“Les gens ont des étoiles qui ne sont pas les mêmes. Pour les uns, qui voyagent, les étoiles sont des guides. Pour d’autres elles ne sont rien que de petites lumières. Pour d’autres qui sont savants elles sont des problèmes. Pour mon businessman elles étaient de l’or. Mais toutes ces étoiles-là se taisent. Toi, tu auras des étoiles comme personne n’en a…
Que veux-tu dire ?
Quand tu regarderas le ciel, la nuit, puisque j’habiterai dans l’une d’elles, puisque je rirai dans l’une d’elles, alors ce sera pour toi comme si riaient toutes les étoiles. Tu auras, toi, des étoiles qui savent rire !
Et il rit encore.
Et quand tu seras consolé (on se console toujours) tu seras content de m’avoir connu. Tu seras toujours mon ami. Tu auras envie de rire avec moi. Et tu ouvriras parfois ta fenêtre, comme ça, pour le plaisir… Et tes amis seront bien étonnés de te voir rire en regardant le ciel. Alors tu leur diras: “Oui, les étoiles, ça me fait toujours rire !” Et ils te croiront fou. Je t’aurai joué un bien vilain tour…
Et il rit encore.
Ce sera comme si je t’avais donné, au lieu d’étoiles, des tas de petits grelots qui savent rire..”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The little prince has a special place in my heart and is one of my favorite stories. It is a story where after the motor stalls, a pilot lands in the Sahara desert and tries to fix his plane. The pilot was a case of the author inserting himself into the story. After he crashes in the sahara, he is woken up by a little boy asking him to draw a goat. Surprised, he complied with the boy’s request but couldn’t satisfy him. The little prince then asked if goats eat flowers, and this caused him to worry for his flower. Then, the pilot draws a muzzle for the goat. The majority of the story from that point on, is the little prince recounting his story to the author. He talks about his planet first. The little prince lived on an asteroid which the grown ups called asteroid B 612. It was barely bigger than a house, and he took care of his planet. He prevented bad seeds from growing, so that it would not be overrun by baobab trees. Then, a rose sprouted on the planet and he fell in love with the rose. However, when the rose lied to him, he stopped trusting the rose and wanted to leave the planet because he was lonely. So, he set out to explore other planets and stars.
On his journey, he for the first time, meets with the world of grown ups. First he meets a king, then a vain man, a drunkard, a businessman, a lamplighter, and a geographer. They all live alone and are totally absorbed by their chosen jobs. The little prince was both amused and disturbed by their behavior, and did not like them very much. He did not learn anything of use either, with the exception of learning from the geographer that flowers do not last forever. As a result, he starts to miss the rose. Then, the little prince visits earth. He lands in the desert, and does not find humans. He meets a snake who speaks in riddles and hints that their poison can send him back to the heavens, a three petaled flower, and he climbs a mountain where he mistakes echoes of his own voice for conversation. Then, he finds a rose garden, which surprised as well as made him sad as the rose told him she was the only one of her kind. Then, he befriends a fox, who tells him the important things in life are only visible to the heart. He realizes that even if there’s many roses, his rose’s place in his heart made her unique and therefore he was responsible for her. He remains lonely because he left his rose. Then, after the prince finishes his story and on the 8th day of the pilot’s time in the desert, they go to look for a well. They agree that people do not see what is important in life, but the prince makes up his mind to go back to his rose. After the narrator fixes his plane, the prince is bitten by the snake, and falls to the sand. The next day, the pilot cannot find the prince’s body and believes the prince returned to his planet.
What I love about this story is the sense of adventure it conveys and the little prince’s innocence, through which he looks at people with curiosity and impartiality. But most importantly, the story is about being willing to dream, and not take things for granted or too seriously. The quote I chose from this book is from the penultimate chapter, where the little prince says goodbye to the pilot and lets the snake bite him so that he can go home. To make the pilot feel better, the prince says he won’t tell him where exactly he lives, so that when he looks up at the sky, it could be any star, or even all the stars. He also says that he will be making a gift to the pilot; the gift being laughter.
“ People have stars, but they aren’t the same. For travelers, the stars are guides. For other people, they’re nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they’re problems. For my businessman, they were gold. But all those stars are silent stars. You, though, you’ll have stars like nobody else.
What do you mean?
When you look up at the sky at night, since I’ll be living on one of them, since I’ll be laughing on one of them, for you it’ll be as if all the stars are laughing. You’ll have stars that can laugh!
And he laughed again.
And when you’re consoled (everyone eventually is consoled), you’ll be glad you’ve known me. You’ll always be my friend. You’ll feel like laughing with me. And you’ll open your window sometimes just for the fun of it… And your friends will be amazed to see you laughing while you’re looking up at the sky. Then you’ll tell them, ‘Yes, it’s the stars; they always make me laugh!’ And they’ll think you’re crazy. It’ll be a really nasty trick I played on you…
And he laughed again.
And it’ll be as if I had given you, instead of stars, a lot of tiny bells that know how to laugh…”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
This is why it is my favorite story, and why it has also been a “guiding star” to me. The point the prince is trying to make is that since nobody can really reach the stars, they can be anything for anyone. It is part of how I grew to believe that the meaning we find in life is that which we choose for ourselves, and that no one view matters more than another, as long as we value it ourselves. The story taught me it was ok to dream, and so now when I look up at the stars, I don’t just see a distant ball of nuclear fusion in space, but possibility.