The Little Prince

A special friend

“But it will be like an old abandoned shell. There is nothing sad about old shells.” So writes Antoine de Saint Exupery in The Little Prince, and it might be one of the interesting and soulfulness sentences I have ever read in a book.

The Little Prince says this to his friend before he is going to die. He tries to explain that there is nothing sad about his death because he will go to a better place, the small planet he came from. His body would just be too heavy to carry it with him and he doesn’t want his friend to be sad because they have something to share forever: their friendship. ”And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend.”

Everything the Little Prince says has a rare clearness and truth in it, which fascinated me from the beginning. The story he tells about leaving his planet to discover the universe and how much he misses his rose (“Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her”) and his sunsets which he was used to see how often he wants a day. “One Day, I saw the sunset forty-times” is a story of his way to his death. Every single word he says shows his fight against his own fear of his forthcoming death and his strong belief in that he will live a good life on his planet again! Even in his last moments of life he shows a unbelievable strength and he still cares about his friend who came with him to be there for him: “I shall look as if I were dead; and that will not be true…”

Of course, I found some tears on my cheeks after finishing the last sentence because the book is absolutely sad, but for me it was a good sadness. How dolorous his death might have been for me, this extraordinary little man in his big mantle really brought some more happiness in my life. I felt happy for him because he could go back to the place he loved so much, to his rose, his sunsets and his volcanoes- two active and one extinct. I hoped he would be happier there. But I also knew that I would miss him with his understanding helpful words, his curiosity and his simply honesty. Not like a real person but in a special way one just could miss someone like The Little Prince. He seemed to understand the world without using too many words or difficult expressions. He just told the truth, which we –the people of this world- tend to forget, over our selfishness, our monotonous lives and all the problems we struggle with. We tend to forget that there is more than money and like the fox said: “ There is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more.” This is certainly not completely true but the world goes more and more in this direction and it should be our mission to stop this, because what would one do without a friend? A friendship will be –like the fox says- “ as if the sun came to shine on my life,” and a friend is important for everyone.