The Little Prince

To some extent, the pilot's (and Saint-Exupéry's) criticism of "adults" boils down entirely to their lack of imagination. The pilot's opening anecdote about his drawings of boa constrictors suggest that children are inherently curious and creative. Over time, however, most lose the ability to think imaginatively because they are taught to focus on supposedly practical considerations so that they can find a job, manage their money, and so on. Not even the pilot is immune to these pressures, as evidenced by the difficulty he sometimes has understanding and interacting with the prince: "My friend never explained anything. Perhaps he thought I was like himself. But I, unfortunately, cannot see a sheep through the sides of a crate. I may be a little like the grown-ups" (13).

Over the course of the story, the pilot does regain some of his childhood capacity for imagination. This is important because imagination is what allows a person to truly see and make sense of the world. The adults the pilot initially showed his drawings to failed to understand them because they couldn't step outside the constraints of their daily lives, first mistaking the snake for a hat and then becoming confused about why anyone would draw a boa constrictor to begin with. The pilot, however, has a heightened capacity to "see" the deeper significance of his surroundings—the things that the fox describes as "invisible to the eyes" (63). This is particularly clear in the pilot's life-long love of the desert, which he finds beautiful. He also describes it as, essentially, a blank space: "I've always loved the desert. You sit down on a sand dune. You see nothing. You hear nothing" (68). However, where others might simply see the physical emptiness of the desert, the pilot senses something "shin[ing]" and "sing[ing]" (68).

In addition to helping humans find or construct meaning in the world, imagination also helps us overcome harmful beliefs and actions. A reminder of just how closed-minded and prejudiced humans can be is evident in the anecdote about the Turkish astronomer who discovered Asteroid B-612. As a result of their ethnocentric assumptions, the audience listening to the astronomer can't conceive of how someone dressed in non-Western clothing could possibly have anything useful or correct to say. The flipside of this is that a small amount of imagination could help the audience shed their biases. In this sense, imagination is very much like empathy, which helps explain the close relationship between imagination and love in The Little Prince. The most hidebound adults, like the businessman concerned only with counting stars, are also those who seem least capable of stepping outside themselves to meaningfully connect with someone else.

Over the course of The Little Prince, both the pilot and the prince discover the value of connecting personally and meaningfully with others. However, where the pilot's early isolation is largely unavoidable—that is, a side effect of his inability to find another adult who shares his values—the prince's is self-imposed. He came to Earth in search of "friends," but had in fact left a friend (the rose) behind on his home planet.

The prince's choice to leave the flower is in many ways understandable. In bits and pieces, he reveals that she could be vain and demanding. Eventually, the prince comes to realize that much of her demeanor was bluster, and her actions—perfuming the planet and bringing beauty to it—spoke louder than her words. The prince also begins to understand that his own actions within the relationship—watering the flower, placing her under glass at night, etc.—have bound him to the flower permanently. For one, the time and care he has lavished on the rose have transformed his own feelings toward her: she has gone from being simply a flower like any other to "his" flower. The relationship has also changed the flower herself, in the sense that it has made her more vulnerable. The prince, for instance, often thinks of the "four ridiculous thorns" (80) the flower has to protect herself, but this physical fragility is largely a metaphor for the flower's new emotional fragility. Now that she loves him, he has the capacity to hurt her. As a result, the prince comes to feel that he has a duty to return to his rose.

These ideas about the responsibilities entailed by human relationships come to a head during the prince's interactions with the fox. The fox begs the prince to tame him so that he can lead a more meaningful life, taking pleasure in every sight and sound that reminds him of the prince. By definition, however, this means that the prince, in establishing a personal connection with him, will change the fox's perspective on the world permanently. Forging those bonds is therefore not something to undertake lightly, as the fox himself reminds the prince: "People have forgotten this truth […] You become responsible forever for what you've tamed" (64). The Little Prince suggests that love and friendship carry inherent obligations within them because of the ways in which they change the people involved, and how that responsibility is often neglected in modern society.

Although the pilot believes that the prince is not in fact dead, The Little Prince ends with its title character appearing to die in order to return to his home planet. What's more, the vulnerability of the prince's rose to destruction and death is a recurring topic in the story, as is the inevitability of children growing into adults and losing some of their childhood innocence.

Impermanence and fragility are major concerns of Saint-Exupéry's characters, along with the passage of time in general. On the one hand, this is what gives the story its frequently bittersweet tone. Both the pilot and the fox, for instance, take comfort in having known the prince despite eventually losing him; as the fox says, "I get something […] because of the color of the wheat" (61).The relationship the pilot has with the prince derives much of its significance precisely from the fact that it is temporary. With the pilot, for instance, relating how deeply touched he was by the prince's physical frailty: "As the little prince was falling asleep, I picked him up in my arms, and started walking again. I was moved. It was as if I was carrying a fragile treasure" (68). More specifically, the fact that humans are subject to aging and death makes time particularly valuable, and anything they elect to spend that time on correspondingly valuable. This is particularly true within the context of time spent on others: as the fox says, "It's the time [the prince] spent on [his] rose that makes [his] rose so important" (64).

The Little Prince suggests that much of modern society has forgotten how precious time is. Although the businessman constantly insists that he is busy and has no time to waste, his days are all spent exactly the same way: on endlessly counting his earnings on the stars he claims to own. Even setting to one side the meaningless of this claim, the fact that the businessman's days are so unvarying itself poses problems because it obscures the passage of time and thus allows him to ignore how finite it truly is. This in turn explains the fox's fondness for "rites" (61), which he regretfully says have now fallen by the wayside: by marking one particular interval of time as unique, these ceremonies reinforce time's value.