Old Myths in a New Story: Antoine de Saint-Éxupéry’s The Little Prince

Abstract

Antoine De Saint-Éxupéry’s The Little Prince, first published in 1943, is usually thought to be just a children’s book teaching lessons of friendship and responsibility. Going beyond this first impression, this paper explores narrative elements in the plot like an individual’s origin in the stars, celestial journeys, the descent to earth and a later ascent and return to one’s own star. Such passages, the paper will suggest, resemble Plato’s (427–348/7 BCE) view of the heavens and can therefore be understood as retelling tales about humans’ relationship to the sky. Coming from a depth psychological approach, the term ‘myth’ will be used in the sense of an archetypal pattern describing experiences that many, if not all, humans make in life. Accordingly, some passages of the story will be related to Saint-Exupéry’s personality and biography.