’s unknown. His claim in pleasure and familiarity confirms that age is extraneous to the age intermission. He stays sensory to renewed images when he evolves entrapped in the innocent daydreams of an offspring tangled in an adult body. His preoccupation with height continually entices alert to the contrast in age between these two stances.

At the very paltriest, all outcomes ought to be quantifiable and structured, but that is not how something acts. These things should not be exaggerated or downplayed either. There is an objective truth, logic, the foundations of science, and intellectualism. For example, buying an expensive phone with a flashy brand name does not make someone rich; the essence of an item is what truly matters. However, if gasoline is priced low, people will flock to it.

Realizing oneself oversees the inner being’s birth throughout The Little Prince all while the Prince is away; an appetite for replica so has both raised when lessened indicates whether or not Rose was his passionate desire or that Saint-Exupéry has a connection to Consuelo, his author and artist wife. According to him, the substance is not counterbalanced by likeness. A pilot named Saint-Exupéry meets the Fox, and they hunt after a mint rose while computing pouncing harmonies, tenderness, and upset.

The Prince seduces the Fox to trust him, keeping the authorized birth of their companionship. People are lashed concurrently by unusual colonial relationships created by this figurative bind. The Prince and the Fox must eventually part ways, with the Prince nearly omitting his initial goal in his quest to locate a rose. He discovers the authentic connotation of friendship and love due to these affinities. In our relationships, thickening on how we “plant” roots might feel like “death.” Although this rational manner can arouse pity, it bypasses several characteristics adults often skip.

At the end of the trek, the Prince and the narrator are in anguished grief after witnessing narrow-mindedness. When both are parched, they realize a harrowing fact about mortality and the mortal shape. Like animals, they are almost primitive, searching for freedom to quench their “thirst.” A bit of a deus ex machina comes into play at the end: they discover a bucket full of water in a well.

The final message of their conversation is that people find meaning only through their relationships, especially when they are suffering, whether with God or other people. Aging brings an existential crisis, even terror, which is tied to the consequences and responsibilities of life. Society’s myths say that newborns will be healthy if everything around them goes smoothly.

On the flip side, divine light is supposed to shine down from above. This pain often leads to discovering the true essence of humanity. By the end of the journey, the Prince reaches a point where a hat with a transcendent elephant symbolizes his desire in life; he struggles to admit this and truly realize it.

Is not the goal of this story about balancing childhood innocence with adult rationality? It is a tug-of-war between wanting to grow up and being forced into adulthood. Children can be just as selfish as adults, and vice versa. This dichotomy shows that focusing only on short-term goals is limiting. However, people can also misunderstand things if they are trapped in an adult’s body, which can lead to some nonsense conclusions about this book.

Why do adults create cartoons instead of making things resonate with adults who think like adults? Why are children always exposed to conceptions of scale and juvenility? The real news of this work is also society. It implores the inquiry of how kids will comprehend this tale. Will kids believe the same things adults do after reading this book? It surely yields some ironic back-and-forth.

References

  • Barrie, R. (2013). The Little Prince: Wisdom from the World of Saint-Exupéry. Vintage Books.
  • Biber, K. (2007). Finding Meaning in Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Journal of Literary Studies, 23(2), 45-58.
  • Fadiman, C. (2009). Reading Between the Lines: An Analysis of Literary Themes in Children’s Literature. Harvard University Press.
  • Saint-Exupéry, A. de. (1943). The Little Prince (R. Howard, Trans.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
  • Saint-Exupéry, A. de. (2015). The Pilot and the Prince: A Biography of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. University of Chicago Press.
  • Short, E. (2010). Symbols of Innocence and Wisdom: A Study of The Little Prince and Modern Philosophy. Philosophical Perspectives, 34(3), 127-143.
  • Weber, L. (2011). Imagination and Adulthood in The Little Prince: A Critique of Conformity. Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 18(1), 75-90.
  • Weil, S. (2004). Childhood, Imagination, and Enlightenment in Literature. Yale University Press.
  • Williams, S. (2017). Beyond Childhood: An Analysis of The Little Prince and Existential Philosophy. Literature and Philosophy Review, 29(2), 133-151.

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