Childhood Verses Adulthood Themes in The Little Prince
"Through the journey of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry contrasts childhood innocence with jaded adulthood." The Little Prince, passionately written, tells of a male adult whose plane breaks down in the Sahara Dessert when he stumbles upon a child whom he calls the Little Prince. The Little Prince teaches the man exactly what it means to “… [see] clearly only with the heart.” (63) De Saint-Exupéry’s brilliance in authoring this novella, demonstrates a replica of themes in people’s lives today. De Saint-Exupéry vindicates that the mind of a child is innocent, and children see so purely, but adult’s minds are jaded with numbers and more difficult life experiences which can be …show more content…
De Saint-Exupéry shows the truth of this statement even in the first chapter of his novella. The reader is already shown the struggle of adult’s minds in grasping the imaginative mind of a child. “Then I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so the grown-ups could understand. They always need explanations.” (2) The narrator is speaking about when he was a child and how he could never understand why adults could not grasp something so simple as a boa constrictor with an elephant in its’ stomach. Children have this magnificent love of fantasy verses reality while adults prefer more of a realist point of view. Why do children love fantasy though? Alison Gopnik explains why in an article she entitled The Real Reason Children Love Fantasy. “It’s not so much that children embraced fantasy as that they were unable to recognize reality.” Unlike adults, children do not have the stress that comes with everyday life. Children can not understand time limits or money or even worry. It is just not in their nature. Instead, children would prefer drawing imaginative pictures or having an imaginary …show more content…
One would always think of a child learning from an adult and an adult teaching a child, but De Saint-Exupéry contradicts this statement. “Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again.” (2) This quote is quite humorous. Children go to school to obtain knowledge from their teachers, but De Saint-Exupéry is saying here in this quote that it is the other way around that children have to explain over and over again to adults what the meaning behind things are. Jon from blogspot.com says this:
“We always say ‘teach children to imagine.’ So, as we grow older, our imagination skills that our parents and teachers teach us should be SO GOOD! On the contrary, dear friends. As children mature into teens and adults, slowly, but surely, they realize that the world is limited (I know we like to think of the world as infinite, but really, that’s just metaphorical language and a playful motivational though).”
This excerpt from Mr. Jon is an extremely true statement. A child is taught to imagine and be creative, but as soon as he hits an age of adulthood; he must forget these things of imagination, and begin to think things of a higher
"Through the journey of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry contrasts childhood innocence with jaded adulthood." The Little Prince, passionately written, tells of a male adult whose plane breaks down in the Sahara Dessert when he stumbles upon a child whom he calls the Little Prince. The Little Prince teaches the man exactly what it means to “… [see] clearly only with the heart.” (63) De Saint-Exupéry’s brilliance in authoring this novella, demonstrates a replica of themes in people’s lives today. De Saint-Exupéry vindicates that the mind of a child is innocent, and children see so purely, but adult’s minds are jaded with numbers and more difficult life experiences which can be …show more content…
De Saint-Exupéry shows the truth of this statement even in the first chapter of his novella. The reader is already shown the struggle of adult’s minds in grasping the imaginative mind of a child. “Then I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so the grown-ups could understand. They always need explanations.” (2) The narrator is speaking about when he was a child and how he could never understand why adults could not grasp something so simple as a boa constrictor with an elephant in its’ stomach. Children have this magnificent love of fantasy verses reality while adults prefer more of a realist point of view. Why do children love fantasy though? Alison Gopnik explains why in an article she entitled The Real Reason Children Love Fantasy. “It’s not so much that children embraced fantasy as that they were unable to recognize reality.” Unlike adults, children do not have the stress that comes with everyday life. Children can not understand time limits or money or even worry. It is just not in their nature. Instead, children would prefer drawing imaginative pictures or having an imaginary …show more content…
One would always think of a child learning from an adult and an adult teaching a child, but De Saint-Exupéry contradicts this statement. “Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again.” (2) This quote is quite humorous. Children go to school to obtain knowledge from their teachers, but De Saint-Exupéry is saying here in this quote that it is the other way around that children have to explain over and over again to adults what the meaning behind things are. Jon from blogspot.com says this:
“We always say ‘teach children to imagine.’ So, as we grow older, our imagination skills that our parents and teachers teach us should be SO GOOD! On the contrary, dear friends. As children mature into teens and adults, slowly, but surely, they realize that the world is limited (I know we like to think of the world as infinite, but really, that’s just metaphorical language and a playful motivational though).”
This excerpt from Mr. Jon is an extremely true statement. A child is taught to imagine and be creative, but as soon as he hits an age of adulthood; he must forget these things of imagination, and begin to think things of a higher