little prince

The Little Prince Chapter 2

The Little Prince even though written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was intended for children, is a novel, which has a hidden deeper meaning to it. By reading the book I found that it was very interesting and subtly brings out human nature and characteristics through various characters from the book the little prince meets.

This chapter appealed to me the most as it created a sense of questioning and awe in me. I was filled with these emotions as I could see that the Little Prince could connect with the author’s drawing while the adults could not. When the author drew the picture of a boa eating an elephant, no adult could say what it really was. All they could see was a hat. This shows how our minds are conditioned to think like the way we think. It is rare to find people who can think out of the box. Our perception is something unique to all of us. The author has tried to bring out a point through his drawing of the boa eating the elephant that a person does not see something even when it is in front of him, he looks at the picture as a whole and not through details. I feel that the author is showing that people in today’s time have prioritized things which are of consequences but do not look at something as important as their own child.

As the chapter moves on, the author eventually draws three different figures of sheep. The little prince ha asked him to draw sheep but the author’s reason to not draw a perfect sheep was because he had never drawn a sheep before. I felt that the little prince was pestering the author to do something he had never done was perhaps because the little prince knew the authors potential and the author did not know it himself. This is relevant as one always thinks he cannot do something because he has never done it before, what one does not understand is that he is not going to lose anything by trying something new. One cannot be certain that he is going to a new task wrong. If he does go wrong in the new task, he learns a way that he should not use to complete that task. The author by the fourth attempt to draw a perfect sheep used lateral thinking. He drew a box in which he said was the sheep the little prince wanted. This was a clever thinking on the part of the author, as he knew he could not draw exactly what the prince wanted but knew the prince knew exactly what he wanted. The box symbolized the mind of the prince since the prince knew exactly what the sheep wanted to do at any point of time.

When the author was asked to draw a sheep while he was asleep, his immediate reaction was surprise as he was in the middle of a desert when he heard the voice. The author was also astonished to find that the prince could understand that drawing of the boa eating the elephant. On the first drawing of the sheep the prince said it was sickly, on the second one he smiled and simply rejected the third one. The little prince wanted the picture of a sheep but the author wanted to fix his plane. There were contradicting sets of emotions in the conversation in the chapter. This is also directed at the fact that in today’s time people have no time to look at new things, they are usually impatient and disregard the feelings of others. The author was at first complaining about the adults but now he has become what the adults were to him, to the prince.

Even though the prince claims to have come from another planet, he knows how to speak the same language as the author. The author knowing this befriends the prince. I feel the author is trying to show that however different we are, we can always live together. The author has also stereotyped adults as those who would not listen to him. However even after concluding that no one might get what his picture of the boa eating the elephant is, the prince broke his stereotype of the people around him. The author knew he could connect with prince, as the prince knew what the authors drawing was. The author had called what we think is a box, a box in which there is a sheep. Both the author and the prince knew what the author meant. I feel the author does not like conventions like calling a box, a box. He wanted to say that that is a box which coul have a sheep in it.