-<The Little Prince>-From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
--{{{(Story}}}-------
Interleaved in the first nine chapters the narration's point of view changes from third person to first person. In the first eight days of the narrator being stranded in the desert, the Prince has been telling these stories to the narrator.
The Prince asks the narrator to draw a sheep. Not knowing how to draw a sheep, the narrator draws what he knows, a boa with an elephant in its stomach, a drawing which previous viewers mistook for a hat. "No! No!", exclaims the Prince. "I don't want a boa with an elephant inside! I want a sheep...".
He tries a few sheep drawings, which the Prince rejects. Finally he draws a box, which he explains has the sheep inside.
The Prince, who can see the sheep inside the box just as well as he can see the elephant in the boa, says "That's perfect".
The home asteroid of the Little Prince is introduced.
He inhabits a house-sized planet, B612, which has three volcanoes (two active, and one dormant) and a rose. He spends his days caring for his asteroid, pulling out the baobab trees that are constantly trying to take root there.
The trees will make his little planet turn to dust if they are not pulled out. The prince falls in love with the rose, but when he sees that she does not feel the same way he leaves to see what the rest of the universe is like, and visits six other asteroids (numbered from 325 to 330) each of which is inhabited by an adult who is foolish in his own way:
☞The King who can "control" the stars by ordering them to do what they would anyway. He then relates this to human subjects; it is the citizen's duty to obey, but only if the king's demands are reasonable. He orders the Prince to leave as his ambassador.
☞The Conceited Man who wants to be admired by everyone, but lives alone on his planet. He cannot hear anything that is not a compliment.
☞The Drunkard/Tippler who drinks to forget that he is ashamed of drinking.
☞The Businessman who is constantly busy counting the stars he thinks he owns. He wishes to use them to buy more stars. The Prince then goes on to define property. The Prince owns the flower and volcanoes on his planet because he cares for them and they care for him. Because one cannot maintain the stars, he argues, the Businessman cannot own them.
☞The Lamplighter who lives on an asteroid which rotates once a minute. Long ago, he was charged with the task of lighting the lamp at night and extinguishing it in the morning. At that point, the asteroid revolved at a reasonable rate, and he had time to rest. As time went on, the rotation sped up. Refusing to turn his back on his work, he now lights and extinguishes the lamp once a minute, getting no rest. The Prince actually empathizes with the Lamplighter, who is the only adult to care about something other than himself.
☞The Geographer who spends all of his time making maps, but never leaves his desk to explore (even his own planet), going on the pretext that it is the job of an explorer to do so. Even if an explorer were to visit the Geographer, the Geographer is very doubting of any explorer's character and would most likely disregard the report. He doesn't trust things he hasn't seen with his own eyes, yet will not leave his desk. Out of professional interest, the geographer asks the Prince to describe his asteroid. The Prince describes the volcanoes and the rose. "We don't record flowers", says the geographer, because they are only ephemeral. The Prince is shocked and hurt to learn that his flower will someday be gone. The geographer then recommends that he visit the Earth.
~Thank you very much!~
