The Little Prince

The Little Prince

1. What do the snake, the fox and the rose signify?

First, the rose signifies love. Although the rose was arrogant, seductive, demanding and pretentious, the little prince still took care of her. She was the reason why the prince left his planet and find for his queries. She was also the reason why the prince was very eager to return to his world. Although she used too much time and effort of the prince, still the young prince sacrificed all of these for her because of love. For him, the flower served as the perfume of his small planet. The rose was the reason of the young little prince gaining of knowledge and morals from the fox and all other characters. The prince experience love in an innocent way through investing his whole self to the rose. As what the fox said, love comes from investing in other people. And that’s what the prince did.

Second, the snake signifies death. The snake had a power of ‘sending someone to the land of which he came from’. He enforced the idea that human body is not essential and just a shell that is a hindrance to seeking the answers to the riddles of life. It’s too heavy and a burden to carry. With the snake’s help the prince experienced death and eventually led him to his small planet.

Third and last, the fox signifies true friendship. Through the fox, the prince understood the principles of life, love and friendship. The fox served as his adviser and also a friend to lean on during the time the little prince was mourning about the uniqueness of his flower among other roses in the garden. The fox established selflessness during prince’s departure.


2. Which scenes best exemplify the differences in attitudes of grown-ups and children?


Scenes: When the young pilot drew a boa constrictor and showed it to the grown-ups and the first time the prince and the pilot met
First, the young pilot shows to the grown-ups his drawing of boa constrictor and asks them if it scares them but they lookat it as a hat instead. Upon presenting his drawing Number Two, the viewer sees it is actually an elephant inside a boa constrictor. The adults don’t see it in the original drawing because grown-ups only accept what is sensually obvious. They do not perceive with their inner eye, their imagination. Nor do they seem to possess the desire, or make the effort, or the time, to enquire as to the reason, the essence, or the purpose of what is before them. On the other hand, children’s minds are imaginative because they find what is beyond our eyes. In the scene in which the pilot met the young prince, we can see that the little man distinguished the boa constrictor and the elephant drawing. He asked for a sheep’s drawing and checked every detail of it which shows how keen children are compare to grown-ups.

3. Explain the following quotations.

“You are responsible for those whom you have tamed.”

Taming means building an eternal bond that can be seen in love and friendship. In every relationship that we made, responsibilities are attached to it. Efforts, pain, patience and love were all needed for true bonds of friendship or love. This responsibility or what we call sacrifice is the language of love, as the little prince learns from his own experience with his flower. One has to be very patient, as friendship is not a condition acquired otherwise. The other has the burden of waiting, both eager and anxious, for that precious moment of nearness as it approaches. The people whom you’ve created a bond means that you are willing to render your life and sacrifice for him in order to find true friendship or love.

“It is with the heart that one sees clearly. What is essential is invisible to the naked eye.”

Those important details can be seen through thorough seeing. Seeing things clearly with the eyes is not possible. Their vision is hampered by the physical world that is as a stain ruining the essential nature of the things the eyes cast. The eyes see the outer form: color, texture, and shape but the brain actively searches from a stored catalogue of information, deduces what the image most satisfactorily resembles, and the process is complete. For the young pilot, his drawing of a boa constrictor may have presented only the outer image. But if you see it beyond our eyes or by truly understanding it, there is an underlying principle which is essential. This drawings didn’t evoke an emotional response from the grown-ups because it was seen with the eyes.
If one sees with the heart, then things becomes clear. When things are clear, it means they are transparent. The outer shell becomes irrelevant because one can see straight through it, as if it wasn’t even pertinent to its existence. The little prince speaks of this when he attempts to comfort the pilot in alluding to his approaching death. He tells him “There’s nothing sad about an old shell”. Instead the reality of his existence is as a star, shining throughout time and space. To see clearly the essential nature of something requires vision on the same dimension. The heart is the giver of life; therefore it is the perceiver of life.
4. What are your favorite lines, dialogues or scenes in the movie and why?
Actually I like the whole thing about the rose. It gives to many lessons since the flower signifies universal love. As we all know, the other flowers on the little prince’s planet are simple, possessing only a single row of petals so that they “got in no one’s way”. They would last but a day, leaving not a trace. But the rose possesses a dazzling beauty that gins the little prince admiration. It also had thorns to protect its vulnerability believing, naïve and as weak as they are, that their “thorns make them frightening”. The little prince learns this the hard way as he accepts the pain of her thorns through her torments of vanity, lies, contradictions, and pretensions. Realizing too late that her boastful words were born of vulnerability moves him to remark that he “ought to have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions”, for “Language is the source of misunderstandings”. The rose “perfumed my planet” with the essence of her being which is far stronger than words. For words are merely symbols and have no lasting value except what we allude to them.
The flower is important to the little prince inasmuch as he has watched it grow and labored, in love, to provide for and protect it. It is a “unique flower, one that exists nowhere in the world except on my planet”. Yet the little prince did come across five thousand such flowers in a single rose garden during his visit to earth. Initially deeming his rose to be ordinary, and focusing on the absolute quantity of roses before him, he despairs of his wealth and his position on his little planet. But the little prince learns from the fox, a special friend, since he has tamed him from among all the “hundred thousand other foxes”, that the ties created by patience and responsibility are unique and unbreakable. Hence, his rose is important; it is the only one of its kind “among all the millions and millions of stars”. He had tamed her, rendering them inseparable. He has tolerated her arrogance and complaints in his love for her, and thus providing the screen and the glass to protect her from the trials of drafts and the cold of night. This love transcends time and space so that, as he gazes up into the heavens he feels happy simply knowing she is there. It is as though the flower exists within him; his loyalty to the flower has engraved the “image of the rose…within him”. To learn of its demise would be equal to quenching the very existence of his soul. For, without the soul there is no life; and without that life, everything else ceases to exist.