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"Le Petit Prince", "The Little Prince" ...
It's a book for adults, really, I think ...
but with the appearance of being a children's book.
And it's very clever, in that way,
because the substance of the book, in a way, is in that mindset, the mindset of a child.
And the author succeeds in expressing that, in a way .... by pretending that he's writing for children.
Now, that's not to say that children wouldn't enjoy this, there are certain devices in the book that would make children laugh, there's drama,
he doesn't stay with any one event too long, so there's substance there for a very good children's book.
But a lot of what de Saint-Exupéry is saying, he's saying to the adult.
Now, in my opinion, it's a huge achievement, in that on the one hand he can write a book which appears to be a children's book but at the same time, he's saying things to the adult.
So you could imagine the adult reading this book to the child and enjoying it ...
on their own level, while the child is enjoying the book on another level.
And he starts with the narrator, if you like,
the person who's telling the story. He's a pilot. That's all we need to know.
He's a pilot who's plane has broken down in the desert.
And he is ... he begins the book by talking about when he was a child, so that's a great start.
And one of the things ... one of the tricks he uses, and it's very good, are the drawings.
The drawings are closely related to the telling of this story ...
because he describes something, and then he says, "I'll draw a picture of that", and you see the picture.
And he finds fault with the picture or the Little Prince finds fault with the picture.
So straight away, in the first two chapters, we're seeing things, in a way, through the eyes of the child.
And that's very important. Throughout the whole book ... if you want to say ... one of the big themes of this book is that ...
children see things as they are, not as they are seen by the eye.
The thing the eye sees, it's only the outside. As the author says in the book, if you like, the bark.
And that grows to quite a high level coming towards the end of the book.
We're talking about human condition, we're talking about life and death by the end of the book.
Where we started with a silly picture about "is it a hat or is it ... oh it's a snake with an elephant in his stomach" ...
and the story goes on.
And then, he describes how he had to land in the desert.
He only has eight days or a week or something, a very short period of time,
that's how much water he has left. Within that time frame, he has to fix the engine or that will be the end of him, he'll die in the desert.
And the second day, I'm not sure if it was the first day or the second day ...
he meets the Little Prince. He just comes. He wakes up and the Little Prince is greeting him.
And the book starts there, between this pilot and the Little Prince.
One of the significant things about the Little Prince is that he's a very simple character.
Simple in both senses - as a person, he's not very complicated ...
and he has a very simple mind.
And he's presented to us in a very simple way.
There's an innocence about him. He's innocent at times. He's innocent all the time really.
I'm not sure if it's the fox or the snake that says, he says,
"you're pure". I think it's the snake that says it and that's why he's not going to bite him, because the Little Prince is pure.
He's a child. He doesn't have any of the things ... he doesn't have the heavy load that adults carry around, he doesn't have that.
And as the book says, the adults are odd, adults are very strange.
But the Little Prince isn't strange, he's very simple ... eh, he does his own thing, if you like.
There are things that are important to him: the flower,
to have a friend, loneliness, the sunset, these are the big things in the Little Prince's life.
Eh ... and ... therefore he avoids complications.
So, if the pilot asks him a question, this and that, he doesn't answer.
A couple of times he doesn't answer, he doesn't bother. So silence is the result of the adult's question ...
which is lovely. This, for me, is one of the stories that best focuses on what's important in life.
That's one question. Is it the numbers you have in the bank that's important?
Well we know now, of course, that they don't need to be important at all ...
and if you're relying on numbers that come from the bank ...
and if you're putting all your trust in them, maybe tomorrow something will happen without you knowing, and where are your figures then?
And a lot of people are ... we're all paying for that rubbish.
So, is it the books that are important? Is it what's written in books that's important?
Well, no, because the person who's writing book might not have necessarily visited the places he's writing about.
So, what's important then? So, as I said earlier, what's in your heart - that's what the book is saying -
and the thing that you can't see.
De Saint-Exupéry's images are very important because the text goes between the drawings and ....
there's a constant communication between the drawings and the text.
And he mocks his own drawing ability ...
"I'm not able for it ... I hadn't drawn a picture," - "Línigh dom (Draw me)", is the word Ó Doibhlin uses,
and he succeeds - he hadn't done that since he was 6 years old, since he drew that strange snake.
Some of the pictures in children's books now are just beautiful - you could hang them on the wall and look at them.
The books for children now, in Irish and in a lot of languages, are just wonderful.
Some of them very detailed, others, they just use colours and shapes in a great way.
So, you'd say, alright, that this isn't working here, is it? But in a way it is, because the drawings are very simple, but the thing that makes the difference ...
in this book is that the text speaks about the drawing ability -
"oh that's not" ... for example, something that is very basic at the beginning of the story ...
is that the Little Prince asks the pilot to draw a sheep - "Draw me a sheep".
And the pilot has to do this, because he wants to protect the flower.
You know, the plot is very interesting throughout this whole story.
But the prince is not happy - "the ears are too long, no that's not a sheep, it's a ram, look at the horns" ...
and so on ... and you see the picture - "yeah, yeah, the Little Prince is right, that's not very good - there are horns or something".
I think the pictures are good. I like the pictures. I like the scarf on the Little Prince. Again, talking about the Little Prince's character or personality ...
very simple, but one of his big things is this great scarf, this yellow scarf that's blowing out.
Anyway, what he does in the end is put the sheep in a box.
And the Little Prince is on top of the world - "That's exactly the kind of sheep that I want" ...
So, you see a square on the page with three small holes ..
and that's where the sheep is, inside in the box.
So the Little Prince can see a sheep that's exactly how he wanted it because it's in the box.
We, the adults, can't see the sheep but that's the exactly the sheep that the Little Prince wanted.
So, the ... more so than in a lot of other children's book that have illustrations in them ..
the illustrations (in this book) are an integral part of the story and the substance of the thing.
The book is full of really lovely sentences.
And, he says - he's looking up at the stars - and he says, every star is important, or that star is important because there's a flower on it that we can't see.
So one of the two things ... I mean, beauty ... the simplicity of that ... what are the beautiful things in this life?
Well, there are stars - "what is the stars?" and all that - and there are flowers. We like flowers.
But that star is beautiful because there's ...
a flower on it that we don't see. We've come back to this thing - what's important is what's on the inside.
So, it happens in this book, you realise that you're dealing with one of the most important things in life.
And de Saint-Exupéry is sort of making his own version of what C.S. Lewis said ...
"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."
And that's a very interesting and lovely version of that outlook that de Saint-Exupéry is presenting us with here.
The book goes on to an ending which, of course, I'm not going to tell.
And you see - we're not dealing with a joke about a hat here ...
we're dealing with one of the most important questions in life.