The Little Prince: Literary Analysis

The purpose of this literary analysis is to carefully examine and evaluate the story
The Little Prince. This is also to identify the different literary devices used in this story that
creates meaning and to emphasize its theme. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of
The Little Prince, was born in Lyons, France in 1900. He considered himself a pilot above
everything else. For 20 years, he did a lot of flying from commercial airlines to cartography
missions he did them all. He started to write this story during World War II and this may
explain why he wrote the story because of the wartime stress he was undergoing during
that time and he wants to spread love and compassion despite of the war.
The Little Prince can be considered a parable, fable or a fantasy. A parable is a
short, didactic tale meant to convey a lesson. In this book, the moral of the story can be
seen greatly in the chapter where the little prince and the fox are communicating, but the
moral can be seen also throughout the story. Fable is also a possibility because of how
the animals and flowers talk in this book and last but not the least is fantasy when an
Alien comes to earth to figure out things about life.
The story mainly takes place in the Sahara Desert. The setting of this story has a
significant role. The opinion of the narrator on the Desert seems to change throughout
the story. At first, he is sad in the desert but after he met the little prince and get to know
him, his opinion on the desert brightened up and he eventually saw the good things about
the desert. The type of setting used is a backdrop setting as the description of the place
and time is vague showing a timeless tale. As said by the narrator in the beginning, he is
sad and when he crashed in Sahara Desert, the place amplified his sadness because of
how empty the desert is.
The story’s main characters are the little prince and the narrator. The little prince
symbolizes the hope, love, innocence, and insight of a childhood that we all went through.
The narrator is a grown up that acts and thinks more of like a child than an adult. He views
the world like a child and not an adult although there is a part of the story where he does
act a little bit like an adult. Imagery is used in describing the characters in the story. The
supporting characters are the rose, king, conceited man, drunkard, businessman, street
lamp lighter, geographer, and fox. The rose represents the femininity of women. She is
flirtatious and contradictory and very vulnerable. The king reigns over everything and
wants his orders to be always followed but he has no subject in his planet to rule over.
The conceited man considers himself to be the most beautiful, intelligent, and richest man
in his planet. He always wants to be admired and praised but the odd thing is that he is
the only man in his planet. The drunkard spends most of his time drinking to forget. The
little prince found this man to be sad and wants to help. The businessman is always busy.
He spends his time counting the stars and call it his own. The little prince found this very
useless. The street lamplighter seems to be the only one that the little prince found that
actually has a useful job. He just obeys orders and do what he needs to do. The
Geographer collects all the information that the explorers give to him and compile it into
books. The fox is the one that teaches the little prince valuable lessons in life. Imagery is
also used in describing these characters.
First person point of view is used in this story. Sometimes it can be confusing
because the prince also tells the story to the narrator, and the narrator is telling it to us. It
can also be confusing because one might think it can be second person point of view
because some lines contain “you” however it is not us that the narrator is talking about, it
is the prince. The major conflict of this story is that the beliefs of children and adult do not
connect. The children seem to understand and see the world more deeply compared to
adults that only sees what the eyes see. The sub conflicts of this story are the relationship
of the rose and the little prince. The little prince thought that the rose doesn’t love him as
much as he does and this leads him to leave his own planet. This can be called Man vs
Man. Also, as the story progresses and he meets new people, he learns about new things
about life and the fox explained to him how unique his rose is. His feelings and emotions
changing throughout the story can be called Man vs Himself.