Tuesday, July 02, 2013

And in the vein of things whimsical







I first read The Little Prince (by Antoine de Saint-Exupery) when I was about eleven, and I didn't really get what the story was about. It seemed a little fragmented, this strange boy stumbling across random people and asking questions. There was a fox, and a lamp-lighter and a pilot and no climax or discernible storyline. As someone who read Nancy Drew mysteries and Roald Dahl, The Little Prince made very little sense.

But then I re-read it again during my junior college days, and fell head over heels in love with it. I don't understand why, but some part of it brought me back to the days when I tried to make sense of the story. I see now how these precious little encounters shaped the little prince and how they reflect the sort of characters in the world we live in. There are some universal truths in the story, but they don't come through as lectures. I just can't describe how magical the story is.

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