Life lessons from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and “The Little Prince”

Over 80 years ago, a prince fell to Earth and enchanted readers across the globe. On the magic of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and the lasting power of his iconic children’s novel.

I’m delighted to share today’s newsletter, with guest writer Nicole Miras.

I first discovered Nicole’s Substack through a TikTok. And I’m so glad I did. Her thoughtful essays on art history, literature, and folklore are so insightful and a delight to read. So, naturally, I was thrilled when she reached out about collaborating. I’ll be sharing a piece on her Substack soon, and for today, I hope you enjoy Nicole’s essay on The Little Prince as much as I did.

Please take the time to wander through her publication The Crossroads Gazette, where you’ll find endless inspiration, fresh perspectives, and a spark of magic.

Nicole Miras is a writer and the founder of The Crossroads Gazette, a Substack publication all about art, literature, history, and folklore. You can also find her on Instagram, where she creates videos on these topics and more for a wide audience. Her passion is helping others explore new roads of inquiry (and sparking their imaginations). 

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The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, published in 1943. Illustrated by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Little Prince begins with an illustration. When you view the image below, what do you see? 

The narrator tells us that he drew this as a young child after reading “a book about the jungle, called True Stories.” The book teaches him that boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, so he draws a boa constrictor who has just devoured an elephant. 

But upon sharing the first illustration to “the grown-ups” and asking if his drawing scared them, the adults reply, “Why be scared of a hat?” 

The Little Prince is a children’s book, and in my opinion, one of the greatest. Despite its intended audience, it has much to teach us “grown-ups” too. 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born on June 29, 1900 to an aristocratic family that would soon lose its fortune upon the early death of Antoine’s father. Later, his beloved brother François would die of rheumatic fever at the age of fifteen. Perhaps these tumultuous circumstances are what informs the outlook of his masterpiece, The Little Prince: a book that constantly reminds us to focus on what matters, and whose celebration of simplicity is evident on each page, down to the illustrations. 

Our narrator is a pilot who recounts an experience several years prior, when he crashed in the Sahara Desert. Lost in the sand dunes, he readies himself to make the necessary repairs to his plane when he encounters a little boy from outer space. The boy asks him to draw a picture of a sheep, and the pilot complies. His illustrations, which once confused the adults in his life, are no mystery to the little prince. The pilot includes a drawing of a crate, and the prince says that he can see the sheep inside. 

The little prince then recounts his journey to Earth, starting with the asteroid he calls home. On it are three tiny volcanoes (two active, one dormant), the dreaded baobab saplings that he must uproot (lest they take over the entire asteroid), and of course, his beloved rose. He reveals that while he loves his rose more than anything, petty conflicts drove him to leave. 

On his way to Earth, the little prince visits several other asteroids, each populated by adults who have lost touch with the beauty of living. Among them is a king who desperately wishes to be perceived as powerful, a man who wants only to be praised, and a businessman who wants to own every star in the sky. Saint-Exupéry brings these characters to life with his uncomplicated yet highly evocative illustrations, demonstrating to the reader the power of their own imagination when given a bit of prompting. 

When he reaches Earth, the little prince learns the true depths of love after befriending a wild fox. The fox remarks, “…if you tame me, we’ll need each other. You’ll be the only boy in the world for me. I’ll be the only fox in the world for you…” 

The prince realizes that what makes his rose special to him is the relationship they had built and care they had shown to each other, as he now experiences with the fox. Before parting, the fox leaves us with his secret, and perhaps the central lesson of the story: 

“It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.” 

It’s easy in our chaotic world to become like the men on the asteroids, each preoccupied with the material, not to mention the judgements of others. In fact, as I write this, I realize that perhaps this is what Saint-Exupéry was trying to convey to us—that one will never be truly happy when living for the opinions of an imaginary jury. It’s not that the little prince is uncaring—he cares deeply for his rose, his fox, and eventually, the narrator. But he is free from the scrutiny of others. He simply lives. 

When I revisited The Little Prince recently, I conducted some research on the life of the author. I knew that Saint-Exupéry was himself a pilot, and that he had served in World War II. What I didn’t know is that after Nazi Germany invaded France, Saint-Exupéry escaped to the United States and worked to convince American political leaders to join the Allies. It was this time in the early 1940s that he wrote The Little Prince, and the book’s gentleness and championing of empathy are all the more poignant in this context. 

Soon after The Little Prince was published in 1943, Saint-Exupéry returned to his squadron in northern Africa and resumed fighting for the Allies. He died on July 31, 1944, when his plane was shot down by the German military during a mission in occupied France. In his book, the little prince longs to return to his asteroid, and while I won’t share exactly how (in case you’d like to read it), the prince does mysteriously disappear at the end. It’s devastating to see the parallels—Saint-Exupéry was, in a way, finding his way home. He was a man of extraordinary courage, firmly tethered to the things that really mattered. 

The Little Prince holds another lesson for us, young and old alike: how to deal with grief. The pilot is devastated to part ways with the little prince, but the prince tells him that he’ll hear his laughter whenever he looks at the stars, and years later, the pilot indeed hears his friend in the music of the night sky. 

“And at night I love listening to the stars. It’s like five-hundred million little bells.”

The final image is a minimalistic desert landscape—two curved lines create the sand dunes, and a single star hovers overhead. That is the magic of Saint-Exupéry: with a simple drawing, he captures a vast universe. As the pilot tells us, “I’ve drawn it one more time in order to be sure you see it clearly.”

Maybe one day, I’ll be able to fully embody the lessons of The Little Prince and quiet my busy mind. For now, I practice while I go on my walks, and I stop to notice the ephemeral wildflowers, the blooming dogwoods, the sound of the creek full from a day’s rain. 

And perhaps as night falls, if I listen closely, I too might hear the bells.