“The Little Prince” is a children’s book which I think is better suitable for adults. This book follows a young prince who goes from one planet to another and lastly ends up on the Earth. Other planets he sees are very tiny & occupied by a single person. They are all adults who are either lonely or have some very different existential characteristics. Most of them seemed to be stuck in meaningless loops. To the very extent, they signify a lot of things we adults go through.
The narrator here is a pilot whose plane crashed in the Sahara desert, six years ago. He meets this little prince there. The first friend this prince makes on the Earth is a fox who indirectly tells him a lot about the humans on Earth. When he meets the pilot, they talk about a lot of things that give away so many life lessons. This little prince has a small little flower on his planet which is his only and dear companion, so the prince wants to go back to it. In the end, something happens that profoundly gives a lesson on grief, loneliness, bigger hopes and honestly on everything between life & death, but mostly hopes.
What I think is, this book is one of its kind. Never have I ever read such a book that is extremely ambiguous but still very profound. I feel this book has a deeper meaning, but I am not sure if I understood it completely. The lessons in this book aren’t straightforward, but if you get the gist, then just know that this book is full of wisdom. Certain lines in this book hit so hard that you keep thinking. I feel that many people try so hard to understand this book that they end up understanding it very little. This happened to me in the first half. But later, I let it come to me.
The element that I admire the most is a satire on adulthood. As an adult, I felt called out by the little prince. So much so, that I went ahead and started thinking about what is even the meaning of whatever I am doing with my life, LOL.
I enjoyed reading this thought-provoking read and definitely recommend it to everyone. I believe people from different age groups can derive different meanings from this book. A must-read.