Book Title: The Litle Prince
Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Year of Publication: 1943
Week 1
The story start with a 6 year old kid who got amazed after seeing a picture of boa constrictor eating its prey. He tried to redraw it, but this time the snake already swallowed the elepant. Then he showed his drawing to the grown ups, but they totally misunderstood it, thinkin it was just a hat.
Upset of course, he redraw it again, this time with a literal elephant inside the snake, so the grown ups can finally understand it. But it just make the kid wonder why adults always need things explained. In the end, the grown ups just praise his drawing, then tell him to keep it and start learnin other stuff like history, geography, and math and all that.
Comment:
There's one line that really got me, the kid said adults always need explanations for everything. This is kinda tickled my mind actually, because like, kids and adults obviously think on totally different levels. But it made me realize, kid just see the world straight up, simple and real. Meanwhile adults, we always need some definition, proof or logic before we actually get or believe something.
Week 2
The kid gave up at the age of six, and didnt want to pursue his career anymore as a painter. Then he grow up and became a adult, and finally he decided to follow his career in aircraft field as a pilot. He meet a lot of great people, and he has one unique habit: whenever he meet someone he feel close, he tried to show them an experiment, the drawing of an elephant eaten by a boa constrictor that he made when he was a kid. But whoever it is, everyone always say it's just a hat. So he never explain the real picture again and he just start talking about adult stuff like golf, politics, etc. And everyone would be pleased him as a sesible man, wise man, etc.
One day, he got an accident with his plane in the Sahara desert. Six years ago. He go alone, there's no mechanic or any passenger with him. He tried to repair it by himself even tho it's difficult. The first night, he sleep on the sand, far from any human habitation. At sunrise, he sudently wake up because of a child's voice, weirdly asking him to draw a sheep. He stunned, in the middle of nowhere, in his critical situation, suddenly a child come and ask him to draw a sheep. Kinda weird right?
Comment:
It's kinda interesting why this man still keep his drawing of the boa constrictor until he become an adult. I'm kinda curious what's actually his purpose, like what he want to make sure from all these adults. Then the plot continue to the part where he got the accident. At this point, there's still not much we can discuss, so let's see what happened next
Week 3
The child kept asking him to redraw the sheep because it didnt really match what he wanted. He wanted a healthy sheep, one that could live for a long time. Because of the frustration and losing patience, he tried again for the fourth time, but this time he just drew a box with few holes and told the child the sheep was inside it.
With a bit of hope in his mind, the child said this was exactly what he wanted. In the child imagination, the sheep inside the box was big, and there was enough grass for it to eat. And that's how he first got friends with the Little Prince.
After some time, he tried asking questions about where the Little Prince came from, but the Little Prince almost never answered directly. Instead, the child kept asking his own questions, mostly about the airplane and what happened to the pilot. The Little Prince was really curious about his world. he asked if the airplane fell from the sky and whether he came from another planet. Slowly this made him realize that the Little Prince himself wasn't from Earth.
Comment:
The conversation gets kind of frustrating for him because the answers never come directly. But this actually shows how children talk, they don't explain things clearly, they reveal the truth little by little through their curiosity.
