外國名著英語讀書筆記 The Little Prince

　　Despite I‘ve not in my childhood yet, I still prefer reading fairy-tale stories. The tales, which accompany with me in my old days, often make me think of some precious experience and sensation which only belong to children. This summer I‘ve review this kind of tale, which was published in 1940. It‘s the world-famous fairy-tale by the French author, Antoine de St-Exupery, The Little Prince.

　　As many other fairy-tales, the outline of The Little Prince is not very complex. ―I‖, the narrator of the story, is a pilot whose plane has something wrong and lands in the Sahara. In this occasion, the pilot makes the acquaintance of the little prince, a little boy from another planet, the Asteroid B612. The little prince has escaped from his tiny planet, because he has some quarrel with a rose, which grows on his planet. In that case he left his own planet and took an exploration at some neighbor asteroids.

　　On his all-alone journey, the little prince meets different kinds of people, which includes a king, a conceited man, a tippler, a businessman, a lamplighter and a geographer. From these people he gets a conclusion that the grown-ups are very odd. Following the instruction of the geographer, he descends in the Sahara, on the earth.

　　Traveling on the earth, the little prince, who sees a garden of five-thousand roses, is overcome with astonishment and sadness, as he considers his rose is unique in the universe before. At that time a fox appears. The fox, who tell the little prince about the meaning of the word ―tame‖, becomes his new friend. At the time to say farewell, the fox makes him know that his rose is unique because she is his rose and tamed by him. From that the little prince begins to treasure friendship and be responsible to his rose.

　　At the anniversary day of his descent of the earth, rejecting the pilot‘s advice, he goes back to his own planet by bite of a snake. ―It‘s too far. I can not carry this body with me. It‘s too heavy.‖ he said. He tells his friend, the pilot, he must be responsible for his rose, so he has to go back. At the end the author doesn‘t tell us the ending directly. Maybe it‘s more significant for us to imagine, and for more, think over.

　　One of the important characters is the rose. Growing on the planet, she is very beautiful, but her coquetry and vanity suffer the little prince a lot. In spite of they love each other, he soon becomes unhappy. On the time of his departure, he just knows she certainly loves him. The character of the little prince actually represents the children, and their native thoughts and deeds. On the contrary, the inhabitants on the other planets, such as the king, the businessman and the conceited man, they also reflect the defects in the grown-up‘s world. The real theme of this fairy-tale with a little sadness, I guess, is the consequence of pure love and friendship in our lives, but not others ―matters of consequence‖ of the grown-ups.

　　Unbelievable, this little book moved me a lot. I seldom think about the true meaning of love and life before. Well, now I can say, with my short sixteen-year‘s life experience, it‘s like the stars in the sky that lit my heart. The little prince is not only an ordinary fairy-tale for children, but also for grown-ups, and our teenagers. Nevertheless, when I read this book, I feel a little sad – about ourselves, whom are losing more and more innocence.