the little princess by antoine de saint exupery

‘Men,’ said the little prince, ‘set out on their way in express trains, but they do not know what they are looking for. To look at our life and the lives of those around us from the point of view of an intergalactic traveller, or, indeed, a child. Moments of rupture, of crisis, and distress, when everything we took for granted suddenly seems up in the air, always also harbour an opportunity to take stock and to reassess. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the funniest, filthiest comfort TV around In some sense, and in addition to other central themes such as love, friendship and loss, The Little Prince is a story about looking: about how we see only what we are prepared to see about the narrowness that can come with our perspectives, professional and otherwise about the way grownups and children look at the world differently. ‘People where you live,’ the little prince said, ‘grow five thousand roses in one garden, … yet they don’t find what they are looking for.’ And this long hard look in the mirror can bring the realisation that our pre-pandemic lives resembled those of the king, the conceited man, the lamplighter, the businessman, and perhaps even the tippler in more ways than we are prepared to admit. Rather than looking for adventure outside, in public and faraway places, lockdown involves taking a fresh look at things close to home. No more twice-daily commutes, no more school runs, no more rushing to social engagements, no more travel. Even though some of the frantic activity that defines our days continues online, it deprives us of many of our usual interactions. The lockdown cuts back the radius of our actions. Wodehouse in a pandemic: wit and perfect prose to restore the soul

The tippler drinks to forget that he feels guilty for drinking.Įven though they pursue different ends, there is a certain uniformity to these characters: in the uncompromising resoluteness with which they apply themselves to their tasks, they reduce and diminish their lives and worlds.

The businessman counts all the stars he can see in the belief this will make them his own. The lamplighter turns the single streetlight on his little planet on and off, on and off, multiple times a day. The conceited man considers each comer a potential admirer. The king believes everybody arriving on his planet to be a subject. In Saint-Exupéry’s book, first published in French in 1941, the point is that all these individuals live in their own little worlds.

The little princess by antoine de saint exupery