The Little Prince

In a broad sense, the baobabs that constantly threaten to take over and destroy the prince's planet are symbolic of any danger that is easy to overlook until it is too late. Because the baobabs resemble harmless rosebushes when they are young, the prince must be constantly vigilant that a plant doesn't slip past his notice. The fact that the prince views this as a matter of "discipline" (15)links it to the story's overall emphasis on personal responsibility. Although Saint-Exupéry often raises this issue within the context of relationships (e.g. the prince and the rose), the baobabs can also be read as representing any harmful practices, beliefs, etc. that develop gradually over time (e.g. the moments when the pilot unconsciously slides into "adult" impatience and close-mindedness).

On a much more specific level, the story of the baobabs is sometimes read as an allegory for the rise of Nazism. Saint-Exupéry fled to the United States after France fell to Nazi Germany in 1940, and he died four years later flying missions for the Allies. The events of World War II influenced The Little Prince, which was published a year before Saint-Exupéry's death. The baobabs' apparent innocuousness mirrors Europe's failure to recognize the dangers of Nazism.

The first time the narrator of The Little Prince mentions water, it's in the context of necessity: he is stranded in the middle of a desert and only has enough water for eight days, so finding more (or simply escaping the desert) is a matter of survival. Initially, the threat of dehydration weighs heavily on the pilot's mind, causing him to be short-tempered with some of the prince's questions and interruptions.

After hearing the prince's story, however, the pilot slowly begins to think about water in a new way. As the prince's exchange with the salesclerk suggests, there's pleasure to be found in drinking water over and above the fact that it's necessary for survival. The pilot seems to recognize this, but also continues to insist that they need to find water so that they don't die of thirst. The prince, simply remarks, "It's good to have had a friend, even if you're going to die" (67). Ultimately, the prince and pilot do find water, but the physical nourishment it provides is less important than the profound emotional and spiritual nourishment: "That water was more than merely a drink. It was born of our walk beneath the stars, of the song of the pulley, of the effort in my arms. It did the heart good, like a present" (71). The water, then, is a symbol of the necessities for life that humans take for granted, both in the sense that they think they'll always have access to them and in the sense that they don't appreciate their real value. Ultimately, the book suggests survival alone is meaningless if man fails to take pleasure and find meaning in life.

Images of stars appear throughout The Little Prince, where they typically help reveal the priorities of different characters. The prince himself says at one point that "[all] people have stars, but they aren't the same" (77). The businessman and king, for instance, don't care about the stars' beauty or even their usefulness; instead, they see the stars, respectively, as subjects and a source of income. The prince declares that while for most people stars are "silent," the pilot's stars will "laugh" (77)as he remembers the prince who lives among them. The stars underscore the idea that friendship and love imbue the external world with its meaning.