BOOK REPORT

(Little Prince)

Submitted By:
Alvin Amandy
Submitted To:
Mrs.Mirafe C.Abad

The little prince - he is the main character in the story. The little prince comes
from asteroid B612, a tiny planet in space. He leaves his planet in search of
knowledge and wisdom, and also to get away from his flower. He travels to 7
planets, and on the last planet, the earth, he learns the secret of life from the fox
and teaches the narrator that one must be responsible for the things that you
tame. 

Narrator - the narrator loves to draw, but he abandoned drawing at the age of 6
because nobody understood his drawings. Hence, he decided to become a pilot.
One day, he flew his air plane over the Sahara Desert, but suddenly his engine
broke, and he landed in the desert. Here, he meets the little prince and he learns
from the prince the secret of life. The narrator shows the prince his drawings, but
is surprised that the little prince knows what each drawing represents. From the
experience with the little prince, the narrator sees the difference between
children and adults, and he finds in himself, the children within.

The Flower - the flower lives on the planet of the little prince. She is a conceited
and arrogant flower that seems to think that the world revolves around her. She
also nags the little prince all the time and asks him to take very good care of her.
However, inside, she deeply loves the little prince and despite her arrogance, she
realizes that she was the one that caused the little prince to leave the planet. 

Fox - The fox in "le petit prince" is depicted as a very wise creature. He knows the
secret of life, which he gives to the little prince as a present: "the essential is
invisible to the eye, one can only see clearly with the heart." When he first meets
the little prince, he's shy and timid, but then he's willing to sacrifice his freedom
for the little prince to tame him. The fox feels that when the little prince tames
him, he will be happy because he will no longer be like the one million other foxes
that the little prince will see; he will be unique to the little prince.   

Businessman - The businessman is also known as "Mr. Cramoisi" or "Mr. Red"

because according to the little prince, he's too serious. The businessman works all
the time keeping track of how many stars he has in his possession. He hates
distractions and the little prince would be his third distraction. 

King - The king lives on a tiny planet that is almost completely covered by his
magnificent long flowing robe. The little prince visits him, but he automatically
labels the prince as his subject and gives him ridiculous orders like, "do not yawn"
or "be a minister". He is very arrogant and believes that he rules over the universe
including the stars and the planets. Of course, the little prince thinks he is very
foolish because no one can rule the whole universe.

Drunkard - The drunkard is a sad and lonesome soul that lives on a tiny planet by
himself. He drinks to forget that he's ashamed of drinking. It's like a vicious cycle.

Clown - the clown wants attention all the time and he asks the little prince to clap
for him whenever he salutes by taking his hat off. He says that he's the most
wonderful, funny, and admired person in the world and he also loves
compliments.

The Street Lighter - the street lighter turns on and off the street light that he has
on his planet. Whenever he turns the light on, a new life is born, and the sun
rises. Whenever he turns off the light, someone dies, and the sun sets.

Geographer - the geographer draws maps in his atlas. He asks the little prince to
describe his planet to him so he can draw it, but when the little prince tells him
about his flower, he tells the little prince that he cannot draw it because flowers
are "ephemeral", meaning, they don't last forever. The little prince is saddened by
this because he did not know that his flower could die.  

Merchant - the merchant sells pills that would replace water. If you're thirsty,
then all you have to do is take a pill and you will not need to drink water. He says
by doing this, you will save 53 minutes every year from drinking water. The little
prince thinks this is ridiculous and he thinks if he had 53 minutes, he would walk
to a fresh water fountain.

Train person - this person sends trains off in different directions. He says that
children are lucky because they know what they are looking for, unlike adults,
who travel from place to place looking for things.

The book starts with the narrator, who is an airplane pilot, recollecting his
favorite picture when he was a six-year-old boy. The picture was of a boa
constrictor eating a large animal. He recalls how a boa constrictor cannot move
after swallowing its prey, and must hibernate for the six months until its food has
been digested. Fascinated by this story, he had drawn his first drawing, Drawing
Number One, which showed a boa constrictor devouring an elephant. When he
showed his picture to the elders he was surprised to see that they couldn't make
out what it was and were not frightened of it either as he had hoped they would
be. They couldn't understand why anyone would be frightened of a hat, which is
what they interpreted the drawing to be. But his picture was not a hat but
rather, a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.
 
He then drew the inside of the boa constrictor in another picture,
Drawing Number Two, where the elephant could be seen clearly. But the grown-
ups advised the narrator to give up drawing and pursue geography, arithmetic
andgrammar. Disheartened by his failure to become a painter, he realizes
how difficult it is for children to always be explaining something to grown-ups. So
the narrator learned to be a pilot, noting that the geography he learned did
prove to be useful but that his opinion of adults did not improve: whenever one
would see Drawing Number One, they would think it was a hat. Consequently, he
could no longer talk about boa constrictors or stars with anybody.

This continued until six years earlier when his plane had crashed in the Sahara
desert. He was thousand miles from home and faced with a life or death
situation. The narrator was shocked to hear an odd little voice asking him to
draw a sheep. He turns to see the little prince, who is examining the narrator,
looking nothing like a child lost in the middle of the desert. The narrator doesn't
know how to draw a sheep so he shows Drawing Number One to the little prince
instead. The little prince examines the drawing and says that he doesn't want a
picture of an elephant inside a boa constrictor. Finally after a couple of attempts
he is able to draw a box with a sheep inside it, and the little prince is very happy.

The narrator and the little prince become friends and he tries to find out where
the little prince comes from, but the little prince is more
concerned with the pilot's plane, laughing at its broken parts. The little prince
is comforted by the fact that the narrator also comes from the sky, asking
him what planet he comes from. The pilot is surprised at this question and
in turn tries to find out what planet the little prince comes from. The little prince
ignores the question and admires the pilot's drawing of the sheep in a box. The
pilot offers to draw a string to tie to the sheep so he won't get lost, but the little
prince laughs. The sheep will not get lost he says, because on the planet where
he lives everything is very small.

The narrator is surprised to discover that the planet the little prince comes from
is very small and only the size of a house. In fact, it is an Asteroid called B-612,
which is only visible through a telescope. The narrator claims that a Turkish
astronomer had sighted the little prince's asteroid in 1909, but that no one
would seriously believe anybody wearingtraditional Turkish clothes. After a
Turkish dictator ordered all his subjects to change to European clothing, the
astronomer successfully presented his report again in 1920.

The narrator insists that these details are not a concession to his grown-
up readers. He says that grown-ups can only understand facts and
figures, without ever wondering about other essential qualities, such as beauty
and love. Instead they only care about how old someone is or how much a
house costs in order to decide what is beautiful. For example, he notes that
a child would accept the little prince's existence based solely on the fact that he
wanted a sheep, while an adult would care only that the little prince came from
Asteroid B-612.

The narrator is worried that now he has grown too old to properly
remember how the little prince had looked. Instead of relying on figures like an
adult, he has decided to draw pictures of him. Even though he can no longer see
sheep through the walls of boxes, he hopes that he can bring the little prince
back to life.
As the days pass in the desert, the pilot learns more about the little prince's
planet. He finds out that the little prince wants the sheep to eat the baobabs
that grow on his planet. Baobabs are large tree-like weeds whose roots can
secretly grow underground and split a planet into pieces. They can become so
big that even a herd of elephants would not be able to eat all of them.

The little prince exclaims that one must be very careful to take care of one's
planet just as they would take care of themselves. It is hard to distinguish
between good and bad seeds, so it is very important to watch out for baobabs.
Lazy men often let small bushes grow, not realizing that they are baobabs until it
is too late. The narrator feels that this is such an important lesson to be learned
that he takes extra special care with a drawing of baobabs destroying a small
planet.
 
On the fourth day, the pilot learns just how small the little prince's planet really
is. The little prince wants to see a sunset, and is surprised to learn that on Earth
he must wait till evening to see one. The narrator notes that on a large planet
like the Earth, when it is noon in America, the sun is setting in France, while on a
small asteroid, someone can see the end of the day whenever they like. He can
hardly believe that the little prince once saw forty-four sunsets in one day.

On the fifth day, the pilot had discovered the secret of the little prince's life.
Without any reason in particular, the little prince wonders if his new sheep will
eat both bushes and flowers. The pilot tells him that sheep eat anything, but the
little prince does not believe him: he says that flowers with thorns can protect
themselves. The two get into a heated argument and the pilot asks not to be
disturbed from rebuilding his plane, while the little prince reprimands him for
behaving like an adult. The little prince exclaims that if someone knows of a rare
flower that exists only on his planet out of the millions and millions of others
then it is perfectly rational to wonder if a sheep will eat it. Ashamed of his
attitude, the pilot tries to comfort the little prince by offering to draw a muzzle
for the sheep so that he may not eat the flower.
The flower that the little prince mentions turns out to have been one of the most
important parts of his life. One day, a seed mysteriously blew onto his planet and
produced a flower different from any other the little prince had ever seen. The
flower turns out to be a rose, a beautiful but vain creature who constantly
demands that the little prince take care of her. He loves her very much and is
thus happy to water her, protect her with a screen by day, and cover her with a
glass globe by night. But the little prince soon doubts that the rose loves him,
believing that her words are not sincere.

He grows so unhappy that he decides to leave, later lamenting his failure to

judge by deeds and not words. It is only after he leaves that he understands how
she expressed affection, realizing that he was too young to know how to
love her.

The narrator is of the opinion that that the little prince used a flock of migrating
birds to escape from his planet. On the day of his departure he put everything in
order, cleaned out all of his three volcanoes, including even the extinct one. The
rose ignores his good-byes at first but soon asks for forgiveness, admitting that
she loves him. But she is too proud to ask the little prince to stay with her and
claims that she will get along fine without him. She urges him to leave and turns
away so that he will not see her cry.

The little prince reaches the earth by traveling with a flock of migrating birds.
Some time later he comes across a king living on a neighboring asteroid. The king
starts to order the little prince around and even calls him his subject. The little
prince is puzzled as to why the king feels that he is in control of everything in the
universe. He marvels at the king's supposed power to order sunsets, but soon
realizes that the king is actually a lonely creature who is only fooling himself
about his powers. He pleads with the little prince not to leave but the little
prince does so because he is only used to taking orders from himself and not
from others. Then he comes across two men, one who is very conceited and the
other who is drunk. The conceited man orders the little prince to first salute him
and then to admire him. The little prince is amused at first, but doesn't
quite understand what the word admire means. The conceited man wants the
little prince to continually praise him all the time but the prince gets bored
very soon and leaves.

Next he meets a drunk who tells the little prince that he drinks so that he might
forget.
The little prince is confused by this sort of behavior and inquires what it is that
the drunk is trying to forget. The drunk replies that he is trying to forget the fact
that he is ashamed of drinking. The little prince carries on with his journey but is
confused by what the drunk has told him.
 
Then, on yet another fourth planet the little prince meets a businessman, who is
very engrossed in all his numerical calculations and hardly even notices that the
little prince is around. He informs the little prince that he is very busy in counting
all the stars in the sky as this is a matter of great consequence to him. The little
prince is even more confused when the businessman claims that he owns all the
stars. He does not see how it is possible to own an object when one is of no use
to that object. He remarks that by taking care of his rose and his three volcanoes,
his ownership of them was at least useful. From this he realizes that things which
are of consequence to him are different from the things which the
businessman thinks are of great importance. With this newly acquired
knowledge, he 
carries on with his journey.

Next the little prince meets a lamplighter and is even more confused because he
lights a lamp and then puts it out the very next minute. He feels sorry
for someone doing such an absurd job, but realizes that, unlike the
previous adults he has met, the lamplighter is doing something useful. Hoping to 
become his friend he tries to help the lamplighter, but the planet is too small to
accommodate two people. He is quite sad to leave a planet, which has a 1440
sunsets.
On the sixth planet he meets a geographer. The little prince is thrilled to at last
meet someone who has a real profession, and even more so when
the geographer asks him to describe his planet. The little prince tells him about
his dear rose but the geographer refuses to record this saying that he cannot
record things which don't last forever. The little prince is surprised to learn that
his rose will not last forever and feels regretful about leaving her.

Even though he is still thinking about his flower he soon takes courage as the
geographer advises him to visit the planet Earth.

Upon arriving on Earth, the little prince is surprised to find such a large planet.
The narrator marks that there are a great number of kings, geographers,
businessmen, and a whole army of international lamplighters who are required
to work around the clock on this planet. However, he does admit that humanity
is neither as important nor as large as it shows itself to be. The little prince
wonders why he still hasn't met any humans though the planet is so big. He
meets a snake, who tells him that he is in the Sahara Desert and there are hardly
any humans there. He finds that the snake is a curious creature who is not as
dangerous as he appears.

Before parting, the snake promises that he will help the little prince return to his
planet if he grows too homesick.

The little prince continues searching for human beings, but only encounters a
few roses and desolation. The roses tell him that only seven humans exist on the
planet and are very difficult to find as they have no roots. The prince climbs to
the top of a mountain and calls out to someone to be his friend but all he hears
is the echo of his own question. But he believes that his echo is a reply from
another human and concludes that human beings are most unimaginative since
they can only repeat what they are asked. He begins to think about his rose upon
discovering a large rose garden. When he realizes that his flower was not unique,
but just a common rose, he begins to cry.

Next he meets a fox, who asks the little prince to tame him. The prince does not
understand what the word tame means. The fox says the word tame means
to establish ties with each other. He explains that by themselves, neither of them
are very important, but if the little prince tames the fox, they shall both need
each other. The little prince is hesitant in the beginning, saying that he does not
have much time since he is looking for friends. But the fox says that the only way
he will he will find a friend is if he tames someone saying that the reason men
don't have friends is because they try to buy them in shops.

Since the little prince still understands very little in the ways of the world, the
fox must teach him how to properly tame a fox.
 
Soon it is time for the little prince to leave and he is sad to see the fox cry. When
the fox says that he is happy because the little prince is now unique in all the
world to him, the little prince then realizes that even though his flower is a
common rose, it is his rose and thus unique in all the world. Before parting, the
fox tells him a secret. He says only the heart can see clearly what seems invisible
to the eye. He also tells him that it is because of the time he has spent on the
rose that it has become so important to him. He warns the little prince that one
is responsible for what they have tamed.

The prince continues his journey and he meets a railway switchman and
a merchant, each of who try to advise the prince to save time by taking the train
and buying a pill that quenches thirst.

He remembers the fox's advice and declines their respective offers, declaring

that wasted time is the most important kind of time.

The narrative returns to eight days after the pilot's accident in the desert. He is
worried that he will die of thirst and refuses to find comfort in the little prince's
story about the fox. He continues to tell the pilot that it is good to have a friend,
even if one is about to die of thirst, and soon admits that he is thirsty as well. He
suggests that they search for a well and despite the futility of such an endeavor,
the pilot agrees. They begin to look for beauty within the desert: not what they
can actually see, but what they can feel. Deeply moved, the pilot carries the little
prince, realizing the most important part of his fragile little body is the
part, which is invisible.
At daybreak they finally find a well. While they remove water from the well they
agree that men have lost sight of what is important in life. A little water can also
be appreciated like a Christmas present, just as a single rose out of a whole
garden is all that is really needed. This conversation makes the little prince
homesick and he tells the narrator that it is the anniversary of his descent to the
Earth and that he has returned to the place he landed. The pilot is afraid for the

little prince but can't find out what the little prince plans to do next.

On returning the next day, the pilot returns to find the little prince talking to the
same poisonous snake which he had met on his first day on Earth. The little
prince is asking the snake to bite him later that night so that he can finally return
home. The pilot has finished repairing his plane but is very sad to see the
little prince looking so upset. He begs him to stay on but the little
prince comforts him with a present. He tells the pilot that whenever he looks up
at the stars he will hear the little prince's laughter, like five hundred million bells.
Just as the little prince's rose is unique for him, he tells the pilot that the stars
will also now be unique to him. He says that time heals all wounds and that soon
he will look up to the stars and laugh with the little prince. The pilot insists on
accompanying him to his meeting with the snake. The little prince insists that
there is no reason to be sad because his body is nothing but an empty shell and
that only the invisible part of his body is what is important. He also reminds the
pilot that he feels responsible for his rose. The snake bites him quickly and the
little prince falls softly in the sand.

Although six years have passed, the pilot still misses his friend. He does hear the
bells at night but worries that the sheep he drew might somehow find a way to
eat the rose.

The narrator remarks that it is a shame that adults cannot realize that this
question of the sheep eating the rose is a matter of great importance. The little
prince's body actually did disappear, so the narrator tells the reader to watch out
for a particular landscape in the Sahara Desert. If they should meet a little man
with golden hair who laughs, the narrator wants them to send him word that the
little prince has finally returned.