Little Prince Some Unrecognized Messiah

¶ … Little Prince

Some Unrecognized Messiah

You were born into the world a situational Pariah

Spoke in tongues, misunderstood like some unrecognized Messiah..."

Alexx Reed

Exupery is today best known, outside of France, as the author of the Little Prince. It is an association he would not have regretted, for he considered it one of his crowning works, and many consider the story -- for all its allegorical richness -- to be a true autobiography. Exupery in all his works prior to the Little Prince had written of grown-up realities which he knew intimately, of planes and war and mail routes. Here he writes of things more spiritual, of love and responsibility and the landscape of imagination. The Little Prince uses allegory and poetic, elliptical conversations to indirectly convey the deeper meanings of Exupery's life, love, mission, and forthcoming death. It would not be inappropriate to say that both the prince and the pilot are aspects of the author and representations of the ways in which he related to the world: the fact that the prince can be seen as a messianic figure parallels the significance which Exupery himself took on for some of his comrades, even as the prince's death and disappearance eerily predicts Exupery's own sacrificial death.

The autobiographical nature of the book is very clear if one considers the history of Exupery's own life, and only by understanding the autobiographical nature of the book can one understand the subtle messianic claims made through-out. Though there are a very large number of parallels through-out the book to Exupery's life, for the sake of space only a few major points can be touched on here:

the relationship between the crashed-pilot-as-narrator and Exupery (himself a pilot) as the author, the relationship between the little prince and Exupery's own childhood self whom he always drew as an observer to his personal experiences, the parallels between the rose and Consuelo Exupery, and the importance of love and responsibility as they relate to the war which Exupery fought and the little prince's war against the baobabs. Of course, the final parallel between the death of the prince and the death of Exupery is also important. The symbolism of the Little Prince is caught up in the symbolism of the author's life, and taken together they make powerful statements about philosophy and humane life.

Flying and planes are extremely important in the book. The narrator is a character who struggles not to become "grown up" and disillusioned in a world peopled by overly sensible folk. In many ways, he fails. Where he succeeds, it is through his relationship to planes and flight. Exupery himself was a pilot, and through-out his life literally had to fight in order to be able to fly. Biographers such as Robinson and others speak of his obsession with flight, and the great lengths to which he went to gain the right to be airborne. His risk-taking in the sky resulted in many accidents. "he was only keeping himself in training for more serious accidents" (C. Exupery, 296) in fact, in 1936 he had himself crashed in the wastelands of Libya, and wandered through the desert for days before being rescued. This experience so closely parallels the story of the Little Prince that the parallels are inescapable. Many of the characters of this story appeared to him at that time, "Even when he was stranded in the desert, almost certain to die of thirst, he still was fascinated by the little desert fox" (Robinson) Yet one must still ask the significance of the desert as a metaphor within the book -- for if it did not have some significance, surely Exupery would not have been drawn to it in life. The significance of the desert seems to be its purity of solitude, the way in which it reflects the absolute existentialism of life. In the desert there are no complications, nothing which is not (to quote a word commonly found in writings about Exupery's life) monastic. The emptiness of the desert, and the harshness of its need for water, seems to remind the soul of the importance of spirit. It is no surprise that the three great monotheistic religions arose from desert cultures, and that through-out prophetic tradition the desert is spoken of as a source of enlightenment. Jesus was tempted in the desert, John the Baptist came from the desert, as did Elijah and Moses and Muhammad. This same desert near Cairo was influential in the development of the ancient Egyptian religion, to which Greek mythology (that bastion of the Renaissance) was directly indebted. So it is that in being exiled in the desert, Exupery joined an ancient mystic tradition of seeking enlightenment under the Egyptian sun. In this light, it is easy to see the story of the little prince as a sort of mystic experience with the same "child of light" who has been known to mystics through-out the ages. In fact, Exupery had once written of the desert that it united the worth of gods and men: "I am worth, in the desert, what my divinities are worth.." (in: Robinson)

Of course, even as the little prince is symbolically related to all the other young deities of desert mysticism (such as Horus or the Christ Child), he is also very specifically the inner child of Exupery himself. There is not clash between his serving a double role as the inner child and a mystic apparition, for many mystics through-out time have suggested that the voice of the eternal is best heard in the voice of children. The little prince character significantly predates the book in which he appears. As a child, the golden-haired Exupery was "also nicknamed 'Le Roi-Soleil' ('the Sun-King')," and this image of himself as a child king is clearly referenced in the little prince. The prince also appeared much earlier in many drawings by Exupery, so that his eventual appearance in a book was actually encouraged by the comments and suggestions of the author's friends who were fascinated by him:

On a copy of Pilote de guerre, Saint-Exupery sketched a child standing on a cloud, watching the burning of Arras. To the suggestion that the child be made to reveal his thoughts, Saint-Exupery replied, "No, not his thoughts. They are too melancholy." Fleury also mentions the frequent sketching of un petit bonhomme leaning from a cloud; and, on a letter to Leon Werth, reproduced in Icare, there is again "a little fellow" on a cloud, quietly watching a country road, while a Messerschmitt plane approaches menacingly" (Robinson)

The child, as an observer and critic of human society, is clearly indicated in his early appearances. Yet in this book he is also playing a unique role. Like the desert itself, the little prince appears in this book as a symbol of some deep purity which the grown-ups of the world, wrapped up as they are with "matters of consequences," have lost. He critiques the many faces af grown-up-ness: the king, the businessman, the drunkard, the academic, and even (far more gently) the pilot who has merely surrendered to their world. When the little prince says, "Straight ahead one can't go very far," (ch. 8) he is of course speaking of his own asteroid -- yet in a way he is also speaking of the history of earth which has come to such a head that the future is becoming impossible. This shows Exupery's own concern with the state of a world which he saw sinking into the totalitarian regimes of fascism, socialism, and commercialism. The prince learns that the meaningless of the outside worlds highlights the meaninglessness of allowing his own world to be overwhelmed by the baobabs. With Exupery he might "condemn the totalitarian Nazi who wants everything to resemble him and who 'refuses creative contradictions, ruins all hope of ascension, and founds for a thousand years, instead of man, the robot of an ant-heap.'" (Robinson) Yet in his protest he also shows a devotion to transcending and overcoming such obstacles. Through seeing all these other worlds, and particularly Earth in which there are hundreds (even millions) of kings and drunkards, the little prince learns the value of love and devotion to his own rose. The only thing which has any meaning (so he learns from the fox and from the garden of roses) is love and the relationships and commitments which one makes. "Anything essential is invisible to the eye," he discovers at last.

Exupery, in his many works and letters, consistently taught that "When the body breaks apart, the essential is revealed. Man is only a knot of relationships." (Pilote de guerre, quoted in Robinson) This is, essentially, the secret that the prince is taught by the fox and the snake, together. A moment should be taken here to discuss the taming of the fox, for it seems essential to the link between the Little Prince and Exupery's philosophy. In the book, the prince meets a fox, who describes himself as being like any other fox. This fox asks the prince to tame him (the word in French is closer to "befriend" or even "socialize") for only in being tamed and forming that sort of relationship does he become unique. The fox says, "But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world..." (Ch. 21) it is this which gives color to the world. In taming the fox, and learning that establishing ties and relationships is what gives meaning to life, the prince comes to understand that his rose is unique, because she has a relationship with him. The idea that it is relationships, commitments, and sacrifices which define and give meaning to life is one which continues through-out Exupery's life and work. "One sees clearly only with the heart," the fox informs the prince, and it is this secret which the prince teaches in turn to his tamed pilot. It is the secret that teaches him that he must die to return to his rose.

The rose which is like any other rose, and yet absolutely unique, is a central figure in the Little Prince, because in the end she is the one for whom he will live and die. According to some biographers -- most notably Consuela herself -- the rose in this story was based on Exupery's wife, Consuela. She quotes him as saying to her, "I can't forgive myself for not dedicating it to you..." (C. Exupery, 303) and of speaking to her of the next part of the story which would be written when the war had ended: "You'll never again be a rose with thorns, you'll be the dream princess who always waits for the Little Prince." (C. Exupery, 303) According to all accounts, the relationship between the Exupery pair was very stormy for most of the years of their relationship, due in part to their passionate natures, his need for change and flight, and flirtations and affairs on both their parts. It would be no wonder if the finicky, thorned rose were based on Consuela, or if their frequent absences from on another were part of the inspiration behind the words, "Love and distrust cannot live in the same house... I was too young to know how to love her."

The little prince leaves his rose because he feels stifled by her demands, by her self-centeredness, and by her dependence. Yet in the end he returns determined to battle the baobabs for her, and to face death for their reunion. It is relationships, even difficult ones, which make life important.