Trapped inside...

Has anyone heard of Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry? Or The Little Prince in English? It’s about a Little Prince, whose real name is unknown, who travels from his asteroid home and lands in the middle of a dessert on planet earth. Here he meets an aviator whose plane has crashed there as well. The Little Prince starts talking about how children are much different than adults because adults focus too much on pragmatic topics instead of the important things in life. The Prince then proceeds to tell the aviator about his home sized asteroid planet, which is threatened by Baobab trees (that represent evil). That is why he has set out on a journey to find a sheep which is the only creature that can save his planet. He recalls his visits to other planets and how he has met foolish adults. There is a: King, vain man, drunkard, business man, lamplighter, and the geographer. I won’t bore you with the rest of the details.




Basically, my teacher assigned it to my class last year just so we would get accustomed to reading in French…little did we know that she would make it waaaaaaaaaayyyy more complicated than it seemed. But she explained to us that despite that this was SUPPOSED to be a kids’ book it contained complex philosophies such as existentialism. Of course she explained most of it in French, which means no one understood half of what she was saying. So when the term first came up in our lit class, I immediately thought of that book and referred to existentialism as EVIL! Her explanation went something like this: evil is all around us, and therefore we must do all in our power to prevent the evil from trapping us, and therefore, the children of the future are the key because they are the only ones who can make the choice of preventing the spread of evil…At least I think that was explanation, I might have lost something in that translation…:P…nevertheless, that was the moral of the story.



I know…heavy right? …And this was a KIDS’ book.



But I guess this kind of works with the explanation given in class, that the universe is meaningless, and the meaning is created by individuals, and their choices which die once you die… So it just boils down to the choices that are made in general. And perhaps Le Petit Prince (sorry it’s just embedded into my mind in French) has an existentialist philosophy because of that choice of preventing evil…and NOT letting that meaning die with you by passing it on to the children of the future.



But I’m still unsure where all this evil comes into play….

I'm not going to lie...i really didn't like that book, just because adding the dark element of existentialism just killed it...