The Little Prince
Author: [France] Saint-Exupéry
The book "The Little Prince" by the famous French writer Saint-Exupéry , since its publication in New York in 1943, it has been translated into 42 languages, reprinted many times, and remains popular for a long time. "The Little Prince" has been adapted into plays and movies many times and has been performed continuously. "The Little Prince" has been selected into textbooks in many Western countries and has become a must-read book for teenagers. People can't help but ask, what is the reason for the phenomenon of "The Little Prince"?
I think that a passage in the review of Saint-Exupéry by the French writer André Maurois may be a pertinent answer to the above question: "The Little Prince" in its poetic lightness Sadness also contains a whole set of philosophical ideas. "This children's book for adults contains symbolic meanings everywhere. These symbols seem both clear and obscure, so they are particularly beautiful."
This is an ordinary fairy tale, with neither bizarre plots nor earth-shattering feats. The story unfolds in a plain narrative. The charm of this exquisite work "The Little Prince" lies in its rich connotation and extensive symbolic meaning, whether explicit or implicit in its symbolic meaning.
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As the French literary critic A. Eward pointed out: "Symbol is an art form that not only satisfies our desire to describe reality, but also satisfies our The desire to transcend the boundaries of reality. It gives us something concrete, and at the same time it gives us something abstract.” Saint-Exupéry used the art form of symbolism to create poetry in The Little Prince. The general artistic conception not only criticizes the current ills and lashes out the ugly phenomena in the world, but also "shows the essence of life in a continuous flow of experience", trying to point out a path leading to the "ideal realm" of human civilization.
1. The symbols used in "The Little Prince" are rooted in reality. Saint-Exupéry looked at life from the perspective of a philosopher and studied long-term accumulated psychological experiences of universal significance across the boundaries of time and space. This fairy tale is a concentrated expression of the author's philosophy of life extracted and sublimated from life. As Camus pointed out when talking about myth: "Like the greatest artists, Melville based his symbols on concrete rather than on the material of dreams. The creation of myth is the characteristic of genius. , simply because he placed myths in solid reality rather than in the clouds of imagination.”⑤ Saint-Exupéry placed fairy tales in rich real life, allowing symbols to take root in reality. .
Saint-Exupéry was first of all a man of action and a distinguished pilot, and secondly a writer. His works are not only descriptions of his personal experiences, but also summaries of his life experiences. He risked his life, overcame difficulties that would be unbearable for ordinary people, and flew among the clouds and mists above the Andes; he flew across the Atlantic Ocean and the Sahara Desert, and traveled to and from the European and American continents. He was once on the verge of death in the desert, struggled hard, and was finally rescued; in the face of a powerful enemy, in order to save the country and the people, regardless of his disability, he continued to fight tenaciously against fascist planes in the sky until he died for his country. Saint-Exupéry was "a pioneer in opening up routes, adding splendor to the wings of France with his perseverance and indomitable spirit." "Every word he wrote rang true." His fairy tales and their symbols All rooted in reality. However, some of them are straightforward, some are subtle, and some have profound meanings.
The first type of symbol in the text is straightforward and transparent. Such as: the lonely king who is obsessed with power (a symbol of political power), the greedy philistine who blindly pursues money (a symbol of financial power), the pedantic and unrealistic geographer (a symbol of spiritual power), and the vanity of self-admiration. The lamplighter who is obsessed with the old-fashioned way and lacks independent thinking but has a practical spirit, the switchman who is loyal to his duty, and the blind railway passengers are all common characters in our daily lives. They originate from real life and have outstanding characters. After processing and refinement by the author, they have more symbolic and universal significance.
The second type of symbol requires careful consideration and repeated thinking to understand its meaning. Such symbols are drawn from life and are familiar to us. For example: What do "snake", "fox", "flower", "echo", "water and well" etc. symbolize? What’s the moral? If you stay on the surface, you will be confused; if you think about it, you can, as Levi Strauss said, organize these symbols in the "diachronic horizontal combination axis" and the "chronic vertical combination" "Axis", then we can understand the true meaning of these symbols: "Snake" is the god of death with great power and can solve all mysteries; "Fox" is the purest and wisest animal. The author tells the secret of communication through his mouth: in order to make friends, one must be "tamed", establish connections, establish a sense of responsibility, and "see everything with the heart"; "flower" is a symbol of love and happiness, she is on the earth , weaving connections, believing that man is a rootless creature with only false freedom, and is nothing more than a plaything of wind and fate. She is delicate and willful, and needs the comfort of friendship and the watering of love; "Echo" reflects the loneliness and fear of living on earth. The earth is as empty as a desert, without the warmth and true feelings of the world, which makes people feel lost. "Water and well" has a profound meaning: "water" can quench the pilot's thirst and is the source of his life, but for the little prince, "water" is only his spiritual food. After a long journey in the desert, they finally discovered and "awakened" a "well". The pilot was "baptized" with this pure magical water in the desert. The water "comforted his heart like a gift" and he was purified of his thoughts.
The third type of symbol has a deep meaning. It is necessary to examine the fairy tale from the perspective of the author's era and cultural background, and then dig deeper to understand the profound meaning hidden in the fairy tale text. Meaning.
1) The little prince is a magical character with the superhuman ability to travel among the stars at will. With blond hair and a robe, he has neither nationality nor home. He lives outside human society and is not bound by any stereotypes. He is a legendary child image of being carefree and innocent. He is the incarnation of the eternal virgin angel, the source of wisdom and truth, and the symbol of the author's ideal.
In the little prince’s untainted and pure inner world, there is no distinction between rich and poor, no temptation of money, and no room for hatred or greed. He is full of curiosity and a desire to explore the outside world. After a chance encounter with a pilot in the desert, he kept asking questions about friendship, money, "responsibility of love", values ??and other issues, and he must " I will give up only after asking for the truth to come out.” Because of this, the Little Prince is more likely to resonate in the hearts of children and adults who were children all over the world. It is accepted and recognized by them, and it has a more universal symbolic and aesthetic significance.
2) The difficulty in communication or understanding between the little prince and the pilot is not made up out of thin air. This is precisely the objective contradiction that the author strives to reveal. Isn't this "difficulty in communication" a symbol of the incompatibility between children's inner world and adults' inner world?
The complexity of the world and the cruelty of reality made the little prince unable to get satisfactory answers to the questions he asked. For this reason, he felt melancholy and uneasy, and even cried sadly. Emotional fragility is certainly the reason for his sadness, but more importantly, it is the conflict, collision and even incompatibility between his persistence in pursuing the truth and the absurd world. The little prince's values ??are very different from those of adults and cannot be compared with each other. The spiritual world of children, represented by the little prince, is pure and flawless, full of true love and warmth. The relationships between people, people and things, or things and things are direct and natural, untainted by modern civilization and free from the constraints of "adults' logic". As for the spiritual world of adults, it is full of "rules and regulations" and traces of pollution from modern civilization. Adults succumb to the pressure of the outside world and the temptation of money, and some are even selfish and have lost their true feelings.
The phantoms that appear from time to time in the desert symbolize a beautiful world and a future where there is no conflict, no war, no contradiction, and full of friendship and human love. But whether the phantom can be turned into reality is still an unknown to the author. But the author always believes that the desert "is the most beautiful place in the world."
4) "The Death of the Little Prince" symbolizes the fusion of a pure heart and the holy desert, symbolizes the transcendental liberation from complicated and absurd interpersonal relationships, and symbolizes a new life moving toward beauty. The beginning of the future. At the same time, the "Death of the Little Prince" is also a symbol of the death of thousands of "geniuses like Mozart" on the earth who have been destroyed by "modern civilization" full of the smell of copper. Initially, the little prince was tempted by the outside world and began a magical journey in search of truth. After going through various tests, he found that everything was absurd and dirty, and there was darkness and distorted hearts everywhere. For this reason, he was discouraged and passed away in a sad and nostalgic, peaceful and quiet atmosphere. For him, staying on earth has completely lost its meaning. Because the beautiful things in the human world are destroyed all the time; true love and friendship are destroyed all the time; purity and nobility are defiled all the time. The death of the little prince means his categorical rejection of the polluted and devastated human society.
To sum up, the book "The Little Prince" contains many all-round and multi-dimensional symbols. They are both relatively independent and interconnected. A straightforward symbol is natural and vivid, with a sharp meaning; an implicit symbol is thought-provoking and thought-provoking; a profound symbol is both close and distant, and is profound and difficult to understand. Due to historical reasons and limitations of thought, the author is unable to express his thoughts directly, so his insights can only be expressed through symbols with profound meanings.
2. How is the symbolic meaning of "The Little Prince" expressed?
First of all, the symbolic meaning and symbolic function of "The Little Prince" are completed through the fairy tale structural model. The author inherited the conventional "narrative paradigm" in the cultural traditions of Greece and Rome, and used the form of fairy tales as a carrier to let "heroes travel far away from home" to "pursue miracles"⑾. The "super language" of history and super culture uses symbolic techniques to show the beginning, end and turning point of life experience, conveying "the essence and meaning of life experience to others", and thereby defending the distorted and destroyed values ????in human civilization. Levi Strauss compared myth to a symphony score, which has both horizontal melody and vertical harmony. The same is true for fairy tales. Their meaning, or symbolic meaning, is established in a criss-crossing network of relationships.
The narrative structure pattern of "The Little Prince" is as follows:
The hero travels far away from home: he travels to seven planets successively.
Pursuit of miracles: The hero goes through trials and temptations, fails to achieve his goal, and continues to move forward.
Find the answer: It wasn’t until I came to Earth that I finally found the answer.
Ending: The hero's "death".
Examine the mechanism in which the above narrative structure model works in a symbolic sense from the perspective of fairy tale rules. In terms of general structure, the above model is similar to the model proposed by Propp in "Morphology of Fairy Tales": the hero goes away - seeks miracles - experiences hardships - the ending; but it is different: here the little What the prince is persistently pursuing is neither a "miracle" nor an instrument with boundless magic power, but a certain moral and philosophical secret - the true meaning of life - in the spirit of "breaking the casserole and asking for the truth"⒂; here, there is no What kind of demon kings and giant dragons have three heads and six arms? The little prince encountered all kinds of ridiculous people with various psychological defects or problems, which disappointed him. He had to continue to explore other planets; in the end, On the earth, I found the answer to the question: "Love is a responsibility." Friendship and happiness can only be found through "communication." "Only the heart can see into everything, and the naked eye cannot see the essence of things."
The concrete images here are merely shells or packages of symbolic meanings, which have both perceptual and spiritual content. For example: "Flower" is the shell of "true love", "friendship", and "human love"; "water" is the carrier of "the source of life", "spiritual food", and "the holy liquid that purifies the soul and performs baptism". They contain broader and deeper meanings, thus embodying the "principle that the part represents the whole."
There is a strong contrast between the plain narrative and concise expression techniques and the profound symbols and profound philosophy. This is the result of the author's careful conception, and it is also the reason for his success. The material of fairy tales exists in the author's mind. Only the appropriate form of expression can make Saint-Exupéry a poetic fairy tale author and make "The Little Prince" a novel that guides readers to participate in writing activities and supplements the author's undirected work. A writable work that states the intention⒆.
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Do the many symbols in "The Little Prince" still have practical significance? The answer is yes. In 1939, Saint-Exupery devoted himself to the anti-fascist battle. Between battles, he picked up his pen and used it as a sword and gun. If "War Zone Pilot" is the most powerful response to "Mein Kampf", then "the proposition of 'love is a responsibility' in 'The Little Prince' is put forward at the right time in a highly concise way. An idea of ??urgency and far-reaching significance.” This was “no less than a call to arms” at the time.
Half the world has passed since the book "The Little Prince" was first published in the United States in 1943. However, many of the symbols in the book are still very vital today, because the various typical characters with psychological defects that were spurned by the book "The Little Prince" are far from disappearing, and the ugly phenomena criticized in the book are far from being eliminated. This is exactly what Saint-Exupéry hoped that people "should not treat this work lightly
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