On a flying occasion on December 30th 1935, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his mechanic-navigator crashed in the Libyan desert during an attempt to break the speed record in a Paris-to-Saigon air race to win a prize of 150,000 francs. They faced rapid dehydration in the desert heat. Their sole supplies consisted of some grapes, two oranges, a madeleine, a pint of coffee in a battered thermos and half a pint of white wine in another. They also had a hundred grams of ninety percent alcohol, a hundred grams of pure ether, and a small bottle of iodine. Both of them experienced auditory hallucinations and, following those, more vivid hallucinations. Luckily, on the fourth day they were there, a Bedouin on a camel found them and administered a native rehydration treatment that saved their lives. The Little Prince begins with a pilot being stranded in the desert, which is a direct reference to Saint-Exupéry’s near death experience. This sparked the theory that The Little Prince was actually a summary of one of Saint-Exupéry’s hallucinations.

The Little Prince is written from the perspective of the Pilot, a man who finds himself stranded in the middle of a desert with a small child called the Little Prince, who tells the Pilot the story of his journey to Earth. The Prince’s tale begins on his star with his rose. Although he and his rose love each other, the Prince decides to leave his planet. On his journey towards Earth, he encounters many adults who all confuse and astound the prince, each one of them not thinking of anyone or anything but themselves. The pilot also learned when he was a child that adults lacked understanding and imagination. All of them were blind to what was truly important. One of the most famous quotes from this book is “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” which is the main moral of the story. The book tells us that adults are blind while looking with their eyes; they aren’t looking with their hearts. Children, on the other hand, see what is truly important as if it is obvious. When the Little Prince first met the Pilot in the desert, he asked the Pilot to draw him a sheep. No matter how many different sheep the Pilot drew, the Prince wasn’t satisfied by any of them, until finally the Pilot drew a simple box and claimed that the sheep was inside. To his surprise, the Prince loved the drawing and could see the sheep inside the box. It was then that the Pilot realized, with great sadness, that he had grown up.

When I was about eight years old, my sister and I were in a musical production of The Little Prince. Many songs that I will never be able to forget were crucial parts of the performance as well as multiple humorous, sad and philosophical scenes that made the audience laugh, clap and cry. The cast as well as funds for the production were small, so the role of the Little Prince was played by almost everyone in the cast. Because I was the youngest and also the lightest of the Little Princes, I ended up having the “Snake Bite scene”, because my body (when limp) was the easiest for the Snake to lift and carry away. At the end of the book, the Little Prince lets the Snake kill him because he wants to go home-back to his star and his rose. The first time I read the book, when I was a young child, somehow I didn’t grasp the fact that the prince died. Only when I re-read it when I was older did I understand. Saint-Exupéry is trying to show you that you can choose to see one or the other--or both. Did the Little Prince really just die or did he finally make it back home? This is how the author subtly but geniusly showed me the difference between my present self and my child self-- he showed me that I had grown up. It is only now that I understand why the audience was crying so much when I played dead on stage when I was eight. Everyone was a child, once.

Both my sister and I have remained close friends with the majority of the original Little Prince cast, as it was our first official musical production and the memories kept all of us together. Frantically changing costumes in the dark and trying to predict what scene came next could only explain half of the entire experience; I still remember the smell of the changing room and the muffled sound of music and dialogue coming from the stage. “To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world…” In this scene, the Fox is first meeting the Little Prince and talking about how they don’t mean much to each other. However, if they learn to love each other, they will be more important than they ever could be, just like the Prince’s rose. When the Prince first came to Earth, he found an entire garden of roses. This distraught him very much when he realized that his rose was alike so many others and wasn’t special like he had thought. “I thought that I was rich, with a flower that was unique in all the world; and all I had was a common rose.” It is from the Fox that he learns that his love for his rose is what makes it special, and it isn’t like the thousands of other roses in the world; it is unique and important. When the Little Prince lets the Snake kill him at the end of the book, he says goodbye to the Pilot, who, before, was a stranger but eventually was something the prince cared about.

This book was written in 1942 and was officially published in 1943. The author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, was a French writer, poet, aristocrat, journalist and pioneering aviator. Saint-Exupéry both wrote and illustrated The Little Prince which is translated into 300 languages and dialects and has been sold 140 million times worldwide. It was voted the best book of the 20th century in France, selling nearly two million copies annually. It’s even been made into a Netflix original movie which became the most successful French animated film abroad of all time. It has changed million’s of people’s perceptions on love and youth, mine included. Although it means something different for everyone, for me it means that moment when I embodied a child going home. It means the first time I was on a real stage. It means old friends and it means what inspired child me to start drawing. I won’t ever forget the sheep in the box.