little prince

i drove to starbucks this morning and finished the little prince. i found the first half of the book (maybe the first three quarters) exceptionally brilliant. but the last section felt rushed. it seemed like he was trying to say something--trying to create some last minute allegory--but the execution was all wrong. like i said: rushed.

it was too vague: the prince dies (he asks a snake to bite him) and then his body disappears. what i want to know is: why the prince wanted to die? he could have returned to his planet or gone somewhere else and continued his whimsical trip to different places around the universe. fist: the book says he went to earth (by his own volition). then: it says he crash-landed.

maybe it's a matter of inconsistency: i can understand if the prince felt trapped with no way of getting home--this would explain why he wanted to die and why he asked the snake to kill him. but, until the end, there is no mention of the prince being trapped or earth-bound. the book does however say that he is perplexed by the way grown-ups and people on earth live their lives--and maybe a little saddened (seeing the monotony of life on earth through foreign eyes and not being able to make sense of it--one of the things i liked about the book and something i've seen done to similar affect in other works--making human actions look alien or odd). but the assumption (at least by this reader) is that he can always leave at any time whenever he so chooses.

it could be that the author was looking for a place to end the story (death being the easiest way to end any narrative) and muddled his way through something for the sake of brevity or because he lacked the imagination to carry it into more interesting places. but i get the feeling he was trying to say something which didn't come out quite as clearly as he might have hoped--or maybe it was purposefully cryptic (like some inside joke). my initial impression (and this goes along with the allegory theory) is that the prince was a modern fantastical stand-in for the savior figure: like jesus christ but set against new-age-y ideas and preoccupations, evidenced by the message of beauty-in-the-intangible first related to the prince by the fox then imparted to the narrator (like jesus, a life-lesson related in parabolic form). this theory makes sense to a certain extent: the prince knows that he is going to die and tells the narrator not to come back so that he won't have to see him suffer. he says that he will appear dead but that he won't be dead (this is not true) because what the narrator will see is just a shell of a person (the physical remains) and not the eternal soul which the prince says inhabits the stars forever. it's a lot like the crucifixion story: in both cases, jesus and the prince know beforehand that they are going to die--not at their own hands but by the hands of others, so to speak. in the prince's case, he asks the snake to bite him. thus: infecting him with poison. this particular snake (the narrator says) can kill a man in thirty seconds. jesus on the other hand did not ask to be crucified but like the prince knew that it was going to happen--it was prophesied. so the question becomes: was the prince's death a suicide? by extension: is the author suggesting that, if there is truth to this allegory, that jesus' death was a suicide (since he knew that he would be killed but did nothing to prevent it)?

it's something i've thought about before: jesus is the son of god. even if he wasn't, he knew he was going to die. he knew that he would be crucified. but why being all-powerful did he do nothing to stop it. probably because he knew that it was god's will--that it had to happen. in the prince's case, though: it didn't have to happen. his will to die came out of nowhere and was never fully explored. i can understand why he'd want to die but i still need more contextual proof to bolster my argument. the author makes it look like a rash decision on the part of the prince, since it's still plausible that he could just as easily return to his home planet: b612. it just seems like a waste of life. which is what the crucifixion of jesus seems like, at first, until we're told that jesus died and suffered all he did and arose from the dead so that his story would be a testament to anyone needing further proof that he was indeed the messiah--his miraculous return and foreknowledge of his death tells us that at the very least he was extraordinary: and whether or not you believe any of this actually happened: the story adds up to something self-contained and logical, unlike the little prince which comes across as an ambitious attempt to convey many different powerful ideas even if they contradict each other in places.

which leads me to my wikipedia research: apparently the death of the little prince was inspired by the death of the author's little brother when the author's brother was still very young. his dying words were: don't worry. i'm all right. i can't help it. it's my body. this declaration mirrors the prince's assertion that his body is merely a shell containing something invisible (which as the fox says is where all things essential reside). so maybe this cancels out my messiah theory. but why on earth all this death? why not have the prince return home to his rose whom he's spent half the novel learning to appreciate on a more authentic level? what point is the author trying to get across?

despite it's glaring inconsistencies and non-sequiter plot holes and meandering tangents, the little prince is still highly enjoyable. i'm glad i bought it on impulse from amazon. it delivers the way i expected other children's classics like a wrinkle in time (which i did not enjoy at all) to deliver: that is without all the preachiness and enough inventiveness and playfulness to keep me engaged the whole way through.