Regan Flieg: The Little Prince and Wonder

My all-time favorite book is the children’s novel The Little Prince, the tale of a young boy who travels the universe learning about life, love, and responsibility.  This tiny book - only 85 pages in the edition cited here (although in my collection of nine copies of this book, none of them have exactly the same page count) - is full of complexity, but the theme I want to focus on in this blog post is that of wonder.  One of the many things I love about this book is its emphasis on how easy it is to lose our sense of wonder as we grow up, and I think this ties in super well with Chesterton’s “Ethics of Elfland.”  The Little Prince resonates with Chesterton’s statement that “we have all forgotten what we really are” and that “all that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that one awful instant we remember that we forget” (97).  Saint-Eupéry provides us with an answer for the identity we’ve all forgotten: even from his book’s dedication, he reminds us, “All grown-ups were children first” (v).

For any unfamiliar with this story, the little prince’s story is told by a grown-up pilot who encounters him along his journey and not by the prince himself or by any distant narrator.  What’s so important about this choice is that it helps demonstrate the pilot’s rediscovery of his childhood sense of wonder and imagination.  The faulty overemphasis Chesterton depicts his elders with in the very beginning of “The Ethics of Elfland” harmonizes with the pilot’s narration, which tells us repeatedly of grown-ups’ faulty priorities, including an undeserved trust in the quantifiable.  Just as the pilot tells readers that grown-ups discouraged his sense of imagination as a child (Saint-Eupéry 2), Chesterton warns that as adults, we often lose our sense of wonder in the everyday miracles that we see repeated so often (107-9).  One of the beautiful capacities of myth is that it reminds us how little we know and guides us back to wonder, and in doing this, The Little Prince deserves to be counted among the myths.


Chesterton, Gilbert K. “The Ethics of Elfland.”  Orthodoxy, John Lane Company, 1908, pp. 81-118.

Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de. The Little Prince, translated by Richard Howard, Mariner Books, 2000.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jack Snowdon: Danger in the Lake

I will readily admit that I may have procrastinated a bit much in regards to working on my blog posts, waiting for that perfect moment of inspiration to strike, when I should have been working to flesh out my own ideas rather than just letting them come to me. However, with that concession in mind, I am glad to say that something exactly like I had hoped for happened while reading the discussion between Ransom and Hyoi in Chapter 12 of Out of the Silent Planet . The discussion revolves largely around the concept and experience of love and appreciation among the hrossa, and sees Ransom struggling to understand how they can content themselves with valuing the memories rather than replicating the actions, as well as questioning why that can be the way it is with such dangers as the hnakra dwelling in the local waters. Though he does struggle to comprehend them, Hyoi has an answer every step of the way, culminating with the line, "...And I say also this, I do not think the forest woul...
Read more

Katelyn Joyce- The Magician's Nephew & Biblical Parallels

  When reading The Magician's Nephew, I am not sure why I was so shocked at all of the connections that can be made back to scripture. As this is a common occurrence in Lewis’ writing, it should not surprise and excite me as much as it does when I first grasp what is being said and I begin to make those connections. I think it will always catch me off guard and amaze me how intertwined the two storylines can be without them being identical. This is especially true in The Magician’s Nephew. You can see a clear parallel between this book and the book of Genesis in the Bible. Digory is sent to an area of Narnia closed off from the rest and surrounded by a golden gate to retrieve a fruit. He is tempted to use the powers of this fruit to his benefit, but he does the right thing and presents it to Aslan as requested of him. This is similar to the trees and the fruit in the Garden of Eden. There lies a tree with the power to give understanding to good and evil. Eve is tempted and takes th...
Read more

Samuel Swenson-Reinhold: Naming & Knowing

 Once again, I'm going to be referencing my favorite book of all time, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. One of the key elements of Kvothe's character is his desire to learn the 'name' of things - when you learn the name of something, you have control over it. However, learning the name of the wind, for example, is something incredibly difficult. You have to understand the nature of the wind, you have to know it. So knowing the word "wind" doesn't mean you have power over it. It requires this almost Heideggerian conception of listening and knowing the world and nature.  Kvothe grows in his understanding of the world and at one point learns the name of lightning and the wind, allowing him to wield immense power. This particular aspect of Rothfuss' fantasy had me thinking about our conversations in class about how we 'name' and label things in the prosaic. We think we "know" something, but really we are making an observation. It...
Read more