Ma. Jessa Li A. Carilla
BSEd 3-1
TFri 4:00-5:30
A Reflection Paper On The Little Prince
It was six years ago when I first met the story of “The Little Prince” in a form of play. We were all required to watch it and make a reaction paper afterwards. I was still in first year high school then and at that time; I wasn’t able to understand the whole story. All I knew was that there was a little prince who was searching for something – meeting different kinds of people. I was excited to know that Ma’am Tenasas let us watch the movie version of the story because I doubted if it is different from the one I have watched. Fortunately, it was really the one written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. By the time I watched it, I was able to understand the whole story and pictured out exactly how it went. I also realized that it was really meant for children and grown-ups as well that we can learn many things from this story. The childhood of the Pilot and the little prince’s life were almost the similar that they see things clearly and that they perceive things the way they should be. They know what they are looking for but it was the people around them that hinder them for doing so. They are also into a search. They want to seek something that would make them feel that they have achieved something. This was evident when the Pilot became so thirsty and they have to find a well in the desert. The little prince led the way and they were able to find it after a hundred miles. There they quench their thirst and also to bath and enjoy the abundance of water. What makes us realize about the role of the children in the story was that “grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again.” It is clearly presented in the story about how a child and a grown-up view their way of life. If we will try to observe the reality; children talk about what matters most in life unlike the grown-ups who would talk about the factual things.
There were a lot of symbolism used in the story so if one has not been acquainted yet to this story, they would think of the movie version as weird. If we will just understand each event, it would mean something more than the literal context. As to how I understood the story, I think the little prince represents childhood, pilot as
adulthood, the six planets inhabited by the king, general, businessman, drunkard, historian and geographer as our exploration of things in life, the snake, as a temptation that leads us to a trap, the fox, as our true friends, the oasis as treasure, the rose as the people important to us and the little prince’s planet as our own lives.
The most significant part of the movie was the scene of the little prince and the fox wherein the little prince was able to tame the fox. I appreciated their scene so much especially when they danced and laughed together. It is one of the scenes which is relevant because we learned many things about the fox just like when he told the little prince, “It is the time you have developed to tour rose that makes your rose so important.” But the line that striked me most from the fox was “One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” It means that we can’t attain happiness by the material things that we own but by what we truly feel that makes us more human. The most important things in life are those that we can’t see by our naked eyes and no material thing can value its worth. That is why there is also a saying similar like this – “there are things money can’t buy that would make us happy.” So, what are these important things? These are the love we show to others, the bonding moments we share with our loved ones, the jokes that we laugh at with our friends and many other things that would make us feel happy deep inside our hearts. In short, it is when people bond and that is the happiest thing in life.
I think the intention of the author is to make us realize the essence of human life and human nature. He wants his audience to realize that children and grown-ups are never the same even though grown-ups undergone childhood. He also wants us to picture out how one would search for things that would make him happy. In this human race, we meet different kinds of persons and that there are some who are like from the six planets wherein we can’t find out what we are looking for in them and they are just acquaintance, while the fox as those strange people who become our friends and some are like snakes who will just fool us.
Our life comes only once so we should cherish it and enjoy it to the fullest. We should not also forget that we should do good things to others.
