Philosophical tale by A.-S. Exupery “The Little Prince” (system of images, allegory, main issues)

“We are inhabitants of one planet, passengers of one ship,” said Exupery, he dreamed of saving all humanity, he was ready to save everyone on this earth, he lived for its sake. The role of a passive recorder of ongoing events was alien to him; he was always in the center. In this regard, Exupery wrote: “I have always hated the role of observer.”

New wonderful people live in the works of Exupery. They have magnificent, amazing qualities that the writer reveals to us. They are looking for a missing friend over the Cordillera or drawing a lamb for a little guest from another planet, they are pure and trusting, they have a huge childish soul, incapable of meanness.

The story of “The Little Prince” itself arose from one of the plots of “Planet of People”. This is the story of the accidental landing of the writer himself and his mechanic Prevost in the desert. Exupery has key, favorite images and symbols. Here, for example, they lead to storylines: this is the search for water by thirsty pilots, their physical suffering and amazing rescue. The symbol of life is water, it quenches the thirst of people lost in the sands, the source of everything that exists on earth, the food and flesh of everyone, the substance that makes rebirth possible.

In “The Little Prince” Exupery will fill this symbol with deep philosophical content. The fundamental principle of life is water, one of the eternal truths, an unshakable thing possessing great wisdom. The dehydrated desert is a symbol of a world devastated by war, chaos, destruction, human callousness, envy and selfishness. This is a world in which man dies of spiritual thirst.

Saving humanity from the future imminent disaster- one of the main themes in the writer’s work. He actively develops it in the work “The Little Prince”.

“Loving does not mean looking at each other, it means looking in the same direction” - this thought determines the ideological concept of the fairy tale. “The Little Prince” was written in 1943, and the tragedy of Europe in the Second World War, the writer’s memories of defeated, occupied France leave their mark on the work. With his bright, sad and wise tale, Exupery defended undying humanity, a living spark in the souls of people. In a certain sense, the story was the result of the writer’s creative path, his philosophical and artistic comprehension.

The fairy tale-parable “The Little Prince” was written not only for children, but also for adults who have not yet completely lost their childish impressionability, their childishly open view of the world and the ability to fantasize. The author himself had such child-like keen vision.

We determine that “The Little Prince” is a fairy tale by the fairy-tale features present in the story: the hero’s fantastic journey, fairy-tale characters (Fox, Snake, Rose).

First of all, this is a philosophical fairy tale. And, therefore, behind the seemingly simple and unpretentious plot and irony lies a deep meaning. The author touches upon themes of a cosmic scale through allegory, metaphors and symbols: good and evil, life and death, human existence, true love, moral beauty, friendship, endless loneliness, the relationship between the individual and the crowd, and many others.

The main tragedy of Saint-Exupery’s “adult” heroes is not so much that they are subordinated to the material world, but that they “lost” all spiritual qualities and began to exist meaninglessly, and not live in the full sense of the word.

Since this is a philosophical work, the author puts global themes in a generalized abstract form. He examines the theme of Evil in two aspects: on the one hand, it is “micro-evil,” that is, evil within an individual person. This is the deadness and inner emptiness of the inhabitants of the planets, who personify everything human vices. But Exupery is not a pessimist at all. He believes that humanity, like the Little Prince, will comprehend the mystery of existence, and each person will find his own guiding star, which will illuminate his path in life.

The second aspect of the theme of evil can be conditionally called “macroevil”. Baobabs are a personified image of evil in general. One interpretation of this metaphorical image is associated with fascism. Saint-Exupéry wanted people to carefully uproot the evil “baobab trees” that threatened to tear the planet apart.

Only a person with a rich inner world and striving for spiritual self-improvement has the right to be called a Personality. Unfortunately, the inhabitants of small planets and the planet Earth have forgotten about this simple truth and have become like a thoughtless and faceless crowd.

The conflict between the main character and the inhabitants of the planets (“strange adults”) is also unresolved. Adults will never understand the child prince. They are strangers to each other. The inhabitants are blind and deaf to the call of the heart, the impulse of the soul. Their tragedy is that they do not strive to become a Personality. “Serious people” live in their own artificially created world, fenced off from the rest (everyone has their own planet!) and consider it the true meaning of existence! These faceless masks will never know what true love, friendship and beauty are.

From this theme follows the basic principle of romanticism - the principle of dual worlds. The world of the average person, who does not have access to spirituality, and the world of the artist (The Little Prince, the author, the Fox, the Rose), who has moral qualities, will never come into contact.

In a conversation with a geographer, another important aesthetic topic is touched upon - the ephemerality of beauty. “Beauty is short-lived,” the main character sadly notes. Therefore, Saint-Exupéry calls on us to treat everything beautiful as carefully as possible and try not to get lost in difficult things. life path beauty within yourself - the beauty of the soul and heart.

Misunderstanding and alienation of people is another important philosophical topic. Saint-Exupery not only touches on the theme of misunderstanding between an adult and a child, but on the theme of misunderstanding and loneliness on a cosmic scale.

The deadness of the human soul leads to loneliness. A person judges others only by the “outer shell”, without seeing the main thing in a person - his inner moral beauty: “When you tell adults: “I saw a beautiful house made of pink brick, there are geraniums in the windows, and pigeons on the roof,” they do not can't imagine this house. They must be told: “I saw a house for a hundred thousand francs,” and then they exclaim: “What a beauty!”

The author also feels lonely and not understood by anyone. His loneliness among people is close to the loneliness of the Little Prince. The true gift of a person, his talent, can only be understood by people with an open and pure heart. This is why the Little Prince so easily and quickly finds a friend in the author, this is why the prince understands the author without words and is ready to reveal to his friend all the secrets of his own heart.

One of the key philosophical themes of the fairy tale “The Little Prince” is the theme of existence. It is divided into real being - existence and ideal being - essence. Real being is temporary, transitory, but ideal being is eternal, unchanging. The meaning of human life is to comprehend, to get as close as possible to the essence.

“Serious people” from Earth and asteroid planets are dissolved in real existence and do not strive to comprehend the essence of enduring values. And the soul of the author and the little prince is not shackled by the ice of indifference and deadness. Therefore, a true vision of the world is revealed to them: they learn the value of true friendship, love and beauty. This is the theme of “vigilance” of the heart, the ability to “see” with the heart, to understand without words.

The images written in the tradition of a romantic philosophical fairy tale are deeply symbolic. The images are precisely symbolic, since we can only guess what the author wanted to say and interpret each image depending on personal perception. The main symbolic images are the Little Prince, Fox, Rose and desert.

The Little Prince is a symbol of a person - a wanderer in the universe, looking for the hidden meaning of things and his own life.

The desert is a symbol of spiritual thirst. It is beautiful because springs are hidden in it, which only the heart helps a person to find.

There are two storylines in the story: the narrator and the related theme of the world of adults, and the line of the Little Prince, the story of his life.

A rose is a symbol of love, beauty, and femininity. The little prince did not immediately discern the true inner essence of beauty. But after a conversation with the Fox, the truth was revealed to him - beauty only becomes beautiful when it is filled with meaning and content. “You are beautiful, but empty,” continued the Little Prince. - You won’t want to die for your sake. Of course, a random passerby, looking at my rose, will say that it is exactly the same as you. But for me she is more precious than all of you...”

Behind the bewilderment of the little hero lies the bitterness of the writer himself about what is happening on earth. Saint-Exupery forces the reader to look at familiar phenomena from a different angle. “You can’t see the main thing with your eyes. Only the heart is vigilant!” - states the author.

The Fox reveals to the Little Prince the secret of taming: to tame means to create bonds of love and unity of souls. Love not only connects us with other beings, but also helps us better understand the world, makes our own lives richer. And the Fox reveals one more secret to the baby: “Only the heart is vigilant. You can’t see the most important thing with your eyes... Your Rose is so dear to you because you gave her your whole soul... People have forgotten this truth, but don’t forget: you are forever responsible for everyone you have tamed.”

A deep meaning is hidden in the symbolic image of the planet to which the Little Prince returns. This is a symbol of the human soul, a symbol of the home of the human heart. Exupery wants to say that each person has his own planet, his own island and his own guiding star, which a person should not forget about.

The author's fervent faith in the existence of hidden springs gives the ending of the fairy tale-parable a life-affirming sound. The story contains a powerful creative moment, faith in improvement and change in the unjust order of things. The life aspirations of the heroes are in harmony with the moral universal principle. Their fusion is the meaning and general direction of the work.

The composition of the work is very unique. The parabola is a basic component of the structure of a traditional parable. “The Little Prince” is no exception. It looks like this: the action takes place in a specific time and specific situation. The plot develops as follows: there is a movement along a curve, which, having reached the highest point of intensity, again returns to the starting point. The peculiarity of such plot construction is that, returning to the starting point, the plot takes on a new philosophical and ethical meaning. New point of view to a problem, finds a solution.

The philosophical tale of the French writer Saint-Exupery has great potential for the moral education of students. Not everything here will be understood by the little reader with his mind, but much will awaken his imagination, stick in his memory and sprout years later. An adult is concerned about this wonderful fairy tale in a different way. But is it worth deciphering every figurative move of the work, every symbol: isn’t it better to accept it immediately and in its entirety! After all, the wisdom of her hints comes to us through the music of words, through the softness of transitions from jokes to serious reasoning, from laughter to a sad echo of one’s own childhood. These half-tone transitions are as smiling and subtle as the graceful drawings with which the author accompanied it.

The plot of the teaching fairy tale “The Little Prince” was inspired by the following event: on December 29, 1937, 200 km from Cairo, flying over the Sahara, Saint-Exupery was forced to land in the sand. The pilot was saved by Prevost’s friend, who came to him with a caravan on the 5th day after the accident. Already in 1940, during breaks between battles with the Nazis, Exupery often drew a boy on a piece of paper - sometimes winged, sometimes riding on a cloud. Gradually, the wings will be replaced by a long scarf (which, by the way, the author himself wore), and the cloud will become asteroid B-612.

The fairy tale, written for children, has become so widely known due to the exceptional poetic atmosphere created by the figurative and symbolic structure of the story, and the fact that it is intended not only for children, “but also for adults who remain children.” The popularity of the tale was also facilitated by the author's drawings.

Saint-Exupery wrote this in the preface of the book:

Je demande pardon aux enfants d"avoir dédié ce livre a une grande personne. J"ai une excuse sérieuse: cette grande personne est le meilleur ami que j"ai au monde. J"ai une autre excuse: cette grande personne peut tout comprendre , mкme les livres pour enfants. J"ai une troisième excuse: cette grande personne habite la France oç elle a faim et froid. Elle a besoin d"être consolée. Si toutes ces excuses ne suffisent pas, je veux bien dédier ce livre a l"enfant qu"a et autrefois cette grande personne. Toutes les grandes personnes ont d"abord et des enfants. (Mais peu d"entre elles s"en souviennent.) .

“I apologize to the children for dedicating this book to an adult. But I have a good reason for this: this adult is mine. best friend. I have another reason: this adult understands everything, even children's books. And a third reason: this adult lives in France, where he is cold and hungry. He needs consolation. If all these reasons are not compelling enough, I am willing to dedicate this book to the child that this adult once was. All adults were once children. (But few of them remember this.)" .

Published in 1943 as a children's book, this poetic tale is about the courage and wisdom of an artless child's soul, about such important “non-children's” concepts as life and death, love and responsibility, friendship and loyalty. "The Little Prince", perhaps, if not the best, then the very famous work Saint-Exupery. Often, based on the main conclusions and provisions of this book, the personality of Saint-Exupery is judged; sometimes they identify him with the hero of a fairy tale. All this, of course, is not entirely true.

The work has a very rich language. The author uses a lot of amazing and inimitable literary devices. In its text you can hear the melody: “...And at night I like to listen to the stars. Like five hundred million bells..." Its simplicity is childlike truth and precision. Exupery's language is full of memories and reflections about life, the world and, of course, childhood:

The style and special, unique mystical manner of Saint-Exupery is a transition from image to generalization, from parable to morality. You need to have great writing talent to see the world the way Exupery saw it.

The language of his work is natural and expressive. It would seem that ordinary, familiar concepts suddenly acquire a new original meaning for him. Many of his metaphors are just as fresh and natural; the writer uses paradoxical combinations of words that you won’t find in ordinary speech: “children should be very lenient towards adults,” “if you go straight and straight, you won’t get far...” or “people already There’s not enough time to learn anything.” There is a secret in this manner of expressing your thoughts; it tells old truths in a new way, their true meaning is revealed, forcing readers to think.

The narrative style has a number of features. This is a confidential conversation between old friends - this is how the author communicates with the reader. One can feel the presence of the author, who believes in goodness and reason, soon when life on earth will change. We can talk about a peculiar melody of the narrative, sad and thoughtful, built on soft transitions from humor to serious thoughts, on halftones, transparent and light, like watercolor illustrations of a fairy tale, created by the writer himself and being an integral part of the artistic fabric of the work.

Getting acquainted with the work, the reader seems to change the angle of view on banal, everyday phenomena. The writer leads to the comprehension of obvious truths: you cannot put stars in a jar and count them pointlessly; you need to take care of those for whom you are responsible and listen to the voice of your own heart. Everything is simple and complex at the same time.

The image of the Little Prince is both deeply autobiographical and, as it were, removed from the adult author-pilot. He was born out of longing for little Tonio, who was dying within himself - a descendant of an impoverished noble family, who was called in the family the “Sun King” for his blond (at first) hair, and in college was nicknamed the Lunatic for his habit of looking at the starry sky for a long time. The phrase “The Little Prince” itself is found in “Planet of People” (like many other images and thoughts developed in the fairy tale).

In order to convey simple truths to the child’s consciousness, Saint-Exupéry chose the amazing form of a fairy tale-parable. This is a successful combination of an interesting fairy tale with subtext that everyone can understand.

“If we proceed from the famous definition that “adults are grown-up children,” and remember the special role that memories of childhood played in the life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, then, naturally, I want to connect the work with his own words that he himself is “from the land of childhood.” But then all the pathos of “The Little Prince” can easily be put into the formula “take care, preserve your childhood,” a formula that, in general, although correct, somewhat simplifies the complex literary work. This is not just a fairy tale."

In the Sahara desert, and at the same time in the desert modern world, among “serious business people,” the Little Prince is infinitely lonely. People are separated and lonely, even when they are together, due to the inability to understand, love another and create bonds of friendship. Let us remember the words of one of the heroes - the Snake: “It’s also lonely among people.” The conflict between the main character and the inhabitants of the planets - “strange adults” - is unresolvable. Adults will never understand the child prince. They are strangers to each other. The inhabitants are blind and deaf to the call of the heart, the impulse of the soul. Their tragedy is that they do not strive to become a Personality. “Serious people” live in their own artificially created world, fenced off from the rest. Everyone has their own planet. They consider created little worlds to be the true meaning of existence! These faceless masks will never know what true love, friendship and beauty are.

From this theme follows the basic principle of romanticism - the principle of dual worlds. These two worlds will never come into contact: the world of the average man, who does not have access to the spiritual principle, and the world of the artist, who has moral qualities. It is for this reason that we have a romantic fairy tale.

The need for deep generalizations prompted Saint-Exupery to turn to the genre of parables. The lack of specific historical content, the conventions characteristic of this genre, its didactic conditionality allowed the writer to express his views on the moral problems of the time that worried him. The parable genre made it possible to embody Saint-Exupery's thoughts on the essence of human existence.

Back forward

Attention! Slide previews are for informational purposes only and may not represent all the features of the presentation. If you are interested in this work, please download the full version.

Goals and objectives:

developing:

develop students' reading interest;
develop the ability to compare and draw conclusions, briefly formulate your thoughts;
develop emotional-imaginative and analytical thinking;

educational:

teach to comprehend ideological content of the tale, comprehend the moral side of the work;
learn to analyze a work of art;

educational:

evoke personally significant experiences, encourage active efforts to resolve problem situations and search for answers to one’s life questions in a literary text;
cultivate respect for the feelings of another person, emotional sensitivity, and a sense of responsibility for those around you.

Meta-subject goal of the lesson: the formation of universal educational actions of students that have a meta-subject nature.

Educational and organizational:

determine learning task,
formulate hypotheses,
evaluate your educational activities.

Educational and informational:

work with literary text.

Educational and communicative:

develop the ability to enter into dialogue, express one’s point of view,
develop the ability to listen to the opinions of others and work in a group.

Lesson type: a problematic lesson in learning new material using group work and ICT.

Methods and techniques: conversation, observation, comparison, problem solving, analysis, group work and use of ICT.

Equipment: presentation in “Microsoft Office PowerPoint” handouts, text.

During the classes

I. Motivational and orientation stage.

1. Emotional mood.(Slide 1)

2. Announcing the topic of the lesson, goal setting.

Read the topic of our lesson and tell me what we will talk about in the lesson today. (Slide 2)

Based on the topic, determine the purpose of the lesson. What are we going to think about? (Slide 3) What do baobab trees symbolize?

What hidden meaning is hidden in the writer’s words?

We will learn to analyze a work of art and work in a group

II. Analysis of the work.

1. Conversation with the class.

Having read the fairy tale “The Little Prince”, you have come into contact with a miracle. This is a miracle - a boy who lived on a planet the size of a house. A boy with golden hair, fragile, inquisitive, persistent. (Slide 4)

How did he feel about his planet? (Every day he cleaned the volcanoes on which he heated breakfast, and weeded out baobab sprouts.)

What was his rule? ( “You got up in the morning, washed your face, put yourself in order - and immediately put your planet in order.”

On the planet of the Little Prince, like on any other planet, there are good seeds of good, healthy herbs and harmful seeds of bad, weedy grass. These are terrible, evil baobab seeds. The entire soil of the planet is contaminated with them. And if the baobabs are not recognized in time, they will take over the entire planet and tear it to shreds. (Slide 5)

What do baobab trees symbolize? (Baobabs are those forces that prevent humanity from living, that can blow up the planet; these are the vices that destroy the human soul, and man is the whole universe)

Output the definition of the defect (Slide 6)

What danger awaits children? We will learn about this when, together with the Little Prince, we go on a journey through the planets he visited.

Why does the hero of a fairy tale go on a journey? How does he talk about it himself?

2. Journey of the Little Prince (work in groups).

Now I suggest you work in a group.

1. Take the green sheet with the task. (Annex 1)

2. Read the questions and distribute them among group members.

3. Discuss together what each of you will answer.

4. When answering, you can use supporting words from the right column.

Who doesn't understand the task? Get to work. You have 10 minutes.

3. Group performance.(Slide 7)

Now you have to complete the task on the yellow sheet (Appendix 2), where the inhabitants of the planets are indicated. Listening carefully to the speeches of your classmates, please write down the main character trait of each of them (1-2 words).

After the groups performed.

So, we name the inhabitant of the planet and the main trait of his character. (Slide with baobab vices 7)

So what danger awaits children? Why does the writer say: “Children! Beware of the baobabs!” (Traveling with the Little Prince, we saw a whole gallery of human vices: lust for power, ambition, vanity, selfishness, drunkenness, greed, narrow-mindedness. These are the forces that destroy the human soul.)

Guys, but modern life there are many more vices that everyone must fight. I invite you to a short excursion to Moscow, to Bolotnaya Square, where the famous sculptural composition by Mikhail Shemyakin “Children - Victims of the Vices of Adults” is located, which was opened in September 2001. (Video sequence) (Slide 8)

What is the point of contrasting the golden figures of blindfolded children with creepy monsters? (Creepy human figures with animal heads are “baobabs” that children should beware of)

Conclusion . So, if you don’t take care of the planet, if you don’t develop such qualities as accuracy and hard work, the planet may die. And, if a person’s soul is unkempt, then the person will become bad and will also perish for the world of people, and will remain alone.

Guys, what resists vices? (Virtue is a person’s desire for good, this is also a separate positive quality person.) (Slide 9)

BUT virtues are not given by nature. They are acquired as a result of training, they need to be learned.

What virtues did the Little Prince acquire after visiting planet Earth? (Slide 10)

Task for group VII.

1. “The Earth is not a simple planet!...” (Continue the quote)

2. What did the Little Prince experience and understand on Earth?

3. Who appears before the prince in a difficult moment of disappointment?

4. What truths of life did the Fox reveal to him? ( The main lesson is the lesson of the science of love. Love is work.)

Why does the Little Prince return to his planet? (To protect Rose)

A. de Saint-Exupéry wrote: “... I don’t want my book to be read just for fun.” If not for fun, then why is it worth reading the fairy tale “The Little Prince”? (To become smarter, learn new things, defeat vices by cultivating virtue, learn to be friends, love.) (Slide 11)

Generalization. This book is a testament. What cherished thoughts did Saint-Exupery express in his work? Let's voice them. And for this you need to complete one more task on the pink sheet (Appendix 3): continue the phrase (find the correct ending)

(Slide 12)

III. Summarizing

Our lesson is coming to an end. I would like to know if you received answers to the questions you asked at the beginning of the lesson?

Reflection(Slide 13)

Choose one phrase and continue it:

Today in class I learned...
Today in class I learned.....
I enjoyed my lesson today....

Antoine de Saint-Exupery did not write specifically for children. And in general, by profession he was not a writer, but a wonderful pilot. However, his wonderful works, such as "Night Flight", "Planet of Men", "Military Pilot", and, of course, "The Little Prince", without a doubt, belong to the best that was written in France in the 20th century. In The Little Prince, Saint-Exupery appeals equally to everyone - small and large - who wants to think about life and try to understand what is of real value in it. That is why this fairy tale, in which the writer returns to his favorite thoughts, but expresses them in a new way, that is, figuratively and generally, is usually called philosophical. It turns out that you can talk about very serious and deep things quite simply and clearly, especially if you have a sense of humor. “You draw a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant, but adults say it’s a hat,” the author of “The Little Prince” laments, telling why, instead of becoming an artist, as he wanted, he had to choose another profession - he learned to fly airplanes. - “Everything always needs to be explained to adults. I no longer talked to them about boa constrictors, or about the jungle, or about the stars. I talked to them about playing bridge and about golf, about politics and about ties. Adults really like numbers. When tell them what you have new friend, they will never ask about the most important thing: “What is his voice like? What games does he like to play? Does he catch butterflies?” They ask, "How old is he? How many brothers does he have? How much does he weigh? How much does his father earn?" It goes without saying that when Saint-Exupery speaks this way about adults, he does not mean all adults, but only those who have forgotten that they were once children, those who call themselves “serious people,” those who are always adds up numbers like a “man with a purple face”, who has never smelled a flower in his entire life, never looked at a star and never loved anyone, those who, like one king, think that they rule the whole universe, those who lives boring, monotonous and, in essence, unhappy.

What else did the author say in his fairy tale that it continues to be read and admired in the twenty-first century? To understand this, we need to look closely at the realities of today and determine what is most valuable to those living now. And it turns out that the main human values have not changed since the last century and, perhaps, will never change, but, unfortunately, in the turmoil of events and news they have now faded into the background. To use the words of Exupery, the current inhabitants of planet Earth have become too similar to adults. They are less and less interested in the jungle, boa constrictors and stars. Among all the diseases of mankind, one of the most terrible is the loss of spirituality. And right now, more than ever, the words of the Fox ring true: “You can’t see the most important things with your eyes!” People need to read and re-read The Little Prince to remember this, so simple, but very important idea. That we tame not only domestic animals, but also each other.

In addition, the foresight of the French writer cannot but arouse admiration. The fairy tale was written long before the world knew about the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but if a modern reader takes a closer look at Saint-Exupéry’s famous drawing “Beware of the Baobabs,” he will easily notice the similarity of the terrible trees with “mushrooms” nuclear explosions. Thus, through the years, Exupery’s words convey to us his concern for the whole world as a whole and for each of its individual inhabitants.

The same age as our time, Count Antoine-Marie-Roger de Saint-Exupéry was born in June 1900 in France in the city of Lyon, in the castle of La Moll. His parents came from old aristocratic families, but such a noble origin in no way corresponded to the actual social status Saint-Exupery family: the father of the future writer served as an inspector for an insurance company. And when he died, his wife was left with five children, including four-year-old Antoine, without her own means of support. Grandmothers came to the rescue; It was only thanks to them that the children received an education without experiencing need.

As a child, he was a dreamer, wrote poetry, drew, learned to play the violin, but became interested in technology and cars. He studied unevenly, glimpses of genius appeared in him, but it was noticeable that this student was not created for schoolwork. His family called him “Sun King” because of the blond hair that crowned his head. His comrades nicknamed Antoine “Stargazer” because his nose was turned up to the sky. In fact, even then he was the “Little Prince,” arrogant and absent-minded, joyful and fearless. All his life he maintained a connection with his childhood, he always remained enthusiastic, inquisitive and successfully played the role of a magician, as if expecting enthusiastic exclamations: “Long live Antoine de Saint-Exupery!” And these exclamations were heard, but only more often they said: “Saint-Aix, Antoine or Tonio,” because he invariably became a part of the inner life of all those who knew him or read his books.

The time in which Antoine de Saint-Exupéry lived forced him to change his initial social views. In this his biography is similar to the biographies of other progressives, and simply honest people different countries peace. His writing voice, his moral concepts, his understanding of duty, his elevated attitude towards his life’s work - this was invariable in his personality. Saint-Exupery bequeathed to us: “Look for me in what I write. "

Promoted to the rank of major, he managed to join his dear reconnaissance group 2/33 (to which he had previously been enrolled), but his superiors, worried about his life, were reluctant to allow him to fly. He was promised five such flights, but he extracted agreement for three more. He did not return from the eighth flight. He took off at 8:30 a.m. and by 1:30 p.m. he was still missing. The squadron comrades, gathered in the officers' mess, looked at their watches every minute. Now he only had one hour's worth of fuel left. Exactly an hour later there was no longer any hope. Everyone remained silent for a long time. Then the squadron commander said to one of the pilots: “You will complete the task entrusted to Major de Saint-Exupéry.” It all ended just like in a Saint-Exupery novel, and one could easily imagine that, when he had no more fuel and, perhaps, hope, he, like one of his heroes, rushed the plane upward - towards the heavenly field, densely strewn with stars."

Can his books be called novels? Hardly. From work to work, the element of fiction is increasingly reduced. Most likely, this is an essay about action, about people, about the Earth, about life. The scenery almost always depicts an airfield. And the point here is not the writer’s desire to be considered an expert, but his desire for sincerity. After all, this is exactly how the author lives and thinks.

Shortly before his death, Saint-Exupéry wrote a small, completely different fairy tale book, “The Little Prince,” and illustrated it himself. This sad, mocking book is, of course, more for adults than for children. After all, in genuine folk tale Under the first meaning, simple and understandable even to a child, sometimes a wise allegory is hidden. Not everything here will be understood by the little reader with his mind, but much will awaken his imagination, stick in his memory and, over the years, sprout. An adult is concerned about this wonderful fairy tale in a different way. You will smile at it, you will be sad, and most importantly, you will certainly think about it. For the fairy tale told by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is not only lyrical, but also touching in a good way, without sentimentality. This tale is wise and humane, and its author is not only a poet, but also a philosopher. Simply and heartfeltly, as in his stories and letters, he speaks about the most important things: about duty and loyalty, about friendship and love, about ardent, active love for life and for people, about intolerance towards evil and about how to be to man on this not yet very settled, sometimes unkind, but beloved and only planet Earth.

Second World War, the tragic defeat of France, the difficulties of life in exile cause a noticeable shift in Saint-Exupery's social views. He is depressed to the core by the general collapse and blames everything that has happened primarily on insolvency state power- “an administration incapable of any creative act. " So little remains of Saint-Exupery's tolerance. Even in the fairy tale “The Little Prince” - in a fairy tale! - he finds it useful to remind people that baobabs should be weeded out without delay - “as soon as they can be distinguished from rose bushes: their young shoots are almost the same.” This is coming from the same man who, just a few years earlier, reacted, although with disapproval, but, in general, more or less tolerantly to the fact that his friend, the famous pilot Mermoz, joined the fascist organization!

A fairy tale, like a parable, is the oldest genre of oral folk art. It teaches a person to live, instills optimism in him, and affirms faith in the triumph of goodness and justice. Behind the fantastic nature of fairy-tale plots and fiction, real things are always hidden. human relations. Like a parable, morality and morality always triumph in a fairy tale. social truth. The fairy tale-parable “The Little Prince” was written not only for children, but also for adults who have not yet completely lost their childish impressionability, their childishly open view of the world and the ability to fantasize. The author himself had such child-like keen vision.

In the forties, when the French government had not yet capitulated, and the aviation was fighting the last desperate battles with the Nazis, during short breaks between missions, Exupery, lost in thought, absentmindedly drew a butterfly on the flight sheet and a boy with wings on a cloud. - Why do you always draw a boy and a butterfly? - asked pilot Oshede, one of his friends from the squadron.

Exupery was silent. He probably only had a presentiment of what could be the answer to the question.

Then the cloud in the picture disappeared, replaced by an asteroid; and the boy lost his wings. The only thing that made Exupery look like this boy was a long, long scarf, carelessly wrapped around his neck, with the ends fluttering in the wind; and also something elusive in the facial expression.

One day he argued too harshly, as it seemed to him later, with a friend and in an apology note he drew a picture of the Little Prince instead of a signature. A friend recognized Exupery.

We determine that “The Little Prince” is a fairy tale by the fairy-tale features present in the story: the hero’s fantastic journey, fairy-tale characters (Fox, Snake, Rose).

The “prototype” of the literary fairy tale “The Little Prince” can be considered a folk fairy tale with a wandering plot: a handsome prince, because of unhappy love, leaves his father’s house and wanders along endless roads in search of happiness and adventure. He tries to gain fame and thereby conquer the unapproachable heart of the princess.

Saint-Exupery takes this plot as a basis, but reinterprets it in his own way, even ironically. His handsome prince is just a child, suffering from a capricious and eccentric flower. Naturally, there is no talk of a happy ending with a wedding. In his wanderings, the little prince meets not with fairy-tale monsters, but with people bewitched, as if by an evil spell, by selfish and petty passions.

But this is only the external side of the plot. First of all, this is a philosophical fairy tale. And, therefore, behind the seemingly simple and unpretentious plot and irony lies a deep meaning. The author touches upon themes of a cosmic scale through allegory, metaphors and symbols: good and evil, life and death, human existence, true love, moral beauty, friendship, endless loneliness, the relationship between the individual and the crowd, and many others.

Despite the fact that the Little Prince is a child, he discovers a true vision of the world that is inaccessible even to an adult. And the people with dead souls whom the main character meets on his way are much more terrible than fairy-tale monsters. The relationship between the prince and Rose is much more complex than the relationship between the princes and princesses from folklore tales. After all, it is for the sake of Rose that the Little Prince sacrifices his material shell - he chooses physical death.

The fairy tale has strong romantic traditions. Firstly, this is the choice of the folklore genre - fairy tales. Romantics turn to the genres of oral folk art not by chance. Folklore is the childhood of humanity, and the theme of childhood in romanticism is one of the key themes. German idealist philosophers put forward the thesis that man is equal to God in that he can, like the Almighty, produce an idea and implement it in reality. And evil in the world occurs because man forgets that he is like God. A person begins to live only for the sake of the material shell, forgetting about spiritual aspirations. Only baby's soul and soul

The artist is not subject to mercantile interests and, accordingly, to Evil. This is where the cult of childhood can be traced in the works of the romantics. But the main tragedy of Saint-Exupery’s “adult” heroes is not so much that they are subordinated to the material world, but that they “lost” all spiritual qualities and began to exist meaninglessly, and not live in the full sense of the word.

Since this is a philosophical work, the author poses global themes in a generalized and abstract form. He examines the theme of Evil in two aspects: on the one hand, it is “micro-evil,” that is, evil within an individual person. This is the deadness and inner emptiness of the inhabitants of the planets, who personify all human vices. And it is no coincidence that the inhabitants of planet Earth are characterized through the inhabitants of the planets seen by the Little Prince. “The Earth is not a simple planet! There are one hundred and eleven kings (including, of course, black ones), seven thousand geographers, nine hundred thousand businessmen, seven and a half million drunkards, three hundred and eleven million ambitious people - a total of about two billion adults.” By this, the author emphasizes how petty and dramatic the modern world is. But Exupery is not a pessimist at all. He believes that humanity, like the Little Prince, will comprehend the mystery of existence, and each person will find his own guiding star, which will illuminate his path in life.

The second aspect of the theme of evil can be tentatively called “macroevil.” Baobabs are a personified image of evil in general. One interpretation of this metaphorical image is associated with fascism. Saint-Exupéry wanted people to carefully uproot the evil “baobab trees” that threatened to tear the planet apart. "Beware of the baobabs!" - the writer conjures. He himself illustrated the fairy tale, and when you look at the roots of these trees that entangled the small planet, you involuntarily remember the sign of the fascist swastika. The fairy tale itself was written because it was “terribly important and urgent.” The writer often repeated that the seeds lie in the ground for the time being, and then they germinate, and from the seeds of a cedar a cedar grows, and from the seeds of a thorn tree a blackthorn grows. It is necessary for good seeds to sprout. “After all, all adults were children at first. " People must preserve and not lose on the path of life everything that is bright, kind and pure in their souls, which will make them incapable of evil and violence.

Only an Artist is able to see the essence - the inner beauty and harmony of the world around him. Even on the lamplighter’s planet, the Little Prince remarks: “When he lights a lantern, it’s as if one more star or flower is being born. And when he turns off the lantern, it’s as if a star or a flower is falling asleep. Great activity. It’s really useful because it’s beautiful.” The main character speaks to the inner side of beauty, and not to its outer shell. Human work must have meaning, and not simply turn into mechanical actions. Any business is useful only when it is internally beautiful.

In a conversation with a geographer, another important aesthetic theme is touched upon - the ephemerality of beauty. “Beauty is short-lived,” the main character sadly notes. Therefore, Saint-Exupery urges us to treat everything beautiful as carefully as possible and try not to lose the beauty within ourselves on the difficult path of life - the beauty of the soul and heart.

But the Little Prince learns the most important thing about beauty from the Fox. Outwardly beautiful, but empty inside, roses do not evoke any feelings in a child-contemplator. They are dead to him. The main character discovers the truth for himself, the author and the readers - only that which is filled with deep meaning is beautiful. Misunderstanding and alienation of people is another important philosophical topic. Saint-Exupery not only touches on the theme of misunderstanding between an adult and a child, but on the theme of misunderstanding and loneliness on a cosmic scale. The deadness of the human soul leads to loneliness. A person judges others only by the “outer shell”, without seeing the main thing in a person - his inner moral beauty: “When you say to adults: “I saw a beautiful house made of pink brick, there are geraniums in the windows, and pigeons on the roof,” they do not can't imagine this house. They must be told: “I saw a house for a hundred thousand francs,” and then they exclaim: “What a beauty!” People are separated and lonely, even when they are together, due to the inability to understand, love another and create bonds of friendship:

“Where are the people? - The Little Prince finally spoke again. - It’s still lonely in the desert.

It’s also lonely among people,” the snake noted.”

“Serious people” from Earth and asteroid planets are dissolved in real life and do not strive to comprehend the essence of enduring values. And the soul of the author and the Little Prince is not shackled by the ice of indifference and deadness. Therefore, a true vision of the world is revealed to them: they learn the value of true friendship, love and beauty. This is the theme of the “vigilance” of the heart, the ability to “see” with the heart, to understand without words.

The little prince does not immediately comprehend this wisdom. He leaves his own planet, not knowing that what he will look for on different planets will be so close - on his home planet.

The Little Prince is a symbol of a person - a wanderer in the universe, looking for the hidden meaning of things and his own life.

The desert is a symbol of spiritual thirst. It is beautiful because springs are hidden in it, which only the heart helps a person to find. The narrator suffers an accident in the desert - this is one of the plot lines in the story, its background. In essence, the fairy tale was born in the desert. The fairy tales that we know and love were born in the forest, in the mountains, on the seashore - where people live. In Saint-Exupery's fairy tale there is only desert and stars. Why? It has long been noticed that a person, having found himself in an extreme situation, being on the verge of life and death, seems to relive, rethink his life, gives it harsh assessments, trying to identify the most valuable, real thing in it and sweep away the tinsel. A person perceives life itself in a new way: what is important in it and what is accidental. The narrator finds himself face to face with the dead desert, the sands. The Little Prince, an alien from the “planet of childhood,” helps him see what is true and what is false in life. Therefore, the meaning of this image in the work is special - it is like an X-ray beam, helping a person to see what is hidden from the superficial gaze. Therefore, the theme of childhood with its unclouded view, crystal clear and clear consciousness and freshness of feelings occupies a central place in the story. Truly, “the truth speaks through the mouth of a child.”

There are two storylines in the story: the narrator and the related theme of the world of adults, and the line of the Little Prince, the story of his life. The first chapter of the story is introductory, key to one of the important problems of the work - the problem of “fathers” and “children”, to the eternal problem of generations. The pilot, recalling his childhood and the failure he suffered with drawings No. 1 and No. 2, reasons like this: “Adults never understand anything themselves, and for children it is very tiring to endlessly explain and explain everything to them.” This phrase serves as the starting point in the subsequent development of the theme of “fathers” and “children”, in the complex path of an adult pilot to understanding a child, to the author’s return to his childhood. Adults were unable to understand children's drawing the narrator, and only the Little Prince was able to quickly recognize the elephant in the boa constrictor. Thanks to this drawing, which the pilot always carried with him, mutual understanding is established between the child and the adult.

The kid, in turn, asks to draw him a lamb. But every time the drawing turns out to be unsuccessful: the lamb was either “too frail” or “too old.” “Here’s a box for you,” the narrator says to the child, “and in it sits the kind of lamb you want.” The boy liked this invention: he could fantasize as much as he wanted, imagining the lamb in different ways. The child reminded the adult of his childhood, they acquire the ability to understand each other. The ability to enter the world of a child, understand it and accept it - this is what can bring the world of adults and the world of children closer together. The little prince is a man of few words - he says very little about himself and his planet. Only little by little, from random, casually dropped words, does the pilot learn that the baby has arrived from a distant planet, “which is the size of a house” and is called “asteroid B-612.” The little prince tells the pilot about how he is at war with the baobab trees, which take such deep and strong roots that they can tear apart his little planet. You need to weed out the first shoots, otherwise it will be too late, “this is a very boring job.” But he has a “firm rule”: “. got up in the morning, washed, put yourself in order - and immediately put your planet in order.” People must take care of the purity and beauty of their planet, together protect and decorate it, and prevent all living things from perishing. So, gradually, unobtrusively, another important theme arises in the fairy tale - environmental, which is very relevant for our time. It seems that the author of the tale “foresaw” future environmental disasters and warned about careful attitude to my native and beloved planet. Saint-Exupéry acutely felt how small and fragile our planet is. The Little Prince's journey from star to star brings us closer to today's vision of cosmic distances, where the Earth, due to the carelessness of people, can disappear almost unnoticed. Therefore, the fairy tale has not lost its relevance to this day; That’s why its genre is philosophical, because it is addressed to all people, it raises eternal problems. The little prince from Saint-Exupery's fairy tale cannot imagine his life without the love of gentle sunsets, without the sun. “I once saw the sun set forty-three times in one day!” - he says to the pilot. And a little later he adds: “You know. when it becomes very sad, it’s good to watch the sun go down. " The child feels like a part of the natural world, and he calls on adults to unite with it. The established harmony in the relationship between an adult and a child is almost disrupted in chapter seven. The baby is worried about the thought of the lamb and the rose: will he be able to eat it and if so, then why does the flower have thorns? But the pilot is very busy: a nut stuck in the engine, and he tried to unscrew it, so he answered the questions at random, the first thing that came to mind, irritably throwing out: “You see, I’m busy with serious business.” The little prince is amazed: “You speak like adults” and “you don’t understand anything,” like that gentleman “with a purple face” who lives alone on his planet. In his entire life he had never smelled a flower, never looked at a star, never loved anyone. He just added up the numbers and kept repeating one thing from morning to evening: “I am a serious person! I'm a serious person! Just like you." The little prince, pale with anger, explains to the narrator how important it is to protect the only flower in the world, which grows only on his planet, from the little lamb, which “one fine morning will suddenly take it and eat it and will not even know that it done." The kid explains to the adult how important it is to think and care about the one you love, and to feel happy because of it.

“If the lamb eats it, it’s as if all the stars went out at once! And this, in your opinion, is not important!

A child teaches a lesson to an adult, becomes his wise mentor, making him ashamed and feel “terribly awkward and clumsy.”

Next in the story follows a story about the Little Prince and his planet, and here special place takes up the story of Rose. Rose was capricious and touchy, and the baby was completely exhausted with her. But “but she was so beautiful that it was breathtaking!”, and he forgave the flower for its whims. However, the Little Prince took the empty words of the beauty to heart and began to feel very unhappy.

Telling this story about a rose, little hero He admits that he didn’t understand anything at the time. “We should have judged not by words, but by deeds. She gave me her scent and illuminated my life. I shouldn't have run. Behind these pitiful tricks and tricks one had to guess the tenderness. The flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young and didn’t know how to love yet!” This once again confirms Fox’s idea that words only interfere with understanding each other. The true essence can only be “seen” with the heart. The kid is active and hardworking. Every morning he watered Rose, talked with her, cleaned the three volcanoes on his planet so that they would provide more heat, and pulled out weeds. And yet he felt very alone. In search of friends, in the hope of finding true love, he sets off on his journey through alien worlds. He is looking for people in the endless desert that surrounds him, because in communication with them he hopes to understand himself and the world around him, to gain the experience that he so lacked.

Visiting six planets in succession, the Little Prince on each of them encounters a certain life phenomenon embodied in the inhabitants of these planets: power, vanity, drunkenness, pseudo-learning. According to Saint-Exupéry, they embodied the most common human vices taken to the point of absurdity. It is no coincidence that it is here that the hero has the first doubts about the correctness of human judgments. The meaninglessness of existence, a wasted life, stupid claims to power, wealth, special position or honor - all these are the characteristics of people who imagine that they have “common sense”. The planet of people seems callous and uncomfortable to the hero: “What a strange planet! Completely dry, all salty and covered in needles. People lack imagination. They only repeat what you tell them.” If you tell these people about a friend, they will never ask about the most important thing - their questions concern something completely unimportant: “How old is he? How many brothers does he have? How much does he weigh? How much does his father earn? And after that they imagine that they recognized the Man.” Is a “sane” person trustworthy if he confuses “a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant” with an ordinary hat? What gives a true picture of a house: its cost in francs or the fact that it is a house with pink columns? And finally, would the planet of the Little Prince cease to exist if the Turkish astronomer who discovered it refused to change into a European costume, and his discovery would never receive recognition?

Listening to the ringing and sad voice of the Little Prince, you understand that in “adult” people the natural generosity of the heart, directness and sincerity, and masterful concern for the cleanliness of the planet have died out. Instead of decorating their home, cultivating their garden, they wage war, dry out their brains with numbers, and insult the beauty of sunrises and sunsets with vanity and greed. No, this is not how you should live!

Not finding what the kid was looking for on small planets, he, on the advice of a geographer, goes to big planet Earth. The first person the Little Prince meets on Earth is the Snake. According to mythology, the Snake guards the sources of wisdom or immortality, personifies magical powers, and appears in conversion rites as a symbol of restoration. In the fairy tale, she combines miraculous power and sad knowledge of human fate: “Everyone I touch, I return to the earth from which he came.” She invites the hero to get acquainted with the life of the Earth and shows him the way to people, assuring him that “it’s also lonely among people.” On Earth, the prince will have to test himself and make the most important decision in his life. The snake doubts that he will be able to maintain his purity after going through the trials, but be that as it may, she will help the baby return to his home planet by giving him her poison.

The Little Prince experiences the strongest impression when he finds himself in the rose garden. He felt even more unhappy: “His beauty told him that there were no others like her in the whole universe,” and in front of him were “five thousand flowers like her.” It turns out that he had a very ordinary rose and three volcanoes “as tall as my knee,” what kind of a prince he is after that.

This is where the Fox comes to the aid of the hero. Since ancient times in fairy tales, the Fox (not a fox!) has been a symbol of wisdom and knowledge of life. The Little Prince's conversations with this wise animal become a kind of culmination in the story, for in them the hero finally finds what he was looking for. The clarity and purity of consciousness that had been lost returns to him.

The fox reveals to the baby the life of the human heart, teaches the rituals of love and friendship, which people have long forgotten and therefore lost friends and lost the ability to love. It’s not for nothing that the flower says about people: “They are carried by the wind.” And the switchman is in a conversation with the main character, answering the question: where are people rushing? notes: “Even the driver himself doesn’t know this.” This allegory can be interpreted as follows. People have forgotten how to look at the stars at night, admire the beauty of sunsets, and experience the pleasure of the fragrance of a rose. They submitted to the vanity of earthly life, forgetting about the “simple truths”: the joy of communication, friendship, love and human happiness: “If you love a flower - the only one that is no longer on any of the many millions of stars - that’s enough: you look at the sky and you feel happy." And it is very sad for the author to say that people do not see this and turn their lives into a meaningless existence.

The fox says that the prince is for him only one of a thousand other little boys, just as he is only for the prince common fox what hundreds of thousands. “But if you tame me, we will need each other. You will be the only one for me in the whole world. And I will be alone for you in the whole world. If you tame me, my life will be like the sun. I will begin to distinguish your steps among thousands of others. " The fox reveals to the Little Prince the secret of taming: to tame means to create bonds of love and unity of souls. Love not only connects us with other beings, but also helps us better understand the world around us and makes our own lives richer. And the Fox reveals one more secret to the baby: “Only the heart is vigilant. You can't see the most important thing with your eyes. Your Rose is so dear to you because you gave her your whole soul. People have forgotten this truth, but don’t forget: you are forever responsible for everyone you tamed.” To tame means to bind oneself to another creature with tenderness, love, and a sense of responsibility. To tame means to destroy facelessness and indifference towards all living things. To tame means to make the world significant and generous, because everything in it reminds of a beloved creature. The narrator comprehends this truth, and the stars come to life for him, and he hears the ringing of silver bells in the sky, reminiscent of the laughter of the Little Prince. The theme of “expansion of the soul” through love runs through the entire tale.

The little prince comprehends this wisdom, and with him it is revealed to both the pilot-narrator and the reader. Together with the little hero, we rediscover for ourselves the main thing in life that was hidden, buried by all sorts of husk, but which constitutes the only value for a person. The little prince learns what the bonds of friendship are.

Saint-Exupery also speaks about friendship on the first page of the story - in the dedication. In the author's system of values, the theme of friendship occupies one of the main places. Only friendship can melt the ice of loneliness and alienation, since it is based on mutual understanding, mutual trust and mutual assistance.

“It’s sad when friends are forgotten. Not everyone has a friend,” says the hero of the fairy tale. The little heroine from A. Gaidar’s story “The Blue Cup,” Svetlanka, like the Little Prince, has the ability to see the true essence of the world around her. She looks at the world with an open mind. And her father is similar to the author. Amid the eternal bustle of “adult” life, he does not remember human happiness. Constantly guided by reason, he forgets to listen to the most important thing - the voice of his own heart. And the little girl, regardless of her desire, managed to show her father a completely new world of human relationships, childhood relationships; the world is also complex, but richer in feelings and some kind of inner understanding of the beauty of the surrounding people and nature. At the beginning of the fairy tale, the Little Prince leaves his only Rose, then he leaves his new friend Fox on Earth. “There is no perfection in the world,” the Fox will say. But there is harmony, there is humanity, there is a person’s responsibility for the work entrusted to him, for the person close to him, there is also responsibility for his planet, for everything that happens on it. A deep meaning is hidden in the symbolic image of the planet to which the Little Prince returns. This is a symbol of the human soul, a symbol of home, the human heart. Exupery wants to say that each person has his own planet, his own island and his own guiding star, which a person should not forget about. “I would like to know why the stars glow,” said the Little Prince thoughtfully. “Probably so that sooner or later everyone can find theirs again.” The heroes of the fairy tale, having gone through a thorny path, found their star, and the author believes that the reader will also find his distant star. ". Do you know why the desert is good? - the Little Prince asks the pilot. And he himself answers: “Springs are hidden somewhere in it. “A well in the desert, water - this is another important image-symbol for Saint-Exupery, full of deep philosophical content. Water is the fundamental principle of life, the source of all existence, the ability to restore, regenerate, a source of strength that gives immortality. In legends, water was guarded by dragons; in Saint-Exupéry, it was guarded by the desert. The author believes that “springs are hidden” in every person; you just need to be able to find them and open them. The water that the heroes find turns out to be not ordinary water: “It was born from a long journey under the stars, from the creaking of a gate, from the effort of hands. She was like a gift to my heart. “This allegory is not difficult to understand: we are all driven by faith and the desire to find this pure spring, this life truth, which is protected by the author and the Little Prince - each in his own way.

The compositional structure of the work is also peculiar. As in any parable, it has the form of a parabola: the narrative starts from a specific time and specific situation, and then, moving along a curve and reaching its climax, it returns to the starting point again, but in a qualitatively new, philosophical and ethical understanding. Thus, the beginning and end of the story are connected with the hero’s arrival on Earth and his parting with the Earth, the pilot, and the Fox. The little prince returns again to his planet, to his Rose. During the time that the adult and the child were together, they discovered a lot of new things both in life and in each other, and they parted already different - renewed and wiser.

The language of the story attracts with its amazing richness and variety of techniques. It is melodic (“And at night I like to listen to the stars. Like five hundred million bells.”), simple and unusually accurate. This is the language of memories, dreams and thoughts:

". When I was six years old. I once saw an amazing picture. " or: ". It’s been six years since my friend left me with the lamb.” This is the language of tradition, legend, parable. Stylistic manner - transition from image to generalization, from parable to morality - characteristic Saint-Exupéry's writing talent.

The language of his work is natural and expressive: “laughter is like a spring in the desert,” “five hundred million bells.” It would seem that ordinary, familiar concepts suddenly acquire a new original meaning for him: “water”, “fire”, “friendship”, etc. Many of his metaphors are equally fresh and natural: “they (volcanoes) sleep deep underground, until one of them decides to wake up”; the writer uses paradoxical combinations of words that you won’t find in ordinary speech: “children should be very lenient towards adults,” “if you go straight and straight, you won’t get far. ” or “people no longer have enough time to learn anything.” Thanks to such features of language, known truths are perceived in a new way, their true meaning is revealed, forcing readers to think: is the familiar always the best and correct.

In the language of the fairy tale one can find many traditional concepts about goodness, justice, common sense, characteristic of folklore; it contains ancient mythological overtones. Thus, the Snake conceals the mystery of life and death, light is the circle of human warmth, communication and intimacy. The narrative style of the story is also unique. The author seems to be having a confidential and sincere conversation with the reader, reflecting on the essence of human existence. We feel the constant invisible presence of the author, who passionately desires to change life on earth and believes that the kingdom of goodness and reason will come. We can talk about a peculiar melody of the narrative, sad and thoughtful, built on soft transitions from humor to serious thoughts, on halftones, transparent and light, like watercolor illustrations of a fairy tale, created by the writer himself and being an integral part of the artistic fabric of the work. Understanding the wisdom of life, the little hero simultaneously teaches a moral lesson to adults, to all people in general. The moral beauty of love, friendship, happiness and human life is revealed to the characters and readers by the end of the story.

In essence, we have a reimagined plot of the parable of the prodigal son, in which lost adults listen to the words of the child. The phenomenon of the fairy tale “The Little Prince” is that, written for adults, it has firmly entered the circle of children’s reading.

Not everything available to adults will be immediately revealed to children. But children read this book with pleasure, as it attracts them with the simplicity of its presentation, designed for children, with that special atmosphere of spirituality inherent in this fairy tale, the shortage of which is so acutely felt these days.

Children are also close to the vision of the author’s ideal in a child’s soul. Only in children does Exupery see the most valuable, unclouded foundation of human existence. For only children know how to see things in their true light, regardless of their “practical benefits”!

Exupery seems to force the reader to change the angle of view on familiar phenomena. It leads to the comprehension of obvious truths: you cannot hide the stars in a jar and count them pointlessly, you need to take care of those for whom you are responsible and listen to the voice of your own heart. Everything is simple and complex at the same time.

“On your planet,” said the Little Prince, “people grow five thousand roses in one garden. and do not find what they are looking for.

* They don’t find it, I agreed.

But what they are looking for can be found only in one single rose, a sip of water. »

It is important that children remember this truth and not ignore the main thing - one must be faithful in love and friendship, one must listen to the voice of the heart, one cannot be indifferent to what is happening in the world, one cannot be passive towards evil, everyone is responsible not only for your own destiny, but also for the destiny of another person.

I really liked this book, so I decided to post the most interesting analysis of the book on my website. Semyon Kibalo

Problem-thematic analysis of the work

Audiobook (2 hours):

The symbol of life is water, it quenches the thirst of people lost in the sands, the source of everything that exists on earth, the food and flesh of everyone, the substance that makes rebirth possible.
In “The Little Prince” Exupery will fill this symbol with deep philosophical content.
The dehydrated desert is a symbol of a world devastated by war, chaos, destruction, human callousness, envy and selfishness. This is a world in which man dies of spiritual thirst.
Another important symbol to which almost the entire work is addressed is the rose.
A rose is a symbol of love, beauty, and femininity. The little prince did not immediately discern the true inner essence of beauty. But after a conversation with the Fox, the truth was revealed to him - beauty only becomes beautiful when it is filled with meaning and content. “You are beautiful, but empty,” continued the Little Prince. “You won’t want to die for your sake.” Of course, a random passerby, looking at my rose, will say that it is exactly the same as you. But for me she is more precious than all of you...”
The salvation of humanity from the impending inevitable catastrophe is one of the main themes in the writer’s work. He actively develops it in his work “Planet of People”. Exactly the same theme is in “The Little Prince,” but here it receives a deeper development. Saint-Exupéry never wrote a single work of his own, nor did it take as long to hatch as “The Little Prince.” Motifs from “The Little Prince” are often found in the writer’s previous works
What path of salvation does Antoine de Saint-Exupéry see?
“Loving does not mean looking at each other, it means looking in the same direction” - this thought determines the ideological concept of the fairy tale. “The Little Prince” was written in 1943, and the tragedy of Europe in the Second World War, the writer’s memories of defeated, occupied France leave their mark on the work. With his bright, sad and wise tale, Exupery defended undying humanity, a living spark in the souls of people. In a certain sense, the story was the result of the writer’s creative path, his philosophical and artistic comprehension.
“The Little Prince” is, first of all, a philosophical fairy tale. And, therefore, the seemingly simple and unpretentious plot and irony hide a deep meaning. The author touches upon themes of a cosmic scale through allegory, metaphors and symbols: good and evil, life and death, human existence, true love, moral beauty, friendship, endless loneliness, the relationship between the individual and the crowd, and many others.
Despite the fact that the Little Prince is a child, he discovers a true vision of the world that is inaccessible even to an adult. And the people with dead souls whom the main character meets on his way are much more terrible than fairy-tale monsters. The relationship between the prince and Rose is much more complex than the relationship between princes and princesses from folk tales.
The fairy tale has strong romantic traditions.
Firstly, this is the choice of the folklore genre - fairy tales. We determine that “The Little Prince” is a fairy tale by the fairy-tale features present in the story: the hero’s fantastic journey, fairy-tale characters (Fox, Snake, Rose). Romantics turn to the genres of oral folk art not by chance. Folklore is the childhood of humanity, and the theme of childhood in romanticism is one of the key themes.
Saint-Exupery shows that a person begins to live only for the sake of the material shell, forgetting about spiritual aspirations. Only the child's soul and the artist's soul are not subject to mercantile interests and, accordingly, to Evil. This is where the cult of childhood can be traced in the works of the romantics.
But the main tragedy of Saint-Exupery’s “adult” heroes is not so much that they are subordinated to the material world, but that they “lost” all spiritual qualities and began to exist meaninglessly, and not live in the full sense of the word.
Since this is a philosophical work, the author poses global themes in a generalized and abstract form. He examines the theme of Evil in two aspects: on the one hand, it is “micro-evil,” that is, evil within an individual person. This is the deadness and inner emptiness of the inhabitants of the planets, who personify all human vices. And it is no coincidence that the inhabitants of the planet Earth are characterized through the inhabitants of the planets seen by the Little Prince. By this, the author emphasizes how petty and dramatic the modern world is. But Exupery is not a pessimist at all. He believes that humanity, like the Little Prince, will comprehend the mystery of existence, and each person will find his own guiding star, which will illuminate his path in life.
The second aspect of the theme of evil can be conditionally called “macroevil”. Baobabs are a spiritualized image of evil in general. One interpretation of this metaphorical image is associated with fascism. Saint-Exupéry wanted people to carefully uproot the evil “baobab trees” that threatened to tear the planet apart. “Beware of the baobabs!” - the writer conjures.
The fairy tale itself was written because it was “terribly important and urgent.” The writer often repeated that the seeds lie in the ground for the time being, and then they germinate, and from the seeds of a cedar a cedar grows, and from the seeds of a thorn tree a blackthorn grows. It is necessary for good seeds to sprout. “After all, all adults were children at first...” People must preserve and not lose on the path of life everything that is bright, kind and pure in their souls, which will make them incapable of evil and violence. Only a person with a rich inner world and striving for spiritual self-improvement has the right to be called a Personality. Unfortunately, the inhabitants of small planets and the planet Earth have forgotten about this simple truth and have become like a thoughtless and faceless crowd.
Only an Artist is able to see the essence - the inner beauty and harmony of the world around him. Even on the lamplighter’s planet, the Little Prince remarks: “When he lights a lantern, it’s as if one more star or flower is being born. And when he turns off the lantern, it’s as if a star or a flower is falling asleep. Great activity. It’s really useful because it’s beautiful.”
Saint-Exupéry encourages us to treat everything beautiful as carefully as possible and try not to lose the beauty within ourselves on the difficult path of life - the beauty of the soul and heart.
The Little Prince learns the most important thing about beauty from the Fox. Outwardly beautiful, but empty inside, roses do not evoke any feelings in a child-contemplator. They are dead to him. The main character discovers the truth for himself, the author and the readers - only that which is filled with content and deep meaning is beautiful.

Misunderstanding and alienation of people is another important philosophical topic. Saint-Exupery not only touches on the theme of misunderstanding between an adult and a child, but on the theme of misunderstanding and loneliness on a cosmic scale. The deadness of the human soul leads to loneliness. A person judges others only by their “outer shell”, without seeing the main thing in a person - his inner moral beauty: “When you tell adults: “I saw a beautiful house made of pink brick, there are geraniums in the windows, and pigeons on the roof,” they do not can't imagine this house. They must be told: “I saw a house for a hundred thousand francs,” and then they exclaim: “What a beauty!”
Another key philosophical theme of the fairy tale “The Little Prince” is the theme of existence. It is divided into real being - existence and ideal being - essence. Real being is temporary, transitory, but ideal being is eternal, unchanging. The meaning of human life is to comprehend, to get as close as possible to the essence. The soul of the author and the little prince is not shackled by the ice of indifference and deadness. Therefore, a true vision of the world is revealed to them: they learn the value of true friendship, love and beauty. This is the theme of “vigilance” of the heart, the ability to “see” with the heart, to understand without words.

The little prince does not immediately comprehend this wisdom. He leaves his own planet, not knowing that what he will look for on different planets will be so close - on his home planet.
People must take care of the purity and beauty of their planet, together protect and decorate it, and prevent all living things from perishing. So, gradually, unobtrusively, another important theme arises in the fairy tale - environmental, which is very relevant for our time. It seems that the author of the fairy tale “foresaw” future environmental disasters and warned about caring for our native and beloved planet. Saint-Exupéry acutely felt how small and fragile our planet is. The Little Prince's journey from star to star brings us closer to today's vision of cosmic distances, where the Earth, due to the carelessness of people, can disappear almost unnoticed. Therefore, the fairy tale has not lost its relevance to this day; That’s why its genre is philosophical, because it is addressed to all people, it raises eternal problems.
And the Fox reveals one more secret to the baby: “Only the heart is vigilant. You won’t see the most important thing with your eyes... Your Rose is so dear to you because you gave her your whole soul... People have forgotten this truth, but don’t forget: you are forever responsible for everyone you have tamed.” To tame means to bind oneself to another creature with tenderness, love, and a sense of responsibility. To tame means to destroy facelessness and indifference towards all living things. To tame means to make the world significant and generous, because everything in it reminds of a beloved creature. The narrator comprehends this truth, and the stars come to life for him, and he hears the ringing of silver bells in the sky, reminiscent of the laughter of the Little Prince. The theme of “expansion of the soul” through love runs through the entire tale.
Together with the little hero, we rediscover for ourselves the main thing in life that was hidden, buried by all sorts of husk, but which constitutes the only value for a person. The little prince learns what the bonds of friendship are.
Saint-Exupery also speaks about friendship on the first page of the story. In the author's system of values, the theme of friendship occupies one of the main places. Only friendship can melt the ice of loneliness and alienation, since it is based on mutual understanding, mutual trust and mutual assistance.
“It's sad when friends are forgotten. Not everyone has a friend,” says the hero of the fairy tale. At the beginning of the fairy tale, the Little Prince leaves his only Rose, then he leaves his new friend Fox on Earth. “There is no perfection in the world,” the Fox will say. But there is harmony, there is humanity, there is a person’s responsibility for the work entrusted to him, for the person close to him, there is also responsibility for his planet, for everything that happens on it.
A deep meaning is hidden in the symbolic image of the planet to which the Little Prince returns. This is a symbol of the human soul, a symbol of the home of the human heart. Exupery wants to say that each person has his own planet, his own island and his own guiding star, which a person should not forget about. “I would like to know why the stars glow,” said the Little Prince thoughtfully. “Probably so that sooner or later everyone can find theirs again.” The heroes of the fairy tale, having gone through a thorny path, found their star, and the author believes that the reader will also find his distant star.
“The Little Prince” is a romantic fairy tale, a dream that has not disappeared, but is kept by people, cherished by them, like something precious from childhood. Childhood is somewhere nearby and comes in moments of the most terrible despair and loneliness, when there is nowhere to go. It will come up as if nothing had happened, as if it had never left us for these many years, will squat down next to us and ask, looking curiously at the wrecked plane: “What is this thing?” Then everything will fall into place, and an adult will return to that clarity and transparency, the fearless directness of judgments and assessments that only children have.
Reading Exupery, we seem to change the angle of view on banal, everyday phenomena. It leads to the comprehension of obvious truths: you cannot hide the stars in a jar and count them pointlessly, you need to take care of those for whom you are responsible and listen to the voice of your own heart. Everything is simple and complex at the same time.