THE REFLECTIONS OF SAINT-EXUPERY’S LIFE IN THE LITTLE PRINCE: A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters

By

DORCE JULIANCE MANDALA

Student Number: 064214034

ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2010 THE REFLECTIONS OF SAINT-EXUPERY’S LIFE IN THE LITTLE PRINCE: A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters

By

DORCE JULIANCE MANDALA

Student Number: 064214034

ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2010

i

Dream, for it is free. Live it, for it feels good.

v This undergraduate thesis is dedicated to

Me, as a respect to myself.

My Miraculous God.

My Parents.

My brothers and sisters, by blood and by love.

My Friends.

vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My huge thank would be for Jesus Christ, the only one that I can believe in, in any circumstance even when there is nothing I can hold on to. He has been such a faithful love and never ending guidance.

I also want to thank Mom and Dad, for the unwavering supports. Without them, I can never be who I am. They have always been a home I can always come back to.

My gratitude also goes to Leandre Cote, a French-Canadian friend of mine who is so much in love with The Little Prince that he inspired me to take the novel as the topic when I was in the early time of searching the idea for my pre- thesis lecture.

I shall never forget my advisor Drs. Hirmawan Wijanarka, M. Hum and my co advisor Dewi Widyastuti, S.Pd., M.Hum. for their supports and great efforts during my thesis writing and consultation. I am so thankful for having them for they have been very helpful.

I also want to express my gratitude for the English Letters Department and all the lecturers for the 4 years of study. The lectures and the experiences that

I got has enriched and broadened my knowledge that can help me to face the real life. My special gratitude would be for my academic class advisor, Anna Fitriati,

S.Pd., M.Hum. for has been so kind. I thank her for the understanding in dealing with a bothering student like me.

I will never forget to thank my great classmates who have shared many joys and laughter during our 4 years of being together, I would like to thank

vii Gabe, Keke, and Esther for being my reasons to be in class B, and to Yuniar,

Nana, San San, Lucy, Vina, Elok, Sella, Arum, Marcel, and all the class A mates who have accepted me in their class. The class has been my second home and our sisterhood has made a great futsal team ever.

The last but not least, I want to give a bunch of thanks to my friends who have been more like brothers and sisters for me. My gratitude goes to all my cell group brothers and sisters and all my sisters in Center Charity. I thank them for the brotherhood, the sisterhood, and the empowering words of God.

Dorce Juliance Mandala

viii TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE ...... i APPROVAL PAGE ...... ii ACCEPTANCE PAGE...... iii LEMBAR PERNYATAAN ...... iv MOTTO PAGE ...... v DEDICATION PAGE...... vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... vii TABLE OF CONTENTS...... ix ABSTRACT...... xi ABSTRAK ...... xii

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 A. Background of the Study...... 1 B. Problem Formulations...... 4 C. Objectives of the Study...... 4 D. Definition of Terms...... 4

CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL REVIEW ...... 6

A. Review of Related Studies ...... 6 B. Review of Related Theories...... 10 1. Theory of Character and Characterization ...... 10 2. The Relation between the Author and His Work...... 14 C. Biography of Antoine de Saint-Exupery...... 14 D. Theoretical Framework ...... 18

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY...... 19 A. Object of the Study...... 19 B. Approach of the Study ...... 20 C. Method of the Study...... 21

CHAPTER IV: ANALYSIS ...... 22 A. The Characterizations of the Aviator, the Little Prince, the Rose, and the Fox...... 22 1. The Aviator ...... 22 2. The Little Prince...... 26

ix 3. The Rose...... 33 4. The Fox ...... 35 B. The Reflections of Saint-Exupery’s Life Depicted by the Characters ...... 37 1. The Aviator as the Grown-Up Side of Saint-Exupery ...... 38 2. The Little Prince as the Child Side of Saint-Exupery ...... 46 3. The Rose as Saint-Exupery’s Wife, Consuelo ...... 57 4. The Fox as Saint-Exupery’s Best Friend, Leon Werth ...... 61

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION...... 65

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 68

Appendix 1: Summary of The Little Prince...... 70 Appendix 2: The List of Works by Antoine de Saint-Exupery...... 72 Appendix 3: Letters and Pictures ...... 73

x ABSTRACT

DORCE JULIANCE MANDALA (2010). The Reflections of Saint-Exupery’s Life in The Little Prince: A Biographical Study. Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University. This analysis discusses Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince, his masterpiece published in 1943, to find out how much the novel is related to the real life of the author. This topic is very interesting in some ways. First, although the main character of the little prince is a little boy, he is likely to reflect the author himself. As for the other characters, they also represent people in the author’s life. Second, some events occurred in the novel are factual events in the author’s life. In order to analyze the topic, two problems are proposed. The first one is to find the characteristics of some characters in the novel and the second one is to relate the characterizations and the characteristics to the life of Saint-Exupery. This analysis is a library research. For this purpose the data used are taken from the primary source and secondary sources. The primary source is the novel itself, The Little Prince, whereas the secondary sources are various sources related to the novel, such as articles, books, and also from the internet. From this analysis, the writer finds that the aviator is the representation of Saint-Exupery himself. Meanwhile, the little prince is the other self of him. He used the character of a little prince to remind him of his childhood memories and also to preserve the pure imaginative mind owned by children. The other characters that represent the author’s life are the rose whom widely believed as his wife, Consuelo, and the fox that is likely to represent one of the best friends of the author, Leon Werth, to whom the novel dedicated to. There are also several events in the story that reflect the life of the author. They are the plane crashed in the desert which is a personal experience of the author who was a pilot; the complex love between the little prince and the rose reflects the turbulent marriage of the author and his wife; the event when the little prince went to see a garden full of roses is actually reflecting the many affairs that the author had during his marriage. The journey from one planet to another that the little prince did is reflecting the nomadic life of the author. He moved a lot due to his job as a pilot and aviator. From the analysis, it is finally revealed that although The Little Prince tends to have fictitious characters, it cannot be denied that it is actually the reflections of the author’s life.

xi ABSTRAK

DORCE JULIANCE MANDALA (2010). The Reflections of Saint-Exupery’s Life in The Little Prince: A Biographical Study. Yogyakarta: Program Studi Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Sanata Dharma. Skripsi ini membahas novel The Little Prince yang merupakan sebuah mahakarya Saint-Exupery yang diterbitkan pada tahun 1943. Tujuannya adalah untuk mengetahui sejauh mana novel tersebut terkait dengan kehidupan sang pengarang. Pembahasan ini sangatlah menarik karena meskipun tokoh utama dari novel tersebut adalah seorang anak kecil, pencitraan dirinya sangat mirip dengan pengarang. Demikian pula dengan tokoh-tokoh lainnya. Selain itu, beberapa kejadian dalam novel merupakan kejadian sebenarnya yang terjadi dalam kehidupan pengarang. Ada 2 rumusan masalah yang digunakan untuk menganalisis topik ini. Pertama: mencari karakteristik beberapa tokoh dalam novel tersebut. Kedua: mengkaitkan karakterisasi dan karakteristik tokoh-tokoh di dalam novel dengan kehidupan sang pengarang. Skripsi ini menggunakan metode studi pustaka, dengan menggunakan sumber data primer, yaitu novel itu sendiri dan sumber data sekunder seperti artikel, buku, and sumber dari internet. Hasil dari analisa skripsi ini menunjukkan bahwa sang pilot adalah representasi dari pengarang sendiri. Sedangkan pangeran kecil adalah bagian dirinya yang lain. Pengarang menggunakan tokoh seorang pangeran kecil untuk mengenang masa kecilnya dan untuk menjaga perspektif anak-anak yang masih penuh dengan imajinasi. Tokoh lain, yaitu bunga mawar yang dipercaya luas sebagai istri pengarang, Consuelo. Rubah merupakan representasi dari sahabat pengarang yaitu Leon Werth. Pengarang bahkan mendedikasikan novel ini kepadanya. Kejadian-kejadian dalam novel yang merepresentasikan kehidupan pengarang adalah jatuhnya pesawat sang pilot di gurun yang pernah dialami oleh pengarang yang juga seorang pilot. Percintaan yang rumit antara pangeran kecil dan bunga mawar merepresentasikan pernikahan pengarang yang juga penuh gelombang. Kejadian pangeran kecil mengunjungi kebun mawar merepresentasikan perselingkuhan pengarang. Perjalanan pangeran kecil menunjukkan kehidupan pengarang yang selalu berpindah-pindah. Analisis ini menunjukkan betapa terkaitnya cerita dalam novel ini dengan hidup pengarangnya.

xii CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Novel is one of the works of literature from which we can find many values and philosophies. According to Van de Laar in his book An Approach to

English Literature (1963: 163), a novel is a work of art as it introduces us into a living world; in some respect resembling the world we live in, but with an individuality of its own.

In a novel, a story of life will be found. It tells about someone, his or her life and the conflict he or she has to face. By reading a novel, a scene of someone’s life is depicted through words. Novel, as one of the works of literature, undoubtedly has a special relationship with its author. Through a novel, an author expresses his or her feelings, what he or she sees and thinks about. Even their opinion about their surroundings and the society, their own social background and their ideology can be written down into their works.

Many authors’ works are proven to be their autobiographies although they are written in fictitious characters, events, and also settings. It is indeed, the society of the author and his or her life experiences that contribute the idea to the writing process of a novel. Aristotle stated that the literature is an imitation of life, literature is not merely a copy of the world; there is a creative process (Kenney,

How to Analyze Fiction, 1966: 3). This shows that an author’s work cannot be separated from what has happened in his or her life.

1 2

An author uses his writing as a medium to express ideas, it is for sure. But we cannot take for granted that a work of literature is a complete life experience of its author. Literature is not merely a self-expression of the author but there is also renewal in the novel by the slight different arrangement of the characters and also the setting and the plot with the actual real elements in the author’s life.

Instead of analyzing many other literature books that are dominated by

American and English works, the writer chooses to have a novel by Antoine de

Saint-Exupery, who was a French author, to study about. Taking The Little

Prince, one of Saint-Exupery’s novels written, to analyze is indeed very challenging. The Little Prince is a masterpiece. This novel is often misinterpreted as a children fable due to the main character in the novel that is a little prince and his talking to a fox, roses, and many other fictional characters.

The Little Prince is actually Saint-Exupery’s real life story. He packed it very neatly in the novel. This novel seems to be different from other novel that he wrote before that were inspired from his life experiences as an aviator and his nomadic life-he moved for several times from a country to another. The Little

Prince seems to be a children book, but indeed it keeps so many untold stories about his life and his marriage. Later, a novel published years after his wife,

Consuelo died, which is actually the diary of her, entitled The Tale of the Rose, strengthens that the little prince in the novel is actually the reflection of Saint-

Exupery himself. The voyage of the little prince from one planet to another is actually Saint-Exupery’s voyage living in several countries during his life. And 3

the rose, which the little prince left in his tiny little planet so called asteroid b-612, is actually Consuelo, his wife.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a French aviator who loved to write. His loving to the aviation world was not less than his love to writing. In fact, almost all of his writings are inspired from his experiences as a pilot. In the whole of

Saint-Exupery's literary production, we cannot imagine a book like this. At first glance it seems as an unusual book which bears no relation at all to the preceding books. It takes the shape of a poetical short story in which the animals speak. For some, it was quite unthinkable that a man of action and a hero at the same time, could, all of a sudden, write books for children. For others it was something incomprehensible, something, even lacking of seriousness, to be rejected if not condemned. So, when The Little Prince was published, public gave it a cold welcome. Nevertheless The Little Prince is the book which shows best who

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was, a book which contains all his philosophies.

This analysis is going to discuss how much the novel is related to the real life of the author. This topic is very interesting in some ways. First, the novel was published just one year before the death of the author. This added the prominence to the novel because the author’s mysterious death remained unsolved until now.

Second, the other works of the author are also autobiographical, but this novel is very special due to its child-like target readers. At a glance, the novel seems to have been written for children, but in fact, it was also written for grown-ups. 4

B. Problem Formulations

The problems are formulated as follows.

1. How are the characters of the aviator, the little prince, the rose, and the fox

described?

2. How do the characterizations and the characteristics of the aviator, the little

prince, the rose, and the fox reflect the author’s life?

C. Objectives of the Study

The objectives of the study are to first analyze the characters in this novel that the writer believes to be the depictions of real persons in the author’s life.

Then, after having known the characterizations and characteristics, the writer will try to relate them to the life of the author.

D. Definition of Terms

The definition of the terms used in this study is needed in order to avoid the misconception and misleading of the title. There are two terms that need to be clarified, they are: reflection and biographical study.

1. Reflection

Abrams in A Glossary of Literary Terms stated that reflection is the imitation of reality. To imitate reality means to represent human actions through a new “medium” or material. For many Marxist critics, they preferred to hold a view of literature as an imitation or reflection of reality (Abrams, 1993: 89). 5

2. Biographical Study

Dryden defined biography as the history of particular men’s lives. It connotes a relatively full account of a person’s life, involving the attempt to set forth characters, temperament, and milieu, as well as the facts of the subject’s activities and experiences (Abrams, 1993: 14). From here we can conclude that biographical study is a study or analysis which relies most on the information about a person’s life experiences. CHAPTER II

THEORETICAL REVIEW

A. Review of Related Studies

In this chapter the writer will try to present some reviews, articles, and studies done to analyze The Little Prince. These sources will help the writer to analyze the problems that have been formulated. From these sources also we get to know that this novel is worth reading and analyzed.

The Little Prince was written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery sometime between 1941 to 1942, just 2 years before he was missing when piloting his plane, and was published a year later. It was written while he lived in the United States, while renting The Bevin House in Asharoken, New York, in Long Island.

(http://www.answers.com/topic/the-little-prince). Saint-Exupery was a France’s legendary pilot and aviator. An article entitled The Last Flight of the Little Prince in Reader’s Digest, states that no one found his missing plane after almost sixty years. The body is still missing. Monday, July 31, 1944, he took off from the

Corsican airfield of Poretta for a mapping mission over eastern France near the

Swiss border, in a P-38 F-5B of the advanced J series. He never returned

(Chelminski, April 2005: 50).

In The Little Prince, the character of the aviator and the little prince resemble Saint-Exupery. For example, one of the characteristics of the aviator was that he was a loner; this is shown in his narration about him that no grown-up was

6 7

able to understand him. Saint-Exupery was a loner too.Although he lived among many friends of him whom some of them were prominent, he still felt lonely.

He would turn his back on anyone who showed the poor taste to address him as “My dear Count.” This behavior, of course, put him at a distance from another world, one of which his name and his relations if not his fortune – he had none – qualified him (Schiff, 2006: 8).

Born as an aristocrat, St.-Ex (his familiar name) made his own way in several worlds. In a book review written by Geoffrey Hutton on a biography book of Saint-Exupery, he said that Saint-Exupery was a multi-talented person. He was at the same time an artist and a man of action, a poet and a “knight of the air” at a time when France was making its bid as a pioneer in commercial aviation. At the same time he was a mathematician, an inventor, a philosopher, a great story-teller, and –to make himself one of the boys- an expert at poker and card tricks (Hutton,

The Age Newspaper: August 28, 1971). Another article found in the internet also said that Saint-Exupery was a multitalented person. Some of his friends even called him as a person with multi personalities.

"Saint-Ex?" General René Bouscat one day said to me, handing me a caricature "Pépino" had drawn of himself. "Mais il savait tout faire" — there was nothing he couldn't do. One of his closest friends, Dr. Georges Pélissier, wishing to write an appreciation of him after his death, could find nothing better than the pentagonic title, Les Cinq Visages de Saint- Exupéry — the five "faces" or facets of his personality being Saint-Ex the Flyer, Saint-Ex the Writer, Saint-Ex the Man, Saint-Ex the Inventor, and Saint-Ex the Magician. Even so, the spectrum could have been extended and he could just as justifiably have entitled his book, Les Sept Visages de Saint-Exupéry, throwing in Saint-Ex the Humorist and Saint-Ex the Thinker, for good measure. (http://www.trussel.com/saint-ex/cate.htm).

He wrote several books before he died in 1944, but the most influential one is The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince). Some of his works are Southern Mail (1929); 8

Night Flight (1931); Wind, Sand and Stars (1939); Flight to Arras (1942); Letter to a Hostage (1943); The Little Prince (1943); and The Wisdom of the Sands (1948).

The characteristic of his works is that most of them are the depiction of his real life.

He poured his experiences of his life into his writing, and that make his writing more alive and real.

The novel is classified to be one of children literature books. Indeed, beneath its child-like way of writing and point of view, the story is actually targeting the grown-ups. It is proved in the acknowledgement from the author in the beginning of the story.

“To Leon Werth I ask children to forgive me for dedicating this book to a grown-up.” (Saint-Exupery, 2000: iv)

Although Saint-Exupery was a French, he was also counted as one of the

American authors, because he lived in America, particularly in New York when he wrote his masterpiece, The Little Prince. He and his wife stayed in New York City from January 1941 to April 1943. Saint-Exupery through the adventures of the little prince tried to say that grown-ups only care about inconsequential matters such as golf and neckties, and are very dull when talking about the important matters. He also revealed what was important in life. The wise fox told the secret of life to him that “anything essential is invisible to the eye.” (p.63).

The Little Prince was published one year before his death. As one of the pioneers of aviation, he had completed the dangerous missions over the

Mediterranean, over the Sahara, and had many accidents over the middle of the desert. His tendency to lead a life of the mind while he was at the controls led to his 9

notorious tendency to forget small details like putting his wheels down or checking his gauges (Hutton, The Age Newspaper: August 28, 1971). Several times it nearly killed him. During his mission, he deeply thought about solitude, friendship, the meaning of life, the human condition, and the liberty.

Saint-Exupery’s a one of a kind. He is a Frenchman who is not only well- known in France where he was born in, but to America, and even to the entire world. His novel The Little Prince has been translated into more than 150 languages with more than 2 versions of translation for several languages. The

Little Prince has flown Saint-Exupery to any country he never been to.

As a man, he had his childhood memories remained in him. Whereas as a husband, he hurt his wife with his affairs for many times, as written by his wife,

Consuelo de Saint-Exupery, in her memoir book titled The Tale of the Rose. There were several times in their marriage that they had domestic problems. Consuelo was very irritated by him. But still, the prominence of The Little Prince is irresistible.

“Your mention of love are nothing more than an essay on love, a fairy tale, a dream of love, i won’t be angry. You’re a great poet, a flying knight, a handsome fellow, strong and smart.” (2003: 39)

“And you?” I threw back at him. “What are you going to do? I have no reason to reproach you. You don’t love me..” (2003: 176)

The Little Prince is believed to be Saint-Exupery’s way to immortalize his love to his wife, Consuelo. No difference from Saint-Exupery and Consuelo’s tumultuous marriage, the little prince’s relationship with the rose was also turbulent. 10

In 1943 he published The Little Prince, immortalizing Consuelo as the Prince's beloved Rose, too proud and thorny to admit her pain at his departure. A year later, the aviator disappeared over the Atlantic forever. (Publishers Weekly. July 3, 2001).

This analysis will show how much the author and The Little Prince are inseparable. It is widely known that most of Saint-Exupery’s writings are based on his own life experiences, but The Little Prince seems to be different from his many other novels due to its fictitious characters and setting. Through an in-depth analysis, the writer will show that this novel is no different from Saint-Exupery’s other writings; it also reflects the author’s life.

B. Review of Related Theories

1. Theory of Character and Characterization

A way to understand a work of literature is through its characters. In a work, there can be only one or even a lot of characters that build the work. Abrams stated in his book A Glossary of Literary Terms that characters are the persons presented in a dramatic or narrative work, who are interpreted by the reader as being endowed with moral, dispositional, and emotional qualities that are expressed in what they say and by what they do (1993: 23).

In the book Literature for Composition: Essays, Fiction, Poetry, and Drama

(2005: 229), Barnet states that the characters are the significant elements in the work of literature. According to him, there are some important factors that must be considered in understanding the characters. 11

a. What the character says

What the character says in the story is important to give a clue of how the author describes him or her, for example whether he or she is a good or bad person, educated or uneducated person. b. What the character does

To see what character does is important to know whether he or she is an upper class or lower class, he or she is a good or bad person. c. What other characters say about the character

What other characters say about the character is needed to get additional information and clear description about his or her character in the story. d. What others do

The action of others may help to indicate what the character could do but he or she does not do. It is important to know his character such as lazy, wicked, careless person or not.

According to Baldick in his book Criticism and Literary Theory (1990: 34), characterization is the representation of a person in dramatic or narrative works.

This may include direct methods like the attribution of qualities in description or commentary, and direct (or dramatic) methods inviting readers to infer qualities from character’s action, speech, or appearance.

In Reading and Writing about Literature, Mary Rohberger and Samuel H.

Wood stated that the process of creating characters is called characterization. There are two principal ways in characterizing. He can use direct means to describe physical appearance. He can say, for example that Sally is 5 feet 4 inches, weight 12

110, and has blonde hair and blue eyes. Or he can describe her intellectual and moral attributes or explain the degree of her sensitivity. He can say she is bright girl who respects her parents and feels their disapproval strongly. Or he uses dramatic means and places her in situation to show what she is by the way she behaves of speaks (1971: 81).

Murphy in Understanding Unseen (1972: 161-173) stated that there are nine ways in which the author attempts to make his characters understandable and come alive for the readers. a. Personal Description

The author can describe a character’s physical appearance like the face, body, and clothes of the characters to have the specific appearance, so the reader can imagine it. b. Character as Seen by Another

The author can also describe a character through the eyes and opinion of others. c. Speech

The author can give us some clue to a person’s character in the book through what the person says. Whenever he is in conversation with another and whenever he gives his opinion, he is giving us some clues to his personality. d. Past Life

The author can also give the reader a clue to events that have helped to shape a person’s character through his past life. It can be done by direct comment 13

produced by the author, through the person’s thought, through his conversation or through the medium of another person. e. Conversation of Others

The author can give the readers some clues to a person’s character through the conversation to other people and the things they say about him. f. Reactions

The author can also give the reader a clue to a person’s character by letting them know how the person reacts to various situations and events. g. Direct Comment

The author can also describe or comment on a person’s personality. h. Thoughts

The author can give the readers direct knowledge or what a person’s thinking about. What in the person’s mind and what he feels reflect on his character. i. Mannerism

The author can describe a person’s way of behaving that a particular person has which may also tell us something about his character.

In this novel, there are two major characters. They are Saint-Exupery himself as the aviator and the little prince, and many more minor characters. In finding the answer to the problem formulations of the analysis, the characters that are emphasized and studied here are the major characters and some minor characters which are considered significant to the analysis. 14

2. The Relation between the Author and His Work

The author surely has a close relationship with his works. As the creator of literary works, he cannot be separated from his works for the work is the idea that comes from the life experience of him. Thus, the literary work reflects the author’s life. According to Rene Wellek and Austin Warren (1956: 75-78) although a work of literature is the reflection of the author’s life, it’s not merely a copy of the author’s life. It can be a place of medium to hide his weakness and so that in writing a literary the author sometimes depends on his mood.

The other writers also state the relation betwen the author and his work.

Rohrberger and Woods in their book Reading and Writing about Literature, say that there is an indirect relationship and similarity between the work and the author. An author’s work including characters perhaps is a kind of mask which is surely based on the author’s experience of life (1971: 8).

C. Biography of Antoine de Saint-Exupery

On June 29, Antoine Jean Baptiste Marie Roger de Saint-Exupery was born. He was born in Lyon, at Peyrat Street, now Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Street. He was the third child born to John Viscout de Saint-Exupery and Marie de

Fonscolombo (1875-1972), after Mary Magdalene (1897) and Simone (1898). His family was an old family of provincial nobility; one of his ancestors had fought with the Americans at Yorktown. His father was an insurance company executive, who died of a stroke in 1094. (http://www.lepetitprince.com/#/chronologie/

?lang=uk&t=1&id=5&inf=1900&sup=1933) 15

Antoine’s mother moved with her children to Le Mans in 1909. At the castle of Saint-Maurice-de-Remens, Saint-Exupery spent his childhood years surrounded by sisters, aunts, cousins, and nurses. He was educated at Jesuit schools in Montgre and Le Mans, and in Switzerland at a Catholic boarding

School (1915-1917). After failing his final examination at university preparatory school, he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to study architecture.

(http://www.lepetitprince.com/#/chronologie/?lang=uk&t=1&id=5&inf=1900&su p=1933)

The turning point of his life came in 1921 when started his military service in the second Regiment of Chasseurs, and was sent to Strasbourg for training as a pilot. He had flown, with a pilot, for the first time in 1912. On July 9, 1921, he made his first flight alone in a Sop with F-CTEE. The next year, he obtained his pilot’s license and was offered a transfer to the air force. However, when his fiancée’s family objected, he settled in Paris where he took an office job and started to write. The following years were unlucky. His engagement with Louise de Vilmorin broke off, and he had no success in his work and business – he had several jobs, including that of bookkeeper and automobile salesman. His first writing, L’Aviateur was published in 1926 in the literary magazine Le Navire d’argent. He found his true calling in flying the mail for the commercial airline company Aeropostale.

He flew the mail over North Africa for three years, escaping death several times. In 1928 he became the director of the remote Cap Juby airfield in Rio de

Oro, Sahara. His house was a wooden shack and he slept on a thin straw mattress. 16

"I have never loved my house more than when I lived in the desert," he recalled.

In this isolation he learned to love the desert, and used its harsh beauty as the background for The Little Prince and The Wisdom of the Sands (1948). During these years he wrote his first novel, Southern Mail (1929), which celebrated the courage of the early pilots, flying at the limits of safety, to speed on the mail and win a commercial advantage over rail and steamship rivals. Another story line in the work depicted the author's failed love affair with the novelist Louise de

Vilmorin.

Saint-Exupery married in 1931 Consuelo Gomez Carillo, a widow, whose other literary friends included Maurice Maeterlinck and Gabriele D'Annunzio.

"He wasn't like other people," she wrote later in Memoires de la rose, "but like a child or an angel who has fallen down from the sky." The marriage was stormy.

Consuelo was jealous for good reasons and felt neglected, when her husband did not spend much time at home. He also had affairs with other women.

After the air mail business in Argentina was closed down, Saint-Exupery started to fly post between Casablanca and Port-Etienne and then he served as a test pilot for Air France and other airline companies. He wrote for Paris-Soir and covered the May Day events in Moscow in 1936, and wrote a series of articles on the Spanish Civil War. Saint-Exupery lived a traveling, adventurous life: he persuaded Air-France to let him fly a Caudron Simoun (F-ANRY), and had an aviation accident in 1935 in North Africa. He walked in the desert for days before being saved by a caravan. In 1937, he bought another Caudron Simoun, and was severely injured in Guatemala in a plane crash. In 1943 Saint-Exupery published 17

his best-known work, The Little Prince (1943), a children's fable for adults, which has been translated into over 150 languages.

It has been claimed that The Little Prince is the best-selling book after the

Bible and Karl Marx's Das Kapital. Saint-Exupery devoted to book to his friend

Leon Werth. Its narrator is a pilot who has crash-landed in a desert. He meets a boy, who turns out to be a prince from another planet. The prince tells about his adventures on Earth and about his precious rose from his planet. He is disappointed when he discovers that roses are common on Earth. A desert fox convinces him that the prince should love his own rare rose and finding thus meaning to his life, the prince returns back home. The rare rose is usually interpreted as Consuelo.

On July 31, 1944 Saint-Exupery took off from an airstrip in Sardinia on a flight over southern France. His plane disappeared. Saint-Exupery had felt isolated and alone in his squadron, and was pessimistic about the future. On one mission he had trouble with his oxygen mask and nearly passed out. Saint-

Exupery left behind the unfinished manuscript of La Citadelle (Wisdom of the

Sands) and some notebooks, which were published posthumously. "Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity, which is to be what one is and no other." (from La Citadelle, 1948) The book reflects Saint-Exupery's increasing interest in politics, and his later ideals. The author's last flight inspired Hugo

Pratt's comics Saint-Exupery (1996). In 1998, a fisherman found Saint-Exupery's bracelet from the sea, 150 kilometers west from Marseilles. His and Consuelo

Gomez Castillo's name were recognized from it. (Chelminski, April 2005: 53) 18

D. Theoretical Framework

The aim of the study is to reveal that the novel The Little Prince is actually the author’s life experiences. If we read the previous works of the author, they are mostly his own experiences that he wrote in his typical philosophical style. The

Little Prince seems to be different from his other works due to its style which is more likely written to children with the talking plants and animals, but in fact this novel is also his life story.

In order to analyze the story, the writer uses two theories which are the theory of the character and characterization; while the approach used is the biographical approach. The writer also provides the biography of the author to help analyzing the study. Firstly, the writer has to identify the characters in the novel. Here, the theory of character and characterization are applied.

The next and the last job are to relate the characterizations and the characteristics to the life experiences of the author and here the writer will be taking the biographical approach. CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

A. Object of the Study

The type of work which the writer analyzes in this analysis is a novel entitled The Little Prince, which was written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a

French aviator who loved to write, in 1943. The book has been translated to more than 150 languages, from its origin language, French, which entitled Le Petit

Prince, and is considered to be one of the best seller children story ever. It has been read globally and said to be the second famous to the Bible for its wisdom and life lessons.

The novel is known to be the best of his writings. The book is eighty-six pages long and is divided into twenty-seven short chapters. It is also featured with some drawings of the author in almost every page. The setting of the story is in

Sahara Desert, Africa, six years before the narrator told us the story.

The focus of this analysis is the characters and the plot of the novel. The writer believes that some characters in the novel such as the aviator, the little prince, the rose, and the fox resemble those who lived in the real life of the author.

Hence, this novel could be said as an autobiography because the author wrote his own life story, though here it is in a form of a novel.

In the beginning of the story, the young pilot was disappointed with the grown-ups since they were not able to understand his first drawing, the boa constrictor which was digesting an elephant from the outside. He made his second

19 20

drawing then and showed both drawing from outside and inside of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant in it.

It is also stated in the story that the pilot had an accident with his plane in the desert of Sahara and it took him around a week to repair the engine of his plane. While he was there, he was very surprised since he was awakened by a strange voice. The voice was from the little prince. The little prince wanted him to draw a sheep for him. He then told him why he left his planet and about his visits to his neighboring planets, and there their friendship began, and the story flows.

B. Approach of the Study

This analysis will be analyzed using the biographical approach as the most appropriate approach due to the topic of this paper. In A Handbook of Critical

Approaches to Literature by Guerin, the biographical approach is an approach which sees a literary work chiefly as a reflection of its author’s life and times or the life and times of the characters in the work (1999: 22).

Rohrberger and Woods in Reading and Writing about Literature assert that biographical approach is needed to know since it is about the author’s reflection of ideas and personality in writing the novel. Biographical approach asserts the necessity for an appreciation of the ideas and personality of the author to an understanding of the literary objects. They insist that a work of art is a reflection of personality, that in the esthetic experience the reader shares the author’s consciousness, and that at least part of the reader’s response is to the author’s personality (1971: 8). 21

Biographical approach also enables the writer to connect the author’s life experience to his works due to its biographical attempts in interpreting the work of the author.

C. Method of the Study

The analysis is using library research method. For this purpose the data used are from the primary source and secondary source. The primary source is the novel itself, The Little Prince, whereas the secondary sources are taken from various sources that related to the novel, such as articles, books, and also from the internet.

The secondary sources used are chosen because they helped the writer in analyzing the problems by providing appropriate theories and also information to enhance the analysis.

The steps in analyzing the novels were as follows. First, the writer read the primary source in order to get the deep understanding about the story to get knowledge about the characters and the plot. Then secondly, the writer determined the problem formulations, thirdly, reading the secondary sources in order to relate the object of the analysis and the theories. Fourthly, the writer applied the theory of character and characterization to the characters and the flow of the story; then related them with the life of the author as the answer to the last problem formulation. CHAPTER IV

ANALYSIS

In this chapter, the writer will answer the problem formulation proposed in the first chapter. Since there are two problems, this chapter will then be divided into two sections. The first section is to answer the first problem about the significant characters in the novel which influenced the little prince so much, whether they are major and minor, that the writer believes to be the people in the author’s real life. The last section is to relate the characters in the novel with the biography of the author in order to find the reflection of the author’s life in the novel.

A. The Characterizations and Characteristics of the Aviator, the Little

Prince, the Rose, and the Fox

1. The Aviator (The Narrator)

The story of the novel begins with the narrations of the aviator. He does not only become one of the characters in the novel but also the narrator. Indeed, the aviator is one of the main characters in the novel, aside from the other significant characters such as the little prince, the rose, and the fox. It is interesting to find out that the aviator is the only important character that does not come with a picture of him.

The story takes the first person point of view at the beginning then it is shifted to the second person and third person point of view when the narrator

22 23

began to tell the story of the little prince. He was described as a pilot who was having a plane crash in the desert. It is told in the story that he had flown to many places due to his career in the aviation world. As said in the following lines. I learned to pilot airplanes. I have flown almost everywhere in the world. (p.2)

The story is started with the life of the narrator – which is the aviator – back when he was a little boy. In the book Literature for Composition: Essays,

Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (2005: 229), Barnet stated that a character can be learned from what he or she says about himself, as exemplified by the narration of the aviator about himself. He was a person whose childhood memories of his remained within him.

Once when I was six, I saw a magnificent picture in a book about the jungle, called True Story. It showed a boa constrictor swallowing a wild beast. (p.1)

From the narration also, we can see that the aviator was once an artist when he was still at his very young age. He was fond of drawing. He was very imaginative and he even thought about things that others did not. He was so inspired that he made a drawing after reading the book of the True Story.

In the book it said: “Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing. Afterward they are no longer able to move, and they sleep during six months of their digestion.” In those days I thought a lot about jungle adventures, and eventually managed to make my first drawing, using a colored pencil. My drawing Number One looked like this: (p.1) 24

The young boy was so satisfied with his drawing and he went showing it to the grown-ups. He asked the grown-ups whether they were scared with the drawing, but all of the grown-ups that had seen the drawing said why they should be scared of a hat. He was disappointed because none of the grown-ups that he showed the drawing to was able to understand it. The drawing was not a hat; it was a drawing of a boa constrictor chewing an elephant. In order to make the grown-ups understand, he made another drawing.

“Then, I drew the inside of the inside of the boa constrictor, so the grown- ups could understand. They always need explanation. My drawing Number Two looked like this”: (p.2)

From this experience, the disappointment of the narrator toward the grown-ups grew; he became a person who disliked grown-ups. There are many times in the story that the aviator emphasized his dislike toward the grown-ups.

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again.” (p.2) “My career as a painter was discouraged at the age of six by the grown- ups, and I had never learned to draw anything except boa constrictors, outside and inside.” (p.4)

Murphy in Understanding Unseen (1972: 161-173) stated that there are nine ways in which the author attempts to make his characters understandable and come alive for the readers, and one of them is by the character’s past life. From the narration about himself, we come to know that until the aviator became a fully grown person, he rarely found an open minded grown-up that he expected to have the power of imagination as children did. Although he was an adult, he still kept his 25

childhood side and he longed to have a friend who owned the characters of the little children. According to him, most grown-ups had lost their innocence of their childhood. They became very dull. This made him felt lonely. He never really had someone he could talk to because his opinion toward the shallowness of the grown- ups did not change. The quotations below will show.

“So I have had, in the course of my life, lots of encounters with lots of serious people. I have spent time with grown-ups. I have seen them at close range...which hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.” (p.2)

“So I lived all alone, without anyone I could really talk to.” (p.3)

The aviator’s experience of meeting the little prince had raised a hope for him that he could finally have a friend that could really understand him and even have the same imagination of children as he had, but when it came to the little prince’s request of drawing him a sheep, he was discouraged. He had lost his ability of drawing because the grown-ups disappointed him in his golden era of his fond of painting, when he was six years old. He drew the little prince a sheep, eventually, but failed. Becoming impatient, he finally drew only a crate and said that the sheep was inside. He was surprised that the little prince was happy with the drawing. The little prince looked at the drawing and merrily said, “look! He’s gone to sleep…”(p.7). Another way to study a character that is offered by Murphy in Understanding Unseen (1972: 161-173) is through the character’s thoughts, and through the story above we can conclude that another characteristic of the aviator is that he was a person who disappointed with himself. It was because he somehow resembled grown-ups because he could not “see through” the crate and found the sheep. As seen from this quotation. But I, unfortunately, cannot see a 26

sheep through the sides of a crate. I may be a little like the grown-ups. I must have grown old. (p.13)

Another characteristic of the aviator is that he was a person who did not like to forget friends. This can be seen from his own speech. Since he was a loner and rarely had a friend, he would value a friend if he had a chance to make one.

When he finally befriended with the little prince, he decided to pass his story of meeting him to other people through his writing. As shown by the following lines.

If I try to describe him here, it is so I won’t forget him. It is sad to forget a friend.

Not everyone has had a friend. (p.12)

2. The Little Prince

The little prince is the main character of the story. He was a little boy from outer space who then had a long journey to the earth. Although he was a creature from outer space, he was physically no different from a human. He was the one that the aviator met in the Sahara Desert when he had a plane crash. The little prince wore a robe like those of worn by princes. The aviator was very surprised to find such an odd creature, a little boy wearing robe in the middle of the heat of the desert. He was very astounded. 27

According to the aviator, the little prince was a very insisting and curios person. Once he requested for something or asked a question he would never let go of it until he got what he wanted. The little prince never let go of a question once he had asked it (p.19). At his arrival, it was the second day the aviator stranded in the desert, at the daybreak, he woke the aviator up by asking him to draw him a sheep.

“The first night, then, I went to sleep on the sand a thousand miles from any inhabited country. I was more isolated that a man shipwrecked on a raft in the middle of the ocean. So you can imagine my surprise when I was awakened at daybreak by a funny little voice saying, “Please…draw me a sheep…” “What?” “Draw me a sheep…” I leaped up as if I had been struck by lightning.” (p.4)

The little prince was successful in making the aviator draw him a sheep.

But instead of drawing him a sheep, the aviator drew him an “unseen sheep” in a crate, which only two of them could comprehend it. From their conversation we can conclude that the little prince and the aviator had something in common; they both could see the drawing of the boa constrictor from outside; they had the same imaginative mind. As seen in the lines below.

So then, impatiently, since I was in a hurry to start work on my engine, I scribbled this drawing, and added, “This is just the crate. The sheep you want is inside.” But I was amazed to see my young critic’s face light up. “That’s just the kind I wanted! Do you think this sheep will need a lot of grass?” “Why?” “Because where I live, everything is very small…” “There’s sure to be enough. I’ve given you a very small sheep.” He bent over the drawing. “Not so small as all that…Look! He’s gone to sleep…” (p.6) 28

The little prince never answered the questions that the aviator asked him.

The aviator only got to know all about the little prince through the conversation that started from the drawing of the sheep in the crate, and he thanked to it. He began to know that the home to the little prince was known to be a very far planet so called asteroid B612. The planet was only as big as house, thus he could not go anywhere very far. In his planet, it had plants growing there. As planet earth, the little prince’s planet was also infested with good and bad seeds in its soil. If it was a good seed, he would leave it grew, but if it was a bad seed, he would immediately pull the plant right away. The most dangerous plant to grow there was baobab, it was a tree that was so big that it would overgrew the planet and made it burst into pieces. He also had 3 volcanoes, which 2 of them were still active. In order to keep his planet well, he took care of it well and clean the volcanoes to avoid them from erupting. According to him, we must clean our volcanoes on earth too, but he then realized that the earth was too big to do so.

From here we can see that the little prince was very diligent, he was a responsible to what he had in his planet. He always tried to put his planet in order.

”It’s a question of discipline,” the little prince told me later on. “When you’ve finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet. You must be sure you pull up the baobabs regularly, as soon as you can tell them apart from the rosebushes, which they closely resemble when they’re very young. (p.15).

The little prince was fond of watching the sunset, especially when he was sad. When he was with the aviator in the desert, he wanted to see a sunset and asked him to see it together, but he then realized that the earth was too big and he had to wait for the time to be able to see the sun set. In his planet he could even 29

see the sunset for 44 times in a single day. All he had to do was just moving west, to the direction of the sun to set, and he could have as many sunsets as he wished for. From the narration of the aviator we can see how the little prince loved to see sunset. As said by the aviator in the lines below.

O little prince! Gradually, this was how I came to understand your sad little life. For a long time your only entertainment was the pleasure of sunsets. I learned this new detail on the morning of the fourth day, when you told me: “I really like sunsets. Let’s go look at one now…” (p.18)

The little prince was also described as someone who liked a desert. When he was with the aviator, there was a time when they went to find a well due to their thirst because of being stranded. They finally found a well and after drank from it, they sat and the little prince said how he loved the desert and how beautiful it was.

“The desert is beautiful,” the little prince added. And it was true. I’ve always loved the desert. You sit down on a sand dune. You see nothing. You hear nothing. And yet something shines, something sings in that silence…” (p.68).

From the conversation with the aviator, it shown that the little prince had a rose back in his planet and he loved her so much. It came to the fifth day when they aviator finally knew about the rose. He was busy fixing his plane’s engine when the little prince suddenly asked him whether or not the sheep would eat flowers and if the thorns of a rose would do any good for her. The little prince paid no attention to the fact that the aviator was in danger. Instead, he was worried about his flower back home. Annoyed by the endless quest of the little prince, the aviator said that the thorns was not any good and that was only a way of a flower 30

of being mean. The little prince then said that he did not trust what the aviator said, for he cared so much for his rose that he left in his planet. Shocked by the answer of the aviator, the little prince got angry. He was very upset that the aviator did not think that it was something serious to him. The excerpt below shows how the little prince loved his rose so much. The little prince was so preoccupied by his rose.

“For millions of years flowers have been producing thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating them all the same. And it’s not serious, trying to understand why flowers go to such trouble to produce thorns that are good for nothing? It’s not important, the war between the sheep and the flowers? Suppose I happen to know a unique flower, one that exist nowhere in the world except on my planet, one that a little sheep can wipe out in a single bite one morning, just like that, without even realizing what he’s doing? – that isn’t important? If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that’s enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. My flower is up there somewhere…but if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it’s as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that isn’t important?” (p.20-21).

He fell in love with the rose from the first time when he saw her blossom in his planet. He had watched the development of the rose’s preparation to show her beauty and fell into admiration as he saw her emerged. But soon the little prince realized that the rose was a proud flower. She enjoyed the extra attention of the little prince to her and she actually loved him too but she was unable to express it because she was too proud. Marooned by the traits of the rose, the little prince decided to leave the planet. He left his planet in order to get away from the rose’s strange behavior which he could not understand.

“So the little prince, despite all the goodwill of his love, had soon come to mistrust her. He had taken seriously inconsequential remarks and had grown very unhappy. “I shouldn’t have listened to her.”” (p.24) 31

The little prince then left his planet and his rose, went on a journey from one asteroid to another before finally arrived at the earth. His journey shows how he travelled a lot.

He happened to be in the vicinity of Asteroids 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330. So he began by visiting them, to kep himself busy and to learn something. (p.27).

During his outer space journey, he met several grown-ups that lived alone in their own small planets, just like him. They were varied in their characters; he met a king that was very thirsty for power and control. He said that he ruled the universe. In the next planet, he met a conceited man. What he did was very vain.

He was desperate for admiration. He met the third grown-up which was a drunkard who drunk to forget that he was ashamed of drinking. The next grown- up was a businessman that was too busy to take a break for himself. The little prince hopped to the next planet where he met a lamplighter. His planet was too tiny it evolved too fast, made the lamplighter had to light up and out the light in almost every second he had. The last planet he visited before earth was occupied by a geographer. He interested the little prince by broad knowledge that he got about planets, but he disappointed the little prince that he did not understand about his own planet. The meetings with those grown-ups shaped a perception in the little prince’s mind that the grown-ups were always busy doing things that unimportant and in vain.

The little prince is also described as someone who was willing to learn many things. He learned about love and friendship when he met a fox in the desert. The fox “tamed” him. The way the fox made friend with him, through a 32

continual ritual of knowing each other was a process that they both called “to tame.” It was a process of creating ties between both of them, something that made them unique to each other.

“’To create ties’?” “That’s right,” the fox said. “For me you’re only a little boy just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you have no need of me, either. For you I’m only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, we’ll need each other. you’ll be the only boy in the world for me. I’ll be the only fox in the world for you…” (p.59).

From his experience of befriending with the fox, he began to realize why he was so sad in leaving the rose. She had tamed him. It was the work he put into the flower and the time he spent to know him that made her special. The prince then realized how much he missed the rose back home. There was a need for companionship, and for someone to care for him and for him to care for. When he realized how much the rose needed him, the little prince experienced his first moment of regrets. His love for the rose was centered on her dependence on him to take care of her. When he remembered that his rose was an ephemeral creature which was fragile, the prince valued her more and more. Because the rose would one day die, it was so important for the prince that he loved her while he could.

The little prince learned from the fox the secret of life and later on taught the narrator that one must be responsible for the things that you have tamed. 33

3. The Rose

The rose is also a significant character. She lived in the asteroid B612 where the home of the little prince was. Throughout the story, she occupied the little prince's thoughts and heart. Although she appeared only in a couple of chapters, she was crucial to the novel as a whole because her melodramatic proud nature was what caused the little prince to leave his planet and began his planet to planet explorations. From the very first time of her emergence as a little plant, she had caught the entire little prince’s attention. It was because she was different from any flower that the little prince had seen growing in his planet. On the day of her time to bloom, she prepared everything well. She was an elegant creature and she wanted to look just perfect.

“The little prince, who had watched the development of an enormous bud, realized that some sort of miraculous apparition would emerge from it, but the flower continued her beauty preparations in the shelter of her green chamber, selecting her colors with the greatest care and dressing quite deliberately, adjusting her petals one by one. She had no desire to emerge all rumpled, like the poppies. She wished to appear only in the full radiance of her beauty.” (p.22)

She was also described as a proud flower. Her beauty had captured the heart of the little prince. He admired her. He said to her that she was lovely, and she replied him rather in full of pride, knowing that she would have the attention 34

of the little prince since he had fell in love with her. She behaved as if the world evolved around her that the little prince must do what she asked him to. In their first conversation after she bloomed, she dared to ask the little prince to provide her breakfast. And it would be shameful for the little prince to not fulfill her request, because the tone of her asking was rather cynical.

“How lovely you are!” “Aren’t I? the flower answered sweetly. “And I was born the same time as the sun…” The little prince realized that she wasn’t any too modest, but she was so dazzling! “I believe it is breakfast time,” she had soon added. “Would you be so kind as to tend to me?” And the little prince, utterly abashed, having gone to look for a watering can, served the flower. (p.23)

It is also seen in her speech that although she was a proud flower, she was also naïve. In order to get the little prince’s more and more attention, she behaved as if she was a strong creature with her four thorns. She declared that she was ready to face any tiger that would disturb her, while as a matter of fact, there was tiger on the little prince’s little planet. She also lied to the little prince, which clearly showed how naïve she was. The quotation below will show.

“”How cold it is where you live – quite uncomfortable. Where I came from –“ But she suddenly broke off. She had come here as a seed. She couldn’t have known anything of other world. Humiliated at having let herself be caught on the verge of so naïve a lie, she coughed two or three times in order to put the little prince in the wrong. “That screen?” “I was going to look for one, but you were speaking to me!” Then she made herself cough again, in order to inflict a twinge of remorse on him all the same.” (p.24)

Behind all her pride and vanity, she was also in love with the little prince, but she had trouble expressing it to him and consequently drove him away. She 35

informed the little prince of her love for him too late to persuade him to stay at the planet. Although she admitted that she was the cause of the little prince’s leaving and wanted the little prince to stay, her pride overpowered her that it did not persuasive enough for the little prince to not leaving her. Even in their last conversation, she did not plead him firmly that she did not want him to leave. This made the little prince so disappointed for she gave him rather cold goodbye.

“Of course I love you,” the flower told him. “It was my fault you never know. It doesn’t matter.” (p.18)

“Don’t hang around like this; it’s irritating. You made up your mind to leave. Now go.” For she didn’t want him to see her crying. She was such a proud flower. (p18).

4. The Fox

He was the first best friend that the little prince encountered on his visit to the earth before he met the aviator. The one that offered the little prince about the concept of creating ties was the fox. He was known to be a wise creature. the following lines will show. “One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”(p.63). 36

The fox was more like a mentor figure who pointed out the important things that the little prince had learned to helped him cleared his thoughts. When the little prince saw him, he asked the fox to be his friend, but the fox rejected. He said that in order to become friends, the little prince must tame him. The little prince was bewildered by the fox’s request. The fox said that to tame meant to create ties, that simple contact was not enough. He began to explain the little prince about what he meant by creating ties. According to him, in order to be able to understand something, one should take time to know it better. We could come to value something better only when we were attached to it, because it was the process of finding that made the result worthwhile. The process of taming was not without risk. Once one was tamed, he became tied to it and attached to it. And yet, the fox begged the little prince to tame him. He wanted to have someone that he really knew and to have someone to miss. His life was said to be boring. He liked to hunt chickens and the hunters hunted him because of that, and it went in a never ending cycle; that was why he asked the little prince to tame him.

“But if you tame me, my life will be filled with sunshine. I’ll know the sound of footsteps that will be different from all the rest. Other footsteps send me back underground. Yours will call me out of my burrow like music. And then, look! You see the wheat fields over there? I don’t eat bread. For me wheat is of no use whatever. Wheat fields say nothing to me. Which is sad. But you have hair the color of gold. So it will be wonderful, once you’ve tamed me! The wheat, which is golden, will remind me of you. And I’ll love the sound of the wind in the wheat…” (p.60)

In his lessons about taming, the fox argued for the importance of ceremonies and rituals, showing that such things were important even outside the strict world of grown-ups. The fox taught the little prince about much wisdom. 37

Not only about creating ties, but also about the responsible for what he had tamed.

He said that people could only learn from what they had tamed. He also criticized the people that no longer cared about understanding things. They went to the store and buy ready-made things, but one thing they could not but was a friend. When it was the time for them to separate from each other, the fox became sad and he wept. The little prince wondered why the fox should weep when he was the one that begged him to tame him.

“Ah!” the fox said. “I shall weep.” “It’s your own vault,” the little prince said. “I never wanted to do any harm, but you insisted that I tame you…” “Yes, of course,” the fox said. “But you’re going to weep!” said the little prince. “Yes, of course,” the fox said. “Then you get nothing out of it?” “I get something,” the fox said, “because of the color of the wheat.” (p.61)

The fox urged the little prince to revisit the rose garden. There the little prince came to understand how precious his rose was. He could eventually see the difference between his rose and those roses at the garden. It was the time he had devoted to his rose that made her unique on his own. No matter how hard the little prince would be when nursing his rose, she had tamed him. From the story above we can clearly see how the fox was a wise creature.

B. The Reflections of Saint-Exupery’s Life Depicted by the Characters

In this section the writer will analyze the resemblances of the characters that have been analyzed with the real life of the author. The writer believes that most of the characters in the novels are the real people that the author dealt with during his 38

life; people that had the importance in the author’s life and in some decisions that he would probably have made. As a matter of fact, most of his writings are autobiographical. As stated in one of his biographies. Most of his work is journalism, romanticized, but still autobiographical. (Schiff, 2006: x).

1. The Aviator as the Grown-Up Side of Saint-Exupery

There are some clues showing that the aviator was actually the real self of

Saint-Exupery, the author. Although it does not always work this way, the first person point of view in the story shows that it was actually him that narrated the story. The fact that it was Saint-Exupery himself that narrated the story was strengthened with the occupation of them both which was a pilot. Indeed, Saint-

Exupery was a pioneer of international postal flight in those days when the aircraft had only few instruments. It was in 1921 that he began his military service in the second Regiment of Chasseurs (regiment of hunters), and was sent to

Strasbourg for training as a pilot. The next year, he gained his license as a pilot and was offered a transfer to the air force. In 1929 Saint-Exupery moved to South

America, where he was appointed director of the Aeroposta Argentina Company.

(http://www.lepetitprince.com/#/chronologie/?lang=uk&t=1&id=5&inf=1900&su p=1933)

Both Saint-Exupery and the aviator loved to fly. It is clear when the aviator said in the passage “I have flown almost everywhere in the world” (p.2).

Saint-Exupery himself was fond of flying. Although he had several injuries, he always eventually went back to fly aircrafts. Even after the air mail business in 39

Argentina was closed down, Saint-Exupery still tried to find ways to get him back flying. He then started to fly post between Casablanca and Port-Etienne and then he served as a test pilot for Air France and other airline companies. He indeed lived a traveling, adventurous life: he persuaded Air France to let him piloting a

Caudron Simoun (F-ANRY), and he had an aviation accident in 1935 in North

Africa. In 1937, he bought another Caudron Simoun and was severely injured in

Guatemala in a plane crash. His wife even once throw joke that he was the oldest pilot in the world due to his very fond of flying. In the introduction page of the one of his biographies titled Antoine de Saint-Exupery: His Life and Times one of his friends opinioned how Saint-Exupery was so madly in love with the aviation world.

Jean-François Revel has scoffed at his "prop-driven platitudes" and called him the "cou-cou man who replaced the human brain with an airplane engine." (http://www.trussel.com/saint-ex/cate.htm).

An article in the April 2005 edition of Reader’s Digest also stated how Saint-Exupery loved to fly. As shown by the following lines.

He was 12 when he discovered planes at the country airstrip of Amberieu, near Lyon. The boy badgered a pilot into taking him up in one of the spluttering, rickety little things and was smitten forever by the joy of flight. (Chelminski: 48).

At the beginning of the story, the aviator was told to have a plane crash in

Sahara Desert, six years ago (p.3). The time of the plane crash of the aviator was said to be six years earlier from the year of the writing of the novel. While the novel itself was written in 1942-1943, this can conclude that Saint-Exupery was 40

actually retelling his own experience of having a plane crash. On a December,

1935 flight, at 14:45 after 18 hours and 36 minutes in the air, Saint-Exupery and his navigator Andre Prevot crashed their plane in the Libyan Sahara Desert. They were attempting to break the record for the Paris-to-Saigon (which now called Ho

Chi Minh City, Vietnam) flight and win a prize of 150,000 francs. Their plane was a Caudron C-600 Simoun (serial F-ANRY). Both of them survived the crash only but they faced rapid dehydration. Their maps were primitive and ambiguous.

Lost in the desert with a few grapes, a single orange, and some wine, the pair had only one day’s worth of liquid. After the first day, they had nothing. They both began to see mirages, which were quickly followed by more vivid hallucinations.

Between the second and the third day, they were so dehydrated that they stopped sweating altogether. Finally, on the fourth day, they were rescued by a Bedouin caravan. (http://www.answers.com/topic/the-little-prince). The similarity between the plane crashes is that both the aviator and Saint-Exupery managed to survive.

In the story, the narrator also told about his drawing back when he was still six years old. It said that he was trying to show his talent as someone that could draw, the grown-ups misinterpreted his drawing as a hat and he was very upset that he decided to stop drawing although he was so into drawing.

The grown-ups advised me to put away my drawings of boa constrictors, outside and inside, and apply myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar. That is why I abandoned, at the age of six, a magnificent career as an artist. I had been discouraged by the failure of my drawing Number One and of my drawing Number Two. (p.2)

As for Saint-Exupery himself, he was also someone that loved to draw. In some of his letters to his wife, Consuelo, and to his best friend, Leon Werth, he featured it 41

with drawings. (see: appendices). All of his drawings are very childish, and it undoubtedly true that the narrator’s childhood experience of stopping to draw was also experienced by him, that he was never supported when he wanted to learn to draw. In the last pages of the story, when the little prince was about to go back to his planet, he and the aviator sat on the sand and look at the pictures that the aviator had drawn along his experiences with the little prince’s story. The little prince mocked at the pictures, that the aviator was not good enough to draw.

“Your fox…his ears…look more like horns…and they’re too long!” And he laughed again. “You’re being unfair, my little prince,” I said. “I never knew how to draw anything but boas from the inside and boas from the outside.” “Oh, that’ll be all right,” he said. “Children understand.” (p.72)

The passage above also shows that although his drawing would look very childish, it was no big deal for him, because the children would understand. That was why the narrator, though he had stopped drawing since he was still a young boy, drew the little prince a sheep that he asked him to. This suggested that Saint-

Exupery, as the narrator did, sided with the imaginative mind of the children. As a matter of fact, although he had become a grown-up, his childhood memories preserved well in his life and he missed being a child once again. In Consuelo’s memoir book, The Tale of the Rose, she told that Tonio, the name she used to called him, was a person who liked to tell stories, he was quite talkative, and he would describe his experience in a slight manner of a child. The lines below will show.

“Let’s have a drink, you and I, I’m thirsty,” he said to me. “And forgive me if I talk too much, I haven’t seen a soul for almost a week. I’ll tell you 42

stories about Patagonia, about birds and monkeys, smaller than my fist.” (2003: 16).

The way Saint-Exupery explained things was similar to what the aviator would respond to something. As he said in a passage in the novel, he tended to explain things with the details. Saint-Exupery sided with little children, thus, he would more less have the same way of explaining things, and through the narrator, Saint-

Exupery once again showed his dislike toward grown-ups.

They never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: “What does his voice sound like?” “What games does he like best?” “Does he collect butterflies?” They ask: “How old is he?” “How many brothers does he have?” How much does he weigh?” “How much money does his father make?” (p.10).

Both the aviator and Saint-Exupery were loners. In the beginning of the story, through his narration, the aviator showed that he was lonely because he rarely found people who understood him. As stated in the following quotations.

“So I have had, in the course of my life, lots of encounters with lots of serious people. I have spent time with grown-ups. I have seen them at close range...which hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.” (p.2)

“So I lived all alone, without anyone I could really talk to.” (p.3)

Saint-Exupery in his biography was also told as a loner. While working as the chief of the Cape Juby airfield in the desert, he felt so lonely because of his aristocratic name of “de Saint-Exupery.” As shown by the lines below.

It was partly a title that had brought him to Juby in the first place; “de Saint-Exupery” is a fine aristocratic name. His titles kept him apart, as titles are meant to do, and one thing Saint-Exupery had always felt, by nature as much as by birth, was painfully apart. He would turn his back on anyone who showed the poor taste to address him as “My dear Count.” This behavior, of course, put him at a distance from another world, one of 43

which his name and his relations if not his fortune – he had none – qualified him. (Schiff, 2006: 8).

The aviator is a kind of person that did not like to forget about friends. As he said in the novel, the reason why he tried to pass the little prince’s experiences to the readers with details and featured drawings was that he did not want to forget the little prince that had become his best friend. Although it was painful for him to recall those memories, it would be worse to forget his friend. As said in the following lines. If I try to describe him here, it’s so I won’t forget him. It’s sad to forget a friend. Not everyone has had a friend (p.12). It was as if Saint-Exupery himself that said the preceding lines. It was because he himself did not like to forget friend. It is clearly seen when he dedicated this novel and also some other works to his best friend Leon Werth.

To Leon Werth

I ask the children to forgive me for dedicating this book to a grown-up. I have a serious excuse: this grown-up is the best friend I have in the world. I have another excuse: this grown-up can understand everything, even books for children. I have a third excuse: he lives in France where he is hungry and cold. He needs to be comforted. If all these excuses are not enough, then I want to dedicate this book to the child whom this grown-up once was. All grown-ups were children first. (But few of them remember it.) So I correct my dedication: To Leon Werth, when he was a little boy (p. iv)

In running a life as a pilot, he barely had a real friend. The most time he spent was in the air, posting mails from a continent to another and his tendency to ignore those who called him with his aristocratic name, and it resulted in a lonely life.

Although he was surrounded with many famous friends of the era such as Greta 44

Garbo, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and many others, he still felt alone. One of the rare best friends he had was Leon Werth. And this person is one of the friends that he did not want to forget.

Many people believed that actually the novel is the longing of Saint-

Exupery for his childhood memories. It is undoubtedly true. There are several times in the novel that Saint-Exupery, through the narrator, expressed his memories of his childhood. For instance, in the time when the narrator and the little prince were looking for a well, he talked about his childhood house.

“When I was a little boy, I lived in an old house, and there was a legend that a treasure was buried in it somewhere.” (p.68)

When Saint-Exupery was a little boy, he, his mother, with all his brothers and sister moved to a house after his father died. It was an old house, chateau of Saint-

Maurice-de-Remens which similar to the house of the narrator. Back at that time,

Saint-Exupery “ruled” that big house. He was surrounded by abundant love from his family that he was so happy back then. He even said that he never felt so alive as his childhood. Not so long after their marriage, Saint-Exupery and his wife went visiting the memorable old house although it had been sold. It clearly shows how his childhood memories, especially about the house where he used to lived in, sculptured in his heart.

It happened in the summer of 1932, at the chateau of Saint-Maurice-de- Remens, the wondrous setting of Saint-Exupery’s childhood, the most vivid years of his life (“I’m not sure I have lived since my childhood, he wrote to his mother from Buenos Aires). (Saint-Exupery, 2003: xvii).

Saint-Maurice was sold to the nearby city of Lyons, and emptied out; all the familiar beds, armchair, stoves, clocks, dishes, and toys that had surrounded him during those buried treasure days were lined up along the 45

main street of the local village and auctioned off on two successive Sundays. Antoine and Consuelo, Comte and Comtesse de Saint-Exupery – for the Saint-Exupery were an old and titled family- wandered for awhile among the things out that street, and Antoine said good-bye to the irreplaceable objects of his youngest days. (Saint-Exupery, 2003: xvii)

To conclude all the similarities between the two of them, the character of the aviator actually represents the grown-up characters of Saint-Exupery. The aviator is a grown-up person with a childlike mind, as Saint-Exupery was. This can be seen from the way the aviator disagreed with grown-ups’ way of thinking and also his longing to his childhood throughout his narration in the story, whereas Saint-Exupery himself was childish in the way that he was also longing for his childhood. He was undoubtedly living in the shadow of his childhood.

Through the voice of the narrator, Saint-Exupery clearly expressed his longing for his childhood. When he and his siblings lived in his aunt’s home at Saint-

Maurice-de-Remens, they lived a fairly carefree life, listening to their mother’s inventive stories, playing in the countryside, and staging plays and also musicals.

It was the happiest day of his life to be a kid.

The childlike way of thinking of Saint-Exupery had been another reason that led him to have a lonely life. Not only the absences of him in the society because of his flying business, but also because there were not really many people understood him. In the novel, the aviator told how he was sorry that he was somehow grew up, and had lose some of his childlike ability to understand the imaginative matters. Even his friend, the little prince, noticed that the aviator behaved like the grown-up who had been so busy with things they called “matter 46

of consequences” while they did not understand what they were pursuing. As shown by the lines below.

“I may be a little like the grown-ups. I must have grown old” (p.13) “You talk like the grown-ups!” That made me a little ashamed. But he added mercilessly: “You confuse everything…You’ve got it all mixed up!” (p.20)

The novel The Little Prince then can be assumed as a way done by Saint-Exupery to immortalize his childhood, as well as to be as memoir of the important events in his life.

b. The Little Prince as the Child Side of Saint-Exupery

Not only represented himself through the character of the aviator, Saint-

Exupery also brought into use the characters of the little prince as the depiction of him. As a matter of fact, the little prince was more like himself as a child. Saint-

Exupery respectively used the character of a little boy because he wanted bring back his childhood memories into life. "He wasn't like other people," wrote his wife, Consuelo, later in The Tale of the Rose, "but like a child or an angel who has fallen down from the sky." As the writer has discussed in the previous section,

Saint-Exupery tended to think that grown-ups perspectives were unimaginative, very pragmatic, and dull, while the childish perspectives were creative, full of wonder, and open to the mysterious beauty of the universe. Also he wanted to differentiate his grown-up side from his childhood side. The way the little prince could immediately see beyond first appearances and comprehend the boa 47

constrictor in the narrator’s first drawing and a sheep hidden in a crate shows how different children are from grown-ups.

Physically, the little prince resembles the physical appearance of Saint-

Exupery when he was a boy. In the novel, the little prince was described as a little boy with golden hair and he was a prince back in his little planet of asteroid B-

612. While Saint-Exupery, in his childhood age he would be called “le Roi-Soleil”

(The Sun King) by his friends and family, due to his golden wavy hair. And it is why he called the character “the little prince” because back then at his childhood, he was the “king” of the chateau where he lived in as a boy. The lines below will prove.

Antoine may have drawn inspiration for the little prince's appearance from himself as a youth. Friends and family would call him "le Roi-Soleil" ("Sun King"), due to his golden curly hair. (http://www.answers.com/topic/the-little-prince)

The other similarity between the two of them is that they both traveled a lot. The little prince, having escape from his planet, had traveled along to six different planets before reaching the earth. He did not just pass by the planets, but he intentionally visited them. As shown in the excerpt below.

“He happened to be in the vicinity of Asteroids 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330. So he began by visiting them, to keep himself busy and to learn something.” (p.27)

As for Saint-Exupery, he traveled a lot. He had been living in several countries in several continents during his life, due to the fond of flying and his job in airmail aviation. By 1926, he worked on the Aeropostale between Toulouse and

Dakar then in 1928, he flew the Casablanca/Dakar route. He became the director 48

of cap Juby airfield in Rio de Oro, Sahara. In 1929, Saint-Exupery moved to

South America, where he was appointed director of the Aeroposta Argentina

Company. He kept flying until the beginning of World War II. During the war, he at first flew in the French GC II/33 reconnaissance squadron. He then escaped to

New York City, and then hopped to live in Quebec City for some time in 1942.

After his time in North America, he returned to Europe to fight with the Allies in a squadron in the Mediterranean. (http://www.lepetitprince.com/#/chronologie/? lang=uk&t=1&id=5&inf=1934&sup=2003). This shows the similarity between the little prince and Saint-Exupery for they had been traveling a lot around the world.

The little prince was also described as a very insisting person. He insisted in having a vivid answer once he uttered a question. He liked to ask many questions but never seemed to hear the ones that the aviator asked him. The little prince never let go of a question once he had asked it (p.19). It shows that he was a very curios person. In The Tale of the Rose, Consuelo said that at her first meeting with Saint-Exupery, he was dare asking her to fly with him, and insisted in asking her to agree despite of Consuelo’s rejection. This shows another similarity of the little prince and Saint-Exupery of being very insisting.

“I’m going” I said gently, struggling to extricate myself from the armchair. His long arms blocked my way. “But you know very well that you’re coming with me in my plane to see the Rio de la Plata from beyond the clouds. It’s fantastically beautiful, you’ll see a sunset like no other in the world!” (2003: 14)

As discussed before in the previous section, Saint-Exupery was so much fond of flying. And as he had loved something, he would always find a way to achieve it. 49

So with the flying matters, he insisted to fly. Although he had several injuries in some plane crashes, he would not stop flying. It was also for this reason that in early 1923, Louise Vilmorin who was Saint-Exupery’s fiancée decided to break off their engagement after an airplane accident that fractured his skull. She did not want to be with someone who endangered his life like what Saint-Exupery did.

This shows the similarity between the little prince and the author. They both insisted in doing what they wanted to do. The little prince was an insisting person in the way that he never let go of a question once he asked it, while Saint-Exupery was proved to be a insisting person in the way that he insisted to fly although in his age of forties he had been considered to be too old and too overweight to fly a sophisticating aircraft of that era, as seen in the quotation below.

At 44, Saint-Ex was too old, too big and too overweight for the fast, ultramodern and physically demanding Lockheed P-38, but he used his fame to secure an assignment to at least five missions. (Chelminski, 2005: 49).

Not only was fond of flying, Saint-Exupery never stopped surprising people by so many things that could do. No difference from the little prince, he was also a very curios person who was willing to learn many things. In his journey from a planet to another the little prince intentionally visited those planets and there was always something that he could learn – especially about the characteristics of grown-ups – in every planet, while Saint-Exupery also learned many fields during his life. Some of his friends knew him to be a very multitalented person. He was way so curios. Here is an excerpt taken from the introduction part of a biography of Saint-Exupery, written by Curtis Cate titled 50

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: His Life and Times, shows the opinion of his friends toward him.

John Phillips, the former Life photo-reporter, has called him a twentieth century Pico della Mirandola. Others have likened him to Leonardo da Vinci and the omni-curious if not omniscient men of the Renaissance. "Saint-Ex?" General René Bouscat one day said to me, handing me a caricature "Pépino" had drawn of himself. "Mais il savait tout faire" — there was nothing he couldn't do. One of his closest friends, Dr. Georges Pélissier, wishing to write an appreciation of him after his death, could find nothing better than the pentagonic title, Les Cinq Visages de Saint- Exupéry — the five "faces" or facets of his personality being Saint-Ex the Flyer, Saint-Ex the Writer, Saint-Ex the Man, Saint-Ex the Inventor, and Saint-Ex the Magician. Even so, the spectrum could have been extended and he could just as justifiably have entitled his book, Les Sept Visages de Saint-Exupéry, throwing in Saint-Ex the Humorist and Saint-Ex the Thinker, for good measure. For Saint-Exupéry, who "read little but understood everything" (to quote Pélissier), was in the deepest sense a thinker who used card tricks, word puzzles, chess games, and comic drawings to mask his innermost preoccupations. (http://www.trussel.com/saint-ex/cate.htm).

Another article written as a book review by Geoffrey Hutton titled “St. Ex

Legend- even Death Contributed”, also shows the similarity of the little prince to

Saint-Exupery of being a person who learned many things.

Born an aristocrat, St-Ex (his familiar name) made his own way in several worlds. He was at the same time an artist and a man of action, a poet and a “knight or the air” at a time when France was making its bid as pioneer in commercial aviation. At the same time he was a mathematician, an inventor, a philosopher, a great story-teller, and – to make himself one of the boys – an expert at poker and card tricks. (Hutton, The Age Newspaper: August 28, 1971).

The little prince and Saint-Exupery were also similar in their liking of desert. In the novel, the little prince once said that he loved the desert (p.68), while Saint-Exupery himself lived several years in Sahara Desert when occupying 51

the position as the chief of the airfield at Cape Juby and he loved living there, as stated in one of his biographies. “I have never,” he would write fifteen years later,

“loved my house more that when I lived in the desert.” (Schiff, 2006: 3). Another statement in the biography to enhance the fact that he loved the desert is stated as follow.

The desert had its attractions – the aviator who had prospected the African line would swear to its comparable beauty and claim the Sahara as his true mistress. (Schiff, 2006: 4)

One other thing that was interesting to know was that both Saint-Exupery and the little prince were kind of attached to number 4. Saint-Exupery frequently used number 4 in some details in the novel. There were no detail and further studies about this mysteriousness though. It is said in the novel that it was in the fourth day that the aviator got to know that the little prince loved to see sunsets, and then latter, the little prince said that in his planet he could have forty four sunsets a day and also the four thorns owned by the little prince’s rose. In the time of his space journey, the little prince arrived in a very tiny planet where was occupied by the lamplighter. There he could have seen one thousand four hundred forty sunsets in every twenty-four hours. To relate with Saint-Exupery, he was reported missing in July 31 in year nineteen forty four, a month after his forty- fourth birthday.

The most influential character in the whole story is the rose. Although only appeared in a couple of chapters, she was the one that responsible in making the little prince took the decision to leave his planet. In the other words, she was the heart of the story. For the little prince, the rose was his love. Saint-Exupery also 52

had someone that he was really in love with. It was his wife, Consuelo Suncin

Sandoval de Gomez, that later changed her name to Consuelo de Saint-Exupery after marrying him.

As the little prince with the rose had a turbulent relationship, so did Saint-

Exupery and his wife. The little prince’s long journey that he took had eventually taken him back to his beloved rose. The domestic problems that hit Saint-

Exupery’s marriage did not lessen his love to Consuelo. They oftentimes separated from each other only to find that they needed each other.

From Buenos Aires to Casablanca, Paris and New York, they failed to establish a home for themselves; Saint-Ex repeatedly fled the constraints of marriage, only to find he could not write without his wife's support and inspiration. (Publishers Weekly. July 3, 2001).

The relationship between little prince and the rose clearly resembles the life of

Saint-Exupery in his marriage. The little prince and the rose are described to be a complicated couple. The little prince was so madly in love with the rose that he poured all his care to nurture the rose, while the rose was a very proud creature that very hard to express her love to the little prince. The marriage of Saint-

Exupery and Consuelo was very tumultuous. As the little prince would leave the planet because of the rose, Saint-Exupery also fled from his wife because of the domestic problems. His getaway was his aviation; similar to the little prince’s getaway of went on a space travel from one planet to another.

The domestic problem in their marriage was the many affairs that Saint-

Exupery had. In his life, he had been surrounded by many friends and many of them were women. He had always liked pretty woman. In The Tale of the Rose, he 53

thanked his friend Benjamin Cremieux (that later introduced him to Consuelo) for inviting him to his hotel, because he could see so many pretty women. Although he later attracted most to Consuelo, it could not be denied that he was a womanizer.

“Benjamin, you hadn’t told me there would be such pretty women here. I’m very grateful.” (Saint-Exupery, 2003: 13)

The affairs of Saint-Exupery are reflected by the events when the little prince went to a garden to see so many roses. In the novel the rose said that she was the only kind in the entire universe and the little prince believed in her (p.56).

But on his visit to the earth, the little prince found out that roses were common in earth. He felt that his rose was no longer special, because there were so many like her. In his planet, he only had one rose, but in his visit to earth he saw so many roses that attracted him. Later on he realized that what made his rose special was because he tamed her and she also had tamed him. He then took the decision that he would go back to his planet, to his rose. This shows that although Saint-

Exupery and Consuelo’s marriage was turbulent, they did not divorce.

The journey of the little prince from one planet to another also represents

Saint-Exupery’s nomadic life. He and Consuelo had lived in several countries during their marriage. They moved from a continent to another due to Saint-

Exupery’s job as a pilot. They’re married in France, lived in Buenos Aires, Paris, and New York.

They were perpetually unable to find a place where they could stay and be together. All of their paradises were lost: the house in Buenos Aires; El Mirador outside of Nice; a whole series of apartment in Paris, Casablanca, and New York. No sooner had they settled in to some new location than 54

the nameless imperative to move on, to move away, made it-self felt once more. (Saint-Exupery, 2003: xvii).

There was a part in the novel that was possibly the message of Saint-

Exupery’s death. The little prince told the aviator that he would see sunset if he felt sad. And then he said that one day he saw the sun set for forty four times. The aviator assumed that if the little prince saw the sun set forty four times a day he would have been very sad. From this story, it is as if Saint-Exupery had warned that he would be dead in the age of forty four because he was very sad of something.

Before his departure, the little prince forbid the aviator to come and see he went. He said that it would not worth the trouble because it would not be pleasant for the aviator to see him as if he would die. It was similar to what Saint-

Exupery’s brother said. The following passage is what said by Saint-Exupery’s younger brother, Francois, before he died in July 1917. It is cited from one of

Saint-Exupery’s book entitled Airman’s Odyssey:“Don’t worry. I’m all right. I can’t help it. It’s my body.” It is as if Francois said that his body was only an old shell that Saint-Exupery did not need to worry about his illness, as reflected in a passage in The Little Prince below

”You were wrong to come. You’ll suffer. I’ll look as if I’m dead, and that won’t be true…” I said nothing. “You understand. It’s too far. I can’t take this body with me. It’s too heavy.” I said nothing. “But it’ll be like an old abandoned shell. There’s nothing sad about an old shell…” (p.78-79) 55

In the last part of the novel, it shows that the little prince’s way to go back to his planet was rather mysterious. On their conversation when they just met, the snake offered the little prince a fast way back home if he became bored with the earth. By then, he appointed the desert snake to bite him to send him back home on the anniversary of his visit on earth. It is interesting that the way the snake promised to take the little prince back home was by poisoning him with his bite.

The quotation below will show. This is what the little prince told the aviator on his departure.

“I’m telling you this…on account of the snake, he mustn’t bite you. Snakes are nasty sometimes. They bite just for fun…” “It’s true that they don’t have enough poison for a second bite…” (p.78)

By the time the snake would send the little prince back home, he was frightened.

He was actually frightened that he would get poisoned. But he was determined to take the risk because he said that he was responsible for his rose. In the end, what the aviator saw was that the little prince fell, as light as a fallen tree, while the snake coiled in the little prince’s leg. There was no further information from the aviator about what had happened to the little prince whether he died or not, he just said later that at the daybreak, he could not find the little prince’s body, which he said to be the sign that the little prince had gone home. The way the little prince back home was similar to the death of Saint-Exupery which is also mysterious. On

July 31 in 1944, Saint-Exupery took off from the Corsican airfield of Poretta in a reconnaissance mission over Mediterranean Sea, near the Swiss border and never came back. To make it worse, before he disappeared forever, he had once hinted a suicidal thought. He once wrote to a friend of him, “I was indifferent to the idea of 56

death.” He told his fellow pilots that a fortune teller had announced to him that he would finish his life in the sea. It was actually a bad time for him. The relationship with his wife was strained, he had financial problems, and he was also depressed and humiliated by his grounding after he overshot the runway on landing, causing severe damage to the plane, Lockheed P-38. (Chelminski, April 2005: 49-50)

It was a day in September 1998 when Jean-Claude Bianco, a captain of a fishing ship named L’Horizon, found a bracelet when dropping his net into the sea near the island of Riou. With sponge and detergent Bianco scrubbed at the bracelet. Letters began appearing, all in capitals: ANTOINE DE SAINT-

EXUPERY and next to that, CONSUELO. (Chelminski, April 2005: 48). The searching of the ruins of the plane took place. It was a long searching because the ruins were not found until 2004. In Rudolph Chelminski’s article, Last Flight of the Little Prince, Many theories aroused about the way he died. Some said that perhaps he was shot down by a German fighter, perhaps an engine gave out, or perhaps his oxygen system failed, causing him to pass out. But the checking records showed no claim of any P-38 shot down on July, 31, 1944, and there were no bullet holes in any of the debris on one engine. As to the oxygen theory, there would have been plenty of air to breathe when Saint-Exupery came down to lower altitudes.

The truth seems to be less heroic. The impact on pieces dredged up by the Minibex – stainless steel bent and accordioned - and the position of the supercharger valves indicate that Saint-Exupery’s last moment in flight was a near vertical power dive, with the engines at full speed. That would indicate that Saint-Exupery knew exactly what he was doing in that evening. (Chelminski, April 2005: 53) 57

The mysterious gone of the little prince and the mysterious death of Saint-

Exupery seem to give clue to people that Saint-Exupery had planned his death by forewarning it through the little prince’s way of going back to his planet. This was strengthened in his biography, as shown by the following lines. The mystery surrounding his death – so neatly presaged in The Little Prince, whose hero witnesses forty-four sunsets – has enhanced the myth. (Schiff, 2006: ix).

Despite of the mysteriousness of his cause of his death, his fans all over the world continued to dream from the magic that he created from the novel. For them, Saint-Exupery is alive in their heart and he was immortalized in the character of the little prince. They tend to preserve the mystery and would rather believe in what Saint-Exupery would say about himself through the little prince:

You will suffer. I will look as if I’m dead, but it won’t be true…” (p.78)

c. The Rose as Saint-Exupery’s wife, Consuelo

The next character that the writer believes to be one of the persons in

Saint-Exupery’s life is the rose. The rose in the novel is widely believed to be the representation of Saint-Exupery’s wife, Consuelo de Saint-Exupery. Saint-

Exupery had many nick names for Consuelo: she was his little girl, his sorceress, his Pimprenelle, his bird of the islands, but finally and most of all, he would call her “My Rose”, like the rose belonged to the little prince who he could not live with and could not live without. When they were together, Saint-Exupery would often wake her in the middle of the night to read to her what he had just written; when she was not there, in his letters he called her "My Rose", a term which 58

remind us of The Little Prince's rose. The rose was described to be someone who could catch the entire little prince’s attention. The rose was an adorable creature; and this was admitted by the little prince. But the little prince couldn’t contain his admiration. “How lovely you are!” (p.23). It is so with Consuelo. She was so beautiful that she captivated many men to fell in love with her. From the very first time of their acquaintance, Saint-Exupery could not help adoring her beauty. It was back then at Buenos Aires in 1930 when they first met. Benjamin Cremieux, a friend of both of them arranged it. As a matter of fact, Saint-Exupery had somehow introduced himself to her even before he knew that she was the one that

Cremieux promised to introduce to. His adoration toward her had grown by then.

He did not have a clue that Cremieux was going to introduce him with a beautiful woman, as expressed by him in the lines below.

He disappeared into the hotel barbershop and came back ten minutes later, smooth-checked and merry as a child. “Cremieux,” he shouted, “next time you invite a pretty woman you must let me know in advance!” (Saint- Exupery, 2003: 15)

The beauty of the rose had captured the little prince’s heart and this made him willing to do anything that she asked. He had an infatuation toward her. No difference with the rose, Consuelo also had a charm that could pull Saint-Exupery to her. Having to know her in just an hour, Saint-Exupery eagerly asked her to go flying with him to see the sunset from the sky. Consuelo tried to find an excuse to get rid of him saying that she had many friends waiting for her that she could not go with him. Despite of being disappointed, Saint-Exupery invited Consuelo’s 12 friends to get her agree to his invitation. 59

“I’m sending my chauffeur to pick up your friends so that they can come with us and watch the sunset.” “That’s impossible,” I said. “There are twelve of them.” “So what? I have all the airplanes you could want. In this country I’m…well, let’s say I’m the aviation boss. I’m in charge of the airmail service. Resistance was futile. He was in command. He made a phone call to my friends; we were all in his hands. (Saint-Exupery, 2003: 15)

When the rose was about to bloom, she prepared it carefully and delicately. She wanted to look just beautiful.

The little prince, who had watched the development of an enormous bud, realized that some sort of miraculous apparition would emerge from it, but the flower continued her beauty preparations in the shelter of her green chamber, selecting her colors with the greatest care and dressing quite deliberately, adjusting her petals one by one. She had no desire to emerge all rumpled, like the poppies. She wished to appear only in the full radiance of her beauty. (p.22)

As the rose, Consuelo was also someone who did not want to look imperfect. It was her nature since she was still a little girl that she wanted to beautify herself. In her memoir book, it told about her story when she was a little girl wanting to make herself the most beautiful dress in the world. She spent her childhood living in the Central American republic of El Savador.

She rubbed honey all over her naked body and ran into the tropical rain forest, where she was soon arrayed in a rustling, luminescent coat of live butterflies. In a variant on that story, she would say that she was born half- dead and to save her a sorcerer smeared her tiny body with honey, which attracted a swarm of bees whose stings awoke her to life. (Saint-Exupery, 2003: xii)

As the rose was so loved by the little prince, Consuelo was so much loved by Saint-Exupery. Despite of some affairs that he had, he never intended to leave her forever. Although Saint-Exupery spent most of his time away from her 60

because of his aviation life, they both always wrote to each other. Letters were always an essential element of what bound the two of them together; perhaps it was the most essential element. He would write to her when he was halfway across the globe and when he was in a café around the corner from their home.

The little prince valued his rose best when she was away from him and many planets laid between them, and so with the letters in Saint-Exupery’s marriage.

They were a way to rejoin their marriage when they were away from each other.

In one of his last letters, he told how he loved her.

“Consuelo,” thank you for being my wife. If I am wounded, I will have someone to take care for me, if I am killed, I will have someone to wait for me in eternity, and if I come back, I will have someone to come back to.” (Saint-Exupery, 2003: viii)

Although the rose was very proud, she actually loved the little prince. It was her pride that drew the little prince away from her. When the little was about to set to leave the planet, all the rose said was only cold words, because indeed she did not want the little prince to see her crying.

“I’ve been silly,” she told him at last. “I ask your forgiveness. Try to be happy.” “Of course I love you,” the flower told him. “It was my fault you never knew.” ‘…you made up your mind to leave. Now go.” For she didn’t want him to see her crying. (p.27)

Consuelo also loved Saint-Exupery despite of their problematic marriage.

Consuelo, in turn loved her husband too much to leave him. In The Tale of the

Rose which was a compilation of Consuelo’s diary published two decades after she died, it tells the story of a proud, charismatic woman who lived only for her 61

husband, following him from continent to continent as he deceived and neglected her, then pleaded for her return when he began writing again. In one of the last letters she wrote before he disappeared she said goodbye, as if she knew already that she was going to lose him for good. It shows how much she loved him.

“Good-bye for now. If I do not see you again on this planet, know that you will find me with the good Lord, waiting for you, truly you will. You are in me as the vegetation is upon the earth. I love you – you are my treasure, you are my world” Your wife, Consuelo, June 29, 1944 (Saint-Exupery, 2003: 307)

Consuelo was Saint-Exupery’s charm in writing and he himself was Consuelo unavoidable love. This was why Saint-Exupery, as the little prince would do, would always come back to his Consuelo, his rose.

There is a trait that both the rose and Consuelo shared. In a conversation, if it came to a moment where there was emotional crisis, she would cough to emphasize her words. (Saint-Exupery, 2003: xix). As for the rose, she would cough in order to make the little prince fulfill her demand, or to put him into remorse, and sometimes to humiliate him.

Humiliated at having let herself be caught on the verge of so naïve a lie, she coughed two or three times in order to put the little prince in the wrong. “That screen?” “I was going to look for one, but you were speaking to me!” Then she coughed again, in order to inflict a twinge of remorse on him all the same. (p.24) 62

d. The Fox as Saint-Exupery’s Best Friend, Leon Werth

The fox was the little prince’s best friend who had tamed his heart and taught him about so much wisdom. In the whole story, the little prince was told to have met many people with their many different characters in his journey to the earth, but he only made friends with two people, the fox and the aviator. This resembles Saint-Exupery’s life which was quite lonely. Although he was surrounded by many friends, indeed, famous ones, he still felt lonely. Only few best friend that he had in his life.

One of the few best friends of Saint-Exupery was Leon Werth. In fact, they were very different from each other although they both were writers. The little prince was also very different from the fox, human and an animal. As the little prince and the fox, Saint-Exupery and Leon Werth did not have much in common, it could be said that he was Saint-Exupery’s opposite in writing. Leon Werth was way older than Saint-Exupery. They met in 1931 and soon became best friends.

He was an anarchist; his father was a Jew and a left Bolshevik supporter.

The clues to say that the fox is actually the representation of Leon Werth are stated in the dedication page of the novel. There Saint-Exupery dedicated the novel The Little Prince for him as his best friend. As stated before that Saint-

Exupery was a man that did not like to forget friends (p.12), this dedication is fit given to Leon Werth, because he was the best friend of Saint-Exupery.

To Leon Werth

I ask the children to forgive me for dedicating this book to a grown-up. I have a serious excuse: this grown-up is the best friend I have in the world. I have another excuse: this grown-up can understand everything, even books for children. I have 63

a third excuse: he lives in France where he is hungry and cold. He needs to be comforted. If all these excuses are not enough, then I want to dedicate this book to the child whom this grown-up once was. All grown-ups were children first. (But few of them remember it.) So I correct my dedication: To Leon Werth, When he was a little boy. (p. iv)

In his dedication, Saint-Exupery said in a line referred to Leon Werth the reasons why he dedicated this book to him. He said:”he is the best friend I have in the world.” This represents the fox which was also the best friend of Saint-

Exupery when he just arrived on earth. The next reason is: “this grown-up understands everything, even books about children.” When the little prince befriended with the fox, he got to know that he was a wise creature who understood him best. He taught the little prince to value what he had. It is important when Saint-Exupery said that Leon Werth understood book about children. This shows that Leon Werth was somehow similar with him in their opinion about children. It is in line with the way of thinking of the fox that he could understand the little prince which was only a boy.

The third reason was that “he lives in France where he is hungry and cold, he needs cheering up.” By the time Saint-Exupery wrote this novel, Leon Werth was serving his country as a soldier in the frontline of World War II. The condition of the fox is likely to resemble Werth’s condition. When the little prince’s first met him, he was hiding under an apple tree, avoiding from being shoot by the hunter. He was hungry because he got no chance to go out from his burrow to hunt chickens, which ironically was raised by the hunters.

“People,” said the fox, “have guns and they hunt. It’s quite troublesome. And they also raise chickens.” (p.58) 64

The fox, as Leon Werth did, needed cheering up. He asked the little prince to tame him so that they could become friends. He had been living an uneasy life of being hunted by the hunters and he had been hungry so that he needed a friend to amuse him with his friendship. At the end of the World War II, which Saint-

Exupery did not live to see, Leon Werth said: “Peace without Tonio (as he would call him) isn’t entirely peace.” Saint-Exupery did not only dedicate one novel to

Werth, but also his other novel titled Letter to A Hostage, and three more other writings. CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

The Little Prince is a novel written by the famous French writer and aviator, Antoine de Saint-Exupery. It was first published in 1943, just a year before he died. The French version was published later in 1946. This novel somehow reflects the author’s life. The reflection of the author’s life was seen through the characters and the events in the story.

It was a story about a stranded pilot in the Sahara Desert that met an extraterrestrial creature whom physically was no different from the human. He was a little prince that came from a planet so called asteroid B-612. He was on a journey from planet to planet and finally he reached the earth. They then became best friend and the little prince shared his experiences of visiting some odd grown-ups in each planet he passed.

In this chapter, the writer will present the conclusion that covers the analysis chapter. The topic of the analysis is the reflection of the author’s life that can be seen from the characters in the story. In order to find the answer to the problem formulation proposed, the writer uses the theory of character and characterization. The writer believes that the biographical approach would best used to find the answer to the problem formulations.

The first thing to do was to find the characterizations of the major characters in the novel. They are the aviator, the little prince, the rose, and the fox.

65 66

The last is to relate the characterizations and characteristics to the life of the author.

The aviator was a grown-up that disliked the traits of grown-ups. He was discouraged at his age of six when he showed a drawing of him to the grown-ups only to find that they misinterpreted the drawing of a boa constrictor to a hat. The aviator was also a person who loves to fly. He had flown almost anywhere in the world. His being stranded in the desert could not but remind us to the plane crash of the author in 1935 in the desert. He was also someone who did not like to forget his friend. Here, the aviator was the representation of the author. They both were pilots, they both quite lonely because they had not had someone that really understand their imaginative mind, and they both did not like to forget friends, as the dedication of the novel bears witness.

The character of the little prince was in some ways represent the other side of the author. He was the ideal self that the author wanted to have. There are some similarities between them two. The little prince and Saint-Exupery loved to see stars and the sunset. The imaginative mind that Saint-Exupery owned was also depicted through the character of the little prince. Physically, the little prince resembles Saint-Exupery when he was a little boy. His hair was golden and he was also “king” who ruled the chateau Saint-Maurice-de-Remens, a home back when he was a little boy. Both Saint-Exupery and the little prince loved to travel.

The little prince intentionally visited several little planets on his journey, while

Saint-Exupery was a nomadic person. He lived in several countries in several continents. They both also had someone that they loved. Saint-Exupery loved his 67

wife, Consuelo, so much while the little prince was madly in love with his rose back in his planet. The complexity of the relationship between the little prince and the rose reflects the marriage problem of the author, and then the little prince’s journey from a planet to another reflects his nomadic life. He and his wife lived in several countries from a continent to another during their marriage. There are actually many similarities to bind the two of them.

The next character to reflect people in the author’s life was the rose, which was widely believed that she was the representation of the author’s wife,

Consuelo. They both were die hard kind of person. They both love the man that loved them in the way that could not be explained. They were so faithful to their lover. The characters of the fox was said to be the representation of the author’s best friend, Leon Werth. The clues are reflected in the dedication page on the novel. The author was actually reminding himself to Werth through the characterization of the fox.

This novel is unavoidably full of the memories of the author toward his childhood, as it represented by the characters of the aviator and the little prince and his memories of his best friend Leon Werth. It is also a way used by the author to forewarn the people around him about his death, yet also a way to immortalize his love to his wife, Consuelo through the character of the rose, someone that he would always come back to. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, Sixth Edition. Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, Inc. 1993.

Baldick, Chris. Criticism and Literary Theory; 1890 to the Present. London: Longman. 1990.

Barnet, Sylvan, Morton Berman, and William Burto. Literature for Composition: Essays, Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. London: Scott, Foresman and Company. 2005.

“Book Review: The Tale of the Rose.” Publishers Weekly. July 3, 2001.

Cate, Curtis. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: His Life and Times. London: Heinemann. 1970. (http://www.trussel.com/saint-ex/cate.htm) (3 April 2010).

Chelminski, Rudolph. “Last Flight of the Little Prince.” Reader’s Digest. April 2005. pp. 46-53.

Guerin, Wilfred L. Et al. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature: Fourth Edition. New York: Oxford University Press: 1999.

Hutton, Geoffrey. “Book Review: St. Ex Legend – even Death Contributed.” The Age Newspaper. August 28, 1971. (http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1300&dat=19710828&id=Tvc0 AAAAIBAJ&sjid=uZADAAAAIBAJ&pg=6994,5775901)

Kenney, William. How to Analyze Fiction. New York: Monarch Press, 1966.

Laar, Van de and Schonderwoerd N. An Approach to English Literature. Rotterdam: L. G. C. Malmberg. 1963.

Murphy, M. J. Understanding Unseen: An Introduction to English Poetry and the English Novel for overseas Student. London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd. 1972.

Rohrberger, Mary and Samuel H. Woods. Reading and Writing about Literature. New York: Random House. 1971.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine de. The Little Prince. New York: Harcourt, Inc. 2000.

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Saint-Exupery, Consuelo de. The Tale of the Rose. New York: Random House Trade Paperback Edition. 2003. http://www.amazon.com/Tale-Rose-Behind-Little-Prince/dp/0812967178 #reader_0812967178 (20 July 2010)

Saint-Exupery, Antoine de. Saint-Exupery: Chronologie. 2010. http://www.lepetitprince.com/#/chronologie/?lang=uk&t=1&id=5&inf=19 00&sup=1933)

Schiff, Stacy. Saint-Exupery: A Biography. New York: Owl Books and Henry Holt and Company. 2006. (http://www.amazon.com/Saint-Exupery-Biography-Stacy-Schiff/dp/0805 079130/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t#reader_0805079130) (31 July 2010)

Wellek, Rene and Austin Warren. Theory of Literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc. 1956. http://www.answers.com/topic/the-little-prince APPENDICES

Appendix 1: Summary of The Little Prince

The Little Prince was a story about an aviator and a little prince from the outer space. It was told from the point of view of the aviator as the narrator. His plane crashed in the desert and there he met the little prince who was having a journey in the earth. The little prince demanded him to draw him a sheep, but he instead drew him his only drawing that he knew best, the drawing of a boa constrictor from outside. The aviator was surprised that the little prince was able to understand that the drawing was actually a drawing of a boa constrictor swallowing an elephant. It was because none of the grown-ups he had shown the drawing to understood it.

They become friends since then. Little by little, the aviator began to know about the little prince’s life. That he was from a tiny planet so called asteroid

B612 and he had a rose that he loved very much. His journey was actually a getaway from his rose. She was a very proud woman and sometimes naïve. The little prince failed to understand the rose because of her pride. It seemed to him that the rose did not love him although she actually did. She just did not know how to express her love for the little prince.

The little prince’s escape took him to the neighboring planets. In each planet he met a grown-up with a very odd character. In the first planet, he met a king who craved for power and control. In the next planet he met a conceited man who sought for admiration of people. The third was occupied by a drunkard who

70 71

drank to forget that he was ashamed of drinking. In the fourth planet there was a businessman who was busy counting all the stars that he claimed to be his. The next planet lived a lamplighter. His planet was too tiny that he day and night came very fast made him had to light on and light out the light in almost every second.

The last planet before he went to the earth belonged to a geographer who claimed to know any information about any planet, ironically, he did not know much about his own planet.

The next planet was the earth. When he arrived to the earth, he happened to pass a garden which full with roses, just exactly like his rose back in his planet.

He was very upset because his rose told him that she was one of a kind in the whole universe, while in earth he found that roses are very common. Then he met the fox, who then became his best friend. His was a very wise creature. He asked the little prince to tame him which meant to create ties by getting to know him little by little. The process of taming eventually made the little prince realized that it was the time that he spent to care for her that made the rose special. The rose was successfully tamed his heart. Fell into remorse of leaving the rose, he went back to his planet after shared all his experiences to the aviator, who then also become his best friend because of the quality time they had with each other. The little prince tamed the aviator and vice versa. 72

Appendix 2: The List of Works by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

1. L'AVIATEUR, 1926.

2. COURRIER-SUD, 1929 - Southern Mail - filmed by Pierre Billon in 1936.

3. VOLE DE NUIT, 1931 - Night Flight - Yölento - film 1933, directed by Clarence

Brown, starring John Barrymore, Clark Gable, Helen Hayes, Myrna Loy, and

Lionel Barrymore.

4. TERRE DES HOMMES, 1939 - Wind, Sand, and Stars.

5. PILOTE DE GUERRE, 1942 - Flight to Arras.

6. LETTRE Á UN OTAGE, 1943 - Letter to a Hostage.

7. LE PETIT PRINCE, 1943 (illust. by Saint-Exupéry) - The Little Prince.

8. LA CITADELLE, 1948 - The Wisdom of the Sands.

9. LETTRES DE JEUNESSE, 1923-31, 1953.

10. CARNETS, 1953.

11. LETTRES À SA MÈRE, 1955.

12. UN SENS À LA VIE, 1956 - A Sense of Life.

13. LETTERS DE SAINT EXUPÉRY, 1960.

14. LETTRES AUX AMÉRICAINS, 1960.

15. ECRITS DE GUERRE, 1939-1944, 1982 - Wartime Writings. 73

Appendix 3: Letters and Pictures

In the memoir book of Saint-Exupery’s wife, The Tale of the Rose, published in 2003 featured

Saint-Exupery’s note and drawing to his wife, Consuelo one night when he waited up for her and she didn’t come home: “Consuelo, Consuelo, my love,” It says.

“Hurry back home…” (Saint-Exupery, 2003: 323).

Another drawing of Saint-Exupery to Consuelo. (Saint-Exupery: appendices) 74

Antoine de Saint-Exupery Consuelo de Saint-Exupery in 1930

Saint-Exupery (center, in flight gear) with his plane in Rio, 1928 (Saint-Exupery: appendices) 75

Saint-Exupery’s letter to his best friend, Leon Werth.

(http://www.lepetitprince.com/#/chronologie/?lang=uk&t=1&id=5&inf=1900&su p=1933)

Leon Werth