Assignments based on the fairy tale "The Little Prince. Interesting facts about the "Little Prince" What happened on the planet of the little prince

“After all, all adults were children at first, only few of them remember this.”

This book can be read in 30 minutes, but this fact did not prevent the book from becoming a world classic. The author of the story is the French writer, poet and professional pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupery. This allegorical story is the most famous work of the author. It was first published in 1943 (April 6) in New York. It is interesting that the drawings in the book were made by the author himself and became no less famous than the book itself.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exupery(French Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exup?ry; June 29, 1900, Lyon, France - July 31, 1944) - a famous French writer, poet and professional pilot.

To a summary of the story

At the age of six, the boy read about how a boa constrictor swallows its prey, and drew a snake that swallowed an elephant. It was a drawing of a boa constrictor on the outside, but the adults claimed it was a hat. Adults always need to explain everything, so the boy made another drawing - a boa constrictor from the inside. Then the adults advised the boy to give up this nonsense - according to them, he should have done more geography, history, arithmetic and spelling. So the boy abandoned a brilliant career as an artist. He had to choose a different profession: he grew up and became a pilot, but still showed his first drawing to those adults who seemed to him smarter and more intelligent than the rest, and everyone answered that it was a hat. It was impossible to talk heart to heart with them - about boas, jungles and stars. And the pilot lived alone until he met the Little Prince.

This happened in the Sahara. Something broke in the plane's engine: the pilot had to fix it or die, because there was only water left for a week. At dawn, the pilot was awakened by a thin voice - a tiny baby with golden hair, unknown how he got into the desert, asked him to draw a lamb for him. The astonished pilot did not dare to refuse, especially since his new friend was the only one who managed to make out in the first drawing a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant. Gradually it turned out that the Little Prince came from a planet called "asteroid B-612" - of course, the number is only necessary for boring adults who love numbers.

The whole planet was the size of a house, and the Little Prince had to take care of her: every day to clean three volcanoes - two active and one extinct, and also weed out baobab sprouts. The pilot did not immediately understand what danger the baobabs posed, but then he guessed and, in order to warn all the children, he drew a planet where a lazy person lived, who did not weed out three bushes in time. But the Little Prince always put his planet in order. But his life was sad and lonely, so he loved to watch the sunset - especially when he was sad. He did this several times a day, simply by moving his chair to follow the sun. Everything changed when a wonderful flower appeared on his planet: it was a beauty with thorns - proud, touchy and ingenuous. The little prince fell in love with her, but she seemed to him capricious, cruel and arrogant - he was then too young and did not understand how this flower lit up his life. And so the Little Prince cleaned his volcanoes for the last time, tore out the sprouts of baobabs, and then said goodbye to his flower, which only at the moment of farewell admitted that he loved him.

He went on a journey and visited six neighboring asteroids. The king lived on the first: he wanted to have subjects so much that he offered the Little Prince to become a minister, and the kid thought that adults were a very strange people. On the second planet lived an ambitious on third- drunkard on the fourth- a business man fifth- lamplighter. All adults seemed extremely strange to the Little Prince, and only he liked the Lamplighter: this man remained faithful to the agreement to light the lamps in the evenings and extinguish the lanterns in the mornings, although his planet was so reduced that day and night changed every minute. Don't be so small here. The little prince would have stayed with the Lamplighter, because he really wanted to make friends with someone - besides, on this planet you could admire the sunset one thousand four hundred and forty times a day!

A geographer lived on the sixth planet. And since he was a geographer, he was supposed to ask travelers about the countries where they came from in order to write down their stories in books. The little prince wanted to tell about his flower, but the geographer explained that only mountains and oceans are written in books, because they are eternal and unchanging, and flowers do not live long. Only then did the Little Prince realize that his beauty would soon disappear, and he left her alone, without protection and help! But the insult has not yet passed, and the Little Prince went on, but he thought only of his abandoned flower.

Earth was with food- a very difficult planet! Suffice it to say that there are one hundred and eleven kings, seven thousand geographers, nine hundred thousand businessmen, seven and a half million drunkards, three hundred and eleven million ambitious people - a total of about two billion adults. But the Little Prince made friends only with the snake, the Fox and the pilot. The snake promised to help him when he bitterly regrets his planet. And Fox taught him to be friends. Everyone can tame someone and become his friend, but you always need to be responsible for those whom you have tamed. And the Fox also said that only the heart is vigilant - you cannot see the most important thing with your eyes. Then the Little Prince decided to return to his rose, because he was responsible for it. He went to the desert - to the very place where he fell. So they met the pilot. The pilot drew him a lamb in a box and even a muzzle for a lamb, although he used to think that he could only draw boas - inside and out. The little prince was happy, but the pilot felt sad - he realized that he was also tamed. Then the Little Prince found a yellow snake, whose bite kills in half a minute: she helped him, as promised. The snake can return everyone to where he came from - she returns people to the earth, and she returned the Little Prince to the stars. The kid told the pilot that it would only look like death, so there is no need to be sad - let the pilot remember him, looking at the night sky. And when the Little Prince laughs, it will seem to the pilot that all the stars are laughing like five hundred million bells.

The pilot fixed his plane and his comrades rejoiced at his return. Since then six years have passed: little by little he was comforted and fell in love with looking at the stars. But he is always excited: he forgot to draw a muzzle strap, and the lamb could eat the rose. Then it seems to him that all the bells are crying. After all, if the rose is no longer in the world, everything will be different, but no adult will ever understand how important this is.

In 1943, the work of interest to us was first published. Let's talk briefly about the background of its creation, and then we will analyze it. "The Little Prince" is a work, the impetus for writing which was one incident that happened to its author.

In 1935, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was in a plane crash while flying in the direction of Paris-Saigon. He ended up in the territory located in the Sahara, in its northeastern part. Memories of this accident and the invasion of the Nazis prompted the author to think about the responsibility for the Earth of people, about the fate of the world. In 1942, he wrote in his diary that he was worried about his generation, devoid of spiritual content. People lead a herd existence. To return spiritual concerns to a person is the task that the writer set himself.

To whom is the work dedicated?

The story that interests us is dedicated to Leon Werth, Antoine's friend. This is important to note when doing the analysis. "The Little Prince" is a story in which everything is filled with deep meaning, including dedication. After all, Leon Werth is a Jewish writer, journalist, critic, victim of persecution during the war. Such a dedication was not just a tribute to friendship, but also a bold challenge by the writer to anti-Semitism and Nazism. In difficult times, Exupery created his fairy tale story. He fought against violence with words and illustrations, which he manually created for his work.

Two worlds in a story

Two worlds are represented in this story - adults and children, as our analysis shows. "The Little Prince" is a work in which this division is by no means done according to age. For example, a pilot is an adult, but he managed to save a child's soul. The author divides people according to ideals and ideas. For adults, the most important are their own affairs, ambition, wealth, power. And the child's soul longs for something else - friendship, mutual understanding, beauty, joy. The antithesis (children and adults) helps to reveal the main conflict of the work - the opposition of two different value systems: real and false, spiritual and material. It deepens further. After leaving the planet, the little prince meets "strange adults" on his way, whom he cannot understand.

Travel and dialogue

The composition is based on travel and dialogue. The general picture of the existence of humanity losing moral values ​​is recreated by the meeting with the "adults" of the little prince.

The protagonist travels in the story from asteroid to asteroid. He visits, first of all, the nearest, where people live alone. Each asteroid has a number, like the apartments of a modern high-rise building. These figures hint at the separation of people who live in neighboring apartments, but live as if on different planets. For the little prince, meeting the inhabitants of these asteroids becomes a lesson in loneliness.

Meeting with the king

On one of the asteroids lived a king who looked at the whole world, like other kings, in a very simplified way. For him, subjects are all people. However, the king was tormented by this question: "Who is to blame for the fact that his orders are impossible?". The king taught the prince that judging oneself is harder than judging others. Having learned this, one can become truly wise. The lover of power loves power, not subjects, and therefore is deprived of the latter.

The Prince visits the planet of the ambitious

An ambitious man lived on another planet. But vain people are deaf to everything except praise. Only the ambitious loves glory, and not the public, and therefore remains without the latter.

Drunkard's Planet

Let's continue the analysis. The little prince ends up on the third planet. His next meeting is with a drunkard who thinks intently about himself and eventually becomes completely confused. This man is ashamed of what he drinks. However, he drinks in order to forget about his conscience.

business man

The business man owned the fourth planet. As the analysis of the fairy tale "The Little Prince" shows, the meaning of his life was to find something that does not have an owner and appropriate it. A business man counts wealth that is not his: he who saves only for himself might as well count the stars. The little prince cannot understand the logic by which adults live. He concludes that it is beneficial for his flower and volcanoes that he owns them. But the stars do not benefit from such possession.

Lamplighter

And only on the fifth planet the main character finds a person with whom he wants to make friends. This is a lamplighter who would be despised by everyone, because he thinks not only of himself. However, his planet is tiny. There is no room for two. The lamplighter is working in vain, because he does not know for whom.

Meeting with a geographer

The geographer, who writes thick books, lived on the sixth planet, which was created in his story by Exupery ("The Little Prince"). The analysis of the work would be incomplete if we did not say a few words about it. This is a scientist, and beauty is ephemeral for him. Nobody needs scientific papers. Without love for a person, it turns out that everything is meaningless - and honor, and power, and labor, and science, and conscience, and capital. The little prince leaves this planet too. The analysis of the work continues with a description of our planet.

Little prince on earth

The last place the prince visited was the strange Earth. When he arrives here, the title character of Exupery's story "The Little Prince" feels even more alone. The analysis of the work when describing it should be more detailed than when describing other planets. After all, the author pays special attention in the story to the Earth. He notices that this planet is not at all home, it is "salty", "all in needles" and "completely dry". It's uncomfortable to live on it. Its definition is given through images that seemed strange to the little prince. The boy notes that this planet is not simple. It is ruled by 111 kings, there are 7,000 geographers, 900,000 businessmen, 7.5 million drunkards, 311 million ambitious people.

The protagonist's journey continues in the following sections. He meets, in particular, with the switchman directing the train, but people do not know where they are going. The boy then sees a merchant who sells anti-thirst pills.

Among the people living here, the little prince feels lonely. Analyzing life on Earth, he notes that there are so many people on it that they cannot feel like one. Millions remain strangers to each other. What do they live for? A lot of people are rushing in fast trains - why? People are not connected by pills or fast trains. And the planet will not become a home without it.

Friendship with the Fox

After analyzing Exupery's The Little Prince, we found out that the boy is bored on Earth. And the Fox, another hero of the work, has a boring life. Both of them are looking for a friend. The fox knows how to find him: you need to tame someone, that is, create bonds. And the main character understands that there are no shops where you can buy a friend.

The author describes the life before the meeting with the boy, which was led by the Fox from the story "The Little Prince". allows us to notice that before this meeting he only fought for his existence: he hunted chickens, and hunters hunted him. The fox, having been tamed, escaped from the circle of defense and attack, fear and hunger. It is to this hero that the formula "only the heart is vigilant" belongs. Love can be transferred to many other things. Having made friends with the main character, the Fox will fall in love with everything else in the world. The close in his mind is connected with the distant.

A pilot in the desert

It is easy to imagine a home planet in habitable places. However, in order to understand what a house is, it is necessary to be in the desert. Exupery's analysis of The Little Prince suggests this idea. In the desert, the main character met a pilot, with whom he then became friends. The pilot ended up here not only because of a malfunction of the aircraft. He has been enchanted by the desert all his life. The name of this desert is loneliness. The pilot understands an important secret: there is meaning in life when there is someone to die for. The desert is a place where a person feels a thirst for communication, thinks about the meaning of existence. It reminds us that the earth is the home of man.

What did the author want to tell us?

The author wants to say that people have forgotten one simple truth: they are responsible for their planet, as well as for those who have been tamed. If we all understood this, there would probably be no wars and economic problems. But people are very often blind, do not listen to their own hearts, leave their home, looking for happiness far from their relatives and friends. Antoine de Saint-Exupery did not write his fairy tale "The Little Prince" for fun. The analysis of the work carried out in this article, we hope, convinced you of this. The writer appeals to all of us, urging us to carefully look at those who surround us. After all, these are our friends. They must be protected, according to Antoine de Saint-Exupery ("The Little Prince"). This concludes the analysis of the work. We invite readers to reflect on this story for themselves and continue the analysis with their own observations.

You will find out who the Little Prince met on the planets by viewing the material.

"Little Prince" of the planet and their inhabitants

The little prince, having quarreled with the rose, goes on a journey, leaving the flower alone. The little prince travels to several planets where he meets different adults. Each planet is inhabited by one person. He looks with surprise at their spiritual values ​​and cannot understand them. “This is a strange people, adults!” he says.

1 Asteroid King
The king lived on the first asteroid. Dressed in purple and ermine, he sat on a throne, very simple and yet majestic.

2 Asteroid Ambitious
The ambitious man considered himself the most popular and famous. But his celebrity did not manifest itself in anything, since he lived on the planet alone. He wanted fame, honor, but did nothing for this: not a single good deed, not his own development.

3. Drunkard's Asteroid
The little prince stayed with the drunkard for a very short time, but after that he became very unhappy. When he came to this planet, the Drunkard sat silently and looked at the hordes of bottles lined up in front of him - empty and full.

4 Business Man's Asteroid
The fourth planet belonged to a business man. He was so busy that when the little prince appeared, he did not even raise his head.

5 Asteroid Lamplighter
The fifth planet was very interesting. She was the smallest. It only fit a lantern and a lamplighter. The little prince could not understand why on a tiny planet lost in the sky, where there are no houses or inhabitants, a lantern and a lamplighter are needed.

6 Geographa Asteroid
The sixth planet was ten times the size of the previous one. It was inhabited by an old man who wrote thick books.

7. Planet Earth
So the seventh planet he visited was Earth.
Earth is not a simple planet! There are one hundred and eleven kings (including, of course, Negro kings), seven thousand geographers, nine hundred thousand businessmen, seven and a half million drunkards, three hundred and eleven million ambitious people - a total of about two billion adults.

Travel map of the Little Prince

1st planet (10th chapter) - king;

2nd planet (11th chapter) - ambitious;

3rd planet (12th chapter) - drunkard;

4th planet (13th chapter) - a business person;

5th planet (14th chapter) - lamplighter;

6th planet (15th chapter) - geographer.

Having visited these six planets, the Little Prince rejects the false ideas of people about power, happiness, duty. And only at the end of his journey, enriched by life experience, he learns the true essence of these moral concepts. It happens on Earth.

Arriving on planet Earth, the Little Prince saw roses: “they all looked like his flower.” “And he felt very, very unhappy. His beauty told him that there was no one like her in the entire universe. And here in front of him are five thousand exactly the same flowers!” The boy realized that his rose was the most ordinary flower, and wept bitterly.

It was only thanks to the Fox that he realized that his rose was “the only one in the whole world.” The little prince says to the roses: “You are beautiful, but empty. You won't want to die for you. Of course, a random passerby, looking at my rose, will say that it is exactly the same as you. But she is dearer to me than all of you. After all, it is her, and not you, I watered every day. He covered her, and not you, with a glass cap ... I listened to her, even when she was silent. She is mine".

Love is a complex science, it turns out that it needs to be comprehended, it is necessary to learn love. The fox helps the Little Prince to comprehend this complex science, and the little boy bitterly admits to himself: “You should never listen to what the flowers say. You just have to look at them and breathe in their scent. My flower filled my whole planet with fragrance, but I did not know how to rejoice in it ...

It was necessary to judge not by words, but by deeds. She gave me her fragrance, lit up my life. I shouldn't have run. Behind these miserable tricks and tricks, I should have guessed tenderness ... But I was too young, I still did not know how to love.

So the Little Prince comprehends the science of love and the measure of responsibility to those whom he has tamed.

If we discard dry calculations, then the description of the "Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery fits in one word - a miracle.

The literary roots of the tale lie in a wandering story about a rejected prince, and the emotional roots lie in a childish view of the world.

(Watercolor illustrations made by Saint-Exupery, without which they simply do not release a book, since they and the book form a single whole fairy tale)

History of creation

For the first time, the image of a pensive boy appears in the form of a drawing in the notes of a French military pilot in 1940. Later, the author organically wove his own sketches into the body of the work, changing his view of the illustration as such.

The original image crystallized into a fairy tale by 1943. At that time, Antoine de Saint-Exupery lived in New York. Bitterness from the inability to share the fate of comrades fighting in Africa, and longing for beloved France seeped into the text. There were no problems with the publication, and in the same year, American readers got acquainted with The Little Prince, however, they took it coolly.

Along with the English translation came the original in French. The book reached French publishers only three years later, in 1946, two years after the death of the aviator. The Russian-language version of the work appeared in 1958. And now The Little Prince has almost the largest number of translations - there are editions of it in 160 languages ​​​​(including Zulu and Aramaic). Total sales exceeded 80 million copies.

Description of the work

The storyline is built around the travels of the Little Prince from the tiny planet B-162. And gradually his journey becomes not so much an actual movement from planet to planet, but a road to the knowledge of life and the world.

Wanting to learn something new, the Prince leaves his asteroid with three volcanoes and one beloved rose. On the way, he meets many symbolic characters:

• The ruler, convinced of his power over all the stars;
• An ambitious person who seeks admiration for his person;
• A drunkard who pours alcohol into the shame of addiction;
• A business man constantly busy counting the stars;
• the diligent Lamplighter who lights and extinguishes his lantern every minute;
• A geographer who never left his planet.

These characters, together with the rose garden, switchman and others, are the world of modern society, burdened with conventions and obligations.

On the advice of the latter, the boy goes to Earth, where in the desert he meets a crashed pilot, Fox, Snake and other characters. This ends his journey through the planets and begins the knowledge of the world.

main characters

The protagonist of a literary fairy tale has a childish spontaneity and directness of judgment, supported (but not clouded) by the experience of an adult. From this, in his actions, paradoxically, responsibility (attentive care of the planet) and spontaneity (sudden departure on a journey) are combined. In the work, he is an image of a correct way of life, not littered with conventions, which fills it with meaning.

Pilot

The entire story is told from his perspective. He has similarities with the writer himself, and with the Little Prince. The pilot is an adult, but he instantly finds a common language with the little hero. In a lonely desert, he shows a human reaction accepted by the norms - angry from problems with engine repairs, afraid to die of thirst. But it reminds him of childhood personality traits that should not be forgotten even in the most severe conditions.

fox

This image has an impressive semantic load. Tired of the monotony of life, the Fox wants to find affection. When tamed, he shows the Prince the essence of affection. The boy understands and accepts this lesson and finally understands the nature of the relationship with his Rose. The fox is a symbol of understanding the nature of affection and trust.

Rose

Weak, but beautiful and temperamental flower, which has only four thorns to protect against the dangers of this world. Undoubtedly, the hot-tempered wife of the writer, Consuelo, became the prototype of the flower. The rose represents the inconsistency and power of love.

Snake

The second key character for the storyline. She, like the biblical asp, offers the Prince a way to return to his beloved Rose with a deadly bite. Longing for the flower, the prince agrees. The snake puts an end to his journey. But whether this point was a real homecoming or something else, the reader will have to decide. In the fairy tale, the Snake symbolizes deceit and temptation.

Analysis of the work

The genre affiliation of The Little Prince is a literary fairy tale. There are all signs: fantastic characters and their wonderful actions, social and pedagogical message. However, there is also a philosophical context that refers to the traditions of Voltaire. Together with an uncharacteristic attitude to the problems of death, love, and responsibility for fairy tales, this allows us to classify the work as a parable.

Events in a fairy tale, like most parables, have some kind of cyclicity. At the starting point, the hero is presented as is, then the development of events leads to a climax, after which “everything returns to normal”, but having received a philosophical, ethical or moral load. This also happens in The Little Prince, when the protagonist decides to return to his "tamed" Rose.

From an artistic point of view, the text is filled with simple and understandable images. Mystical imagery, together with the simplicity of presentation, allows the author to naturally move from a specific image to a concept, an idea. The text is generously interspersed with bright epithets and paradoxical semantic constructions.

It is impossible not to note the special nostalgic tone of the tale. Thanks to artistic techniques, adults see in a fairy tale a conversation with a good old friend, and children receive an idea of ​​​​what kind of world surrounds them, described in a simple and figurative language. In many ways, it is these factors that "The Little Prince" owes its popularity to.