Antoine de Saint-Exupéry had a horrible life. However, one asset he obtained after fighting in World War II and experiencing multiple traumatic events as a child, was that he learnt many crucial life lessons that he quickly implemented in his own life. He learnt not only the importance of the lesson, but also the importance of learning the lesson early on. Saint-Exupéry utilises his award-winning novel The Little Prince to spread what he learnt to others. In The Little Prince, Saint-Exupéry's usage of metaphors teaches the importance of implementing crucial life-altering lessons to one's life early on to be content with life.
A major reason why the Little Prince left his planet was due to his unhappiness and frustration with his lover, the rose. The rose "was such a proud flower" who "told [the Prince that] she was the only one of her kind in the whole universe" (27, 54). When he reaches Earth, the Prince discovers "five thousand [roses like his own], all just alike, in just one garden" (54). This ledads him down a path of fury and defeat as his whole world, as he knew it, fell apart. The Prince then meets a fox who changes his perspective and tells him that his rose is "the only rose in all the world" because he has tamed his rose (63). "According to the fox, unless you build a relationship with a person and get to really understand [them], that person will remain indistinguishable for you from the hundreds of thousands of people in the world—and you, too, will not be 'unique' or special to [them]" (The Fox in The Little Prince). Saint-Exupéry uses taming as a metaphor for creating meaningful bonds and utilises it to teach an extremely valuable lesson: "You become responsible forever for what you've tamed." (Saint-Exupéry 64). Every person gets tamed at least once in their life, as taming is crucial to feeling true affection and validation. It results in vulnerable individuals, as one shows every part of themself when they decide to tame someone. Thus, taming is extremely delicate and when incorrectly done, can result in more pain than joy. Saint-Exupéry shows multiple cases of incorrect taming, especially with the taming between the fox and the Prince. "The Little Prince does not understand that his act of taming the fox will hurt it" as the fox gave a piece of itself to the Prince and will desperately miss the Prince when he, eventually, leaves (Yunita 38). The Prince's lack of understanding of what a meaningful bond results in him abandoning the responsibility of a bond with multiple of his bond-mates. Through the numerous examples of poor-quality taming, Saint-Exupéry warns readers of the importance of taming and reminds them of the lesson of being forever responsible for the meaningful bonds they've created. Saint-Exupéry learnt this lesson firsthand after he tamed his wife, Consuelo, and left her to fight in World War II. His negligence of that bond resulted in many marital struggles between the two. Saint-Exupéry warns readers to learn this lesson early before their relationships end up like his and Consuelo's. Especially with today's generation, it is extremely common for meaningful bonds to be destroyed and disparaged, 39% of marriages end in divorce (Ganapathi). Thus, as readers ignore this lesson, it becomes more and more crucial.
After learning from his marriage, Saint-Exupéry warns readers of another crucial lesson: "watch out for baobabs" (Saint-Exupéry 16). In the novel, baobabs are "bad plants" that one must "pull up [...] right away, as soon as [one] can recognise it" (14, 15). On a metaphorical level, "the plants represent the good or bad tendencies, in oneself, or one's world" (The Little Prince: Metaphor Analysis). Saint-Exupéry utilises 'planets' as a metaphor for one's self and explains how one's 'baobabs' or bad habits can engulf and ruin them due to the fact that "if we don't spot them and weed them out early, they will take firm root and distort our personalities" (The Little Prince The Baobabs). He explains how everyone has habits, and until the habits grow, no one can tell if they're going to be good or bad. However, if the habit gets identified as a bad habit, it must be stopped immediately. Saint-Exupéry explains how "if you attend to a baobab too late, you can never get rid of it again. It overgrows the whole planet. Its roots pierce right through. And if the planet is too small, and if there are too many baobabs, they make it burst into pieces" (Saint-Exupéry 15). Having too many bad habits or being completely engrossed in one bad habit can crush the planet that is a person into pieces. This warning is prominent today with the concept of a 'digital footprint.' When someone is getting hired by a company, they will often check the applicant's digital footprint to find out if the applicant has done anything that doesn't align with the company's values. If the applicant has a bad habit of saying, for example, slurs on the internet, the company might decide to not hire them. The applicant's bad habit ruined their opportunity to be hired and potentially led to the applicant's ruin. Saint-Exupéry warns readers through this metaphor of how crucial it is to check on one's habits, identify if they are good or bad habits, and get rid of them accordingly to ensure that they are not one's downfall.
The whole purpose of this book is to forewarn readers of the importance of learning the lessons early on. Saint-Exupéry successfully warns readers by showing them someone who doesn't learn these lessons on time: the Little Prince. The Little Prince does not learn most of the crucial life lessons until he comes to Earth and by then, it is too late. By that time, he had already spent over 1 year away from his planet. When he learns the lessons, he is overwhelmed with regret and longing, constantly expressing that he "should have never run away" (24). Thus, in an attempt to fix his mistakes, the Prince allows a poisonous snake to bite him so that he can return home; this alludes to his death. Saint-Exupéry uses the Prince's death as a metaphor for desperation; he utilises it to show readers the consequence of not learning those lessons early on: desperation, regret and sadness. The Prince's sadness and remorse took over him, it left him "weeping" and "he was frightened" (80). It allowed the Prince to kill himself out of desperation in an attempt to fix the mistakes he made due to his lack of knowledge. Saint-Exupéry expresses the tragedy behind desperation, telling readers how even in his final moments, the relief of fixing his mistakes caused the Prince to not even "cry out. He fell gently, the way a tree falls" (81). He shows how the lack of knowledge led to such desperation that the Prince was relieved he was dying. Saint-Exupéry shows readers the worst-case scenario, how a lack of knowledge can cause a once-happy Prince to become sad and desperate enough to kill himself.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, using the tragic story of a boy who understood too late, warns and teaches readers. Saint-Exupéry uses metaphors in Tthe Little Prince to teach the importance of implementing crucial life-altering lessons to one's life early on in order to be content. Through this story, he teaches them the life lessons Saint-Exupéry himself learnt too late and were the cause of his unhappy life. He masks this novel as a happy children's book about a Prince who went and visited all these different planets before returning to his home. However, the story is much darker and more tragic. The Little Prince is not a children's book, it's filled with lessons to better one's self, it's a self-help book.
