The story "The Little Prince", describes the journey of a little boy, the little prince from his planet to the earth. The story begins when the narrator, a pilot, has a plane crash and lands in the Sahara desert. He is all alone in the desert but he is determined to repair his plane before he can trace his way home. The crash is however very intense that it takes him a lot of time to fix the problem. Meanwhile, he runs out of water and food and there is no one in the desert to offer him these. As he is stranded; not knowing what to do next, a little boy, the little prince, approaches him and asks him to draw a sheep. The pilot agrees to draw the sheep and a friendship begins (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 12). In the process, the pilot discovers that the little prince comes from a planet that is commonly referred to as Asteroid B-612 though the prince calls it Asteroid-325. He also learns that the prince is the only person living in that planet and he has since been taking care of it so as to ensure that no harmful plants or baobab trees grow in that planet. His fear is that the baobabs are very large and their roots can penetrate deep and crack the planet into pieces (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 24).
However, one day a rose plant sprouts in the planet and the little prince becomes in love with it that and as a result, he does not destroy it like the other plants. After some time, he finds out that this rose is not faithful in its words. It keeps saying that it loves him but the actions do not mean the words. The rose is ever complaining even after everything that the prince does to ensure that it is comfortable. The little prince thus becomes annoyed and decides to leave the rose alone. To cure his anger, he decides to leave and visit as many other planets as possible. He begins his journey and visits six planets before landing into the earth where he meets the pilot. In these planets, he finds lonely adults who are narrow minded and can not think of anything useful apart from their occupations. Among the adults he meets include a king, a hopeless man, a drunkard, an entrepreneur, a lamplighter and a geographer. They all sound lonely and preoccupied by their occupations. He however does not get any useful information from all these people apart from the geographer who tells him that flowers do not live forever.
After this, the little prince continues with his journey and he finally lands on earth, in the core of the Sahara desert. The first creature he meets is a snake which tells him that its poison can take him back to where he comes from therefore if he wishes so he can ask the snake to bite him (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 67). The little prince ignores the snake's offer and continues with his journey, climbing the tallest mountain he comes across and calling if there is any human being around. But all he hears is the echo of his own words and thinks that the adults living on earth do not know how to communicate back and the only thing they can do is to mimic his words. He eventually finds a garden of roses and he is at first surprised and happy but he suddenly becomes sad because he remembers the rose he left on his planet had told him that it was the only one of its kind (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 82).
He then finds a fox and in the middle of their conversation, the fox tells him that the things that are only visible to the heart are the ones that are most important in life. It is at this point that the little prince comes to realization that even though he saw many roses in the garden, it is the love he has for the rose that he left in the planet that makes it so special and unique from the others (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 80). At this, the little prince concludes his story by telling the pilot how he met a salesclerk and a railway switchman.
The pilot is in his eighth day in the desert and together with the little prince set off to look for a well because they can no longer endure the thirst. They find some water which quenches their bodies as well as their hearts (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 96). They both agree that a good number of people live without knowing what is truthfully significant in their lives; the invisible things. The little prince is thinking about his rose and he starts making arrangements on how he will go back to his planet. The two friends walk back to the first place the little prince landed i.e. where he first saw the snake. He tells the pilot not to worry because his body is useless to him at that moment. He asks the snake to bite him and he immediately falls on the ground with a loud sound (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 103). The pilot has also finished fixing his plane and he is also planning to go back home. The next day he goes to the place where the body of the little prince had fallen and finds that it is not there. He is convinced that is friend has gone back to his planet. He also finds comfort in the stars as he hears the little prince laughing as they had agreed.
The actual journey of the little prince begins when the rose annoys him. We realize that before the rose sprouts; the little prince is living alone but very happy since there is no one to bother him. He is the one to order and decides what to do at what time. When the rose comes to his life, it becomes a bother since it asks him to cover it by the day, water it and protect it from the sun (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 13). He however does this passionately only to realize that he is giving his attention to the wrong subject. The rose is not appreciative and claims to love him while it does not. His journey is actually accelerated by the presence of the rose in his planet.
Philosophically, this journey tends to describe the kind of people that the little prince encounters and how people who are inferior suffer because of the people that are on authority. The six planets are philosophically taken as six countries with different kinds of leadership. In the first planets he lands in, the prince finds a king who is living alone and very commanding. He thinks that he can rule over every person that comes his way. The little prince also realizes that the king is over possessed by his authority and in turn it has made him a narrow-minded person thinking that he can control everything (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 43).
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He has left his peaceful continent to a place where there is tyranny kind of leadership. The leader has been made the final decision maker and he can do whatever he wants with his authority including controlling those things which it is only God who can have authority over, such the sun. This continent describes a country that is full of oppression and its citizens are never free. If we take the little prince as a common citizen in this continent then we find how the king oppresses; not even giving him some freedom to decide what he wants to do. In that line of thought, the author wants to show how people in leadership can sometimes become useless to their own people because of the misuse of power.
The hopeless man he finds in the second planet demands that the little prince worships him and admires him all the time. The prince is turned off by this and proceeds to the third planet where he finds a drunkard. The drunkard tells him that he drinks so that he can forget the fact that he is embarrassed of his drinking (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 51). Philosophically, these two planets illustrate countries in which the people living in them have no direction of thought. There is nothing useful they can do with their minds and the only things they take pride in admiration and drinking. If these are supposed to be leaders of these countries, then their citizens suffer confusion just like the little prince.
As his journey continues, the little prince finds characters that even disturb him more. When he is confused by the drunk, he leaves for another planet where finds a businessman who claims to own the whole universe of stars yet they are of no great importance to him. The little prince wonders why the business man is committed into counting the stars to an extent that he does not care about his own life thus he considers him not different from the other adults in thought and behavior (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 57). He is also guided by self-centeredness and greed to an extent that he does not care about the well being of the others. At this description, the author is trying to tell us of how some people can become possessive of everything when in power. The businessman has been given this planet to take care of yet what he does is to gather everything for himself even the things that are not useful to him like the stars.
The people that the little prince finds in the fifth and sixth planets are the geographer and the lamplighter respectively (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 54-57). These are the only people that do not behave like the other adults and among the things that the little prince is pleased at include their wisdom and their spirit to give him their precious time for discussions. He leans from them very useful things such as the importance of the invisible things and the fact that things that are important in life do not last for long. In such countries therefore, the leaders are wise and they use their wisdom to ensure that people in their countries are not material oriented instead they value love, peace and unity.
The little prince finally lands on the earth and he is told that there are all kinds of adults in it; businessmen, kings, drunkards among all those adults he had met in the other planets. He however does not get a chance to talk to either of them apart from a different adult, the pilot with whom they also differ in mind. The little prince values drawings while the pilot does not since he was discouraged by the adults when he was still young. His journey finally ends in the earth when he is intentionally bitten by the snake.
Nevertheless, the journey of the little prince from his planet and back can be compared to a real life situation. Before one is borne, s/he lives in a planet of his own; the womb and only gets out when s/he is fully developed, lives among other people, learns both good and bad things and eventually dies. Thus by the rose interfering with the peace of the little prince in his little planet, it was preparing the prince for the many difficult things, situations and people that he would meet once he comes to the world. Everyone infant is prepared before it is borne. Once one is born, the people s/he finds in the world and more or less as those people the little prince finds in these planets he describes. One will find adults who are or leadership that is too authoritative, that practices dictatorship and life for this new borne becomes uncomfortable. One will also meet people who are hopeless, drunk and have no direction in life. These people have nothing to offer since they are themselves desperate either because of tough life situations or because of lack of mentorship.
People such as the businessman will also be encountered. Such people represent greedy and they can do anything to accumulate wealth even if it does not help them to a great deal. These people want to possess the whole world; they only care about material things and do not care much about the needs of other people. Such people we encounter them in our daily lives and you will realize that some of them are the leaders that are expected to be leading us. They are so corrupt and will not want to see the other person prosper.
At the same time, there are wise people such as the lamplighter and the geographer that we also find in life. These people represent peace and wisdom. The lamplighter is like the people to who bring to us salvation. They always keep our souls alive by preaching good news. They never get tired in doing their duties so as to ensure that every human is given the chance to learn the goodness of salvation. They are a light to our souls and they ensure that we are not in darkness. The geographer on the other hand enlightens us about the matters of the heart (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 43). Such people inform us about the importance of the things that are invisible in our lives. As much as we do not see them, they are important more than the things that are visible, such as wealth and all other material things.
Things such as love are only visible to the heart and are the ones that are most important in our live. These things however do not last for ever and we often lose them when we least expect. In real life situations, the people that we love most are the ones that leave as when we do not expect, therefore we should fully dedicate our time and resources and possess them as much as we can.
Another thing that the little prince encounters in his journey and is also common in our real lives is the fact that people can only become successful in life when they work together as a team (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 64). When the fox asks the little prince to tame it, it simple meant that the two could only be useful and effective if they work together as one. This is very important and it is an issue that affects us daily. People have adopted the idea of individuality whereby they want to do everything by themselves not knowing that this will even make them less effective.
In real life journey, like the little prince I have encountered these people. It is therefore upon me to decide which advice to follow and which character is the best to emulate. I can choose to emulate the king or the businessman and find myself in a situation that is not pleasing to the others and become useless to even ourselves. I can on the other hand choose to go by the advice given by the geographer and the lamplighter. After the little prince has explored these planets, he dearly wants to go back to his rose (Saint-Exupéry and Testot-Ferry 87). He therefore opts to be bitten by the snake so that he can go back to his rose. Same is the case with the real life journey. After I have lived a complete life, I will one day die and my soul will be taken to where I came from; heaven while my body will remain on earth but as a useless robot. Life is very short and I am learning that I can not do without the help of other people.
There is however some slight difference between the journey traveled by the little prince and that which I travel in my own life. While the little prince encounters these adults, one after the other, as he travels from one planet to another, I on the other hand find these people in one planet and all of them at the same time. In the event of death, it is not always that a person dies from a snake bite; one can die from a disease, an accident, or any other cause. The little prince's journey is full of options and can choose when he wants to go back to his rose while in real life, I have very few options and I can not decide on some things such as death. I can not tell the day I will want to die therefore death will only come as a surprise. The little prince is also happy about his death, while it has never been a joyous thing to me.