About love and responsibility

---- After reading “The Little Prince”

I’ve heard “The Little Prince” when I was a pupil, from a variety of the excellent writings. I just know that it is a fairy tale, which narrates a lonely and sad little prince. I didn’t read this book until I became a freshman.

That was a sun-shining day. I went to my friend’s dormitory and browsed his shelve for something interesting to read. He said to me, “I consider that one book is suitable for you to read,” Then he took me a brand-new, hard cover binging book, “’The Little Prince’, is a book worthy of treasuring and tasting.”

Afterwards I began my journey for reading “The Little Prince”. This book is trilingual (Chinese, English and French), but I’ve just read the Chinese. Now, I reread this book in English as a result of my English homework. Although I have met a large amount of new words and indigestible long sentence, I benefited a lot. For example, when I compared the translation to the original, I found that it should be improved the accuracy of the translation.

It seems say too far, let’s come back to “The Little Prince”. The story’s narrator is a pilot who cannot found someone absolutely understood him, because the adults’ world was too much emphasis on reality and vanity. He told us about his dreamy

meeting with the little prince due to failure of aircraft forced to land in the Sahara Desert.

The mysterious little prince came from another small planet named “B-612”. The author told us that the story about the little prince and his pretentious, babyish beautiful rose. Besides, why the little prince left his planet, which planets did he visit before the earth? According to his words, we know the little prince’s adventures on six planets; we know he met the nominal king, the conceited man, the drunkard, the businessman, the geographer, the fox, and so on.

Of course, there was the author himself. The author and the little prince processed their precious friendship in the desert. When the little prince left the earth, the author felt so sorrow and always missed their good time together. Because of this, he wrote this novel in order to remember his real friend — the little prince.

When I read this book, I first saw a picture which looked like a hat. But the author told us that was not a hat but a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. I was so surprised! Then I had to admit, I was getting old. As the growth of the age, I more and more close to the group-ups world, include the reality instead of fantasy, the inertial thinking instead of innovative thinking.

Therefore, after hearing the little prince’s words - the sheep in

the box was exactly the way he wanted, apart from feeling astonished, I was ashamed of my poor imagination. Because I just saw a common box, I didn’t imagine what was in it. Perhaps the group-ups would have the same thoughts as me as a result of that we always take something for granted.

So, I was greatly agreed with the idea of this book not only for the children but also for the adults. The little prince told me so much as well as impress me so much. Now, let’s seek naive which we lost, with move.

The little prince was lonely and sad, because his planet was too small and he was the only one in it. He said, “You know — one loves the sunset, when one is so sad…” That was to say, the day he saw the sunset forty-four times he felt so sorrow. That was beyond others comprehension.

Until the flower appeared did his life changed. That was a beautiful and effeminate rose, which different from others that have only one ring of petals appeared in the grass in the morning and have faded peacefully away by night. The flower cast her fragrance and her radiance over the little prince. But at that time, he didn’t know all the affection that lay behind the flower’s poor little stratagems. “Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her…” he said. People always do such

things that having lost just know how to cherish it and how it precious for us.

Left his planet, the little prince successively traveled for six stars, and ran into some unreasonable adults, the conceited king, the mercenary businessman, the pedantic lamplighter… Thereupon he constantly regretted, “The grown-ups are very strange.” In here, the author not only reflected these adults’ emptiness, blind and folly, but also revealed their loneliness.

In the last place, he came to the earth. On the earth, he successively met the snake, the flower with three petals, the railway switchman, the merchant, and the garden with five thousand roses, and of course the fox.

Just because of this fox, he finally solved his puzzle about love from his flower. The fox told him, “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world.”

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is

invisible to the eyes…It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important…Men have forgotten this truth. But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose…”

Love means responsibility and compassion. It is the love that makes our life meaningful. As the fox said, “If, for example, you come at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o’clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am!”

Get rid of the loneliness, love makes us understand the sorrow and pain, with sweet expectation, our life also become meaningful and full of sentiment.

Realized these, he went back and looked again at the roses. He found that they were not at all liked his roses because they haven’t tamed him and he has not tamed them. “You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passer-by would think that my rose looked just like you – the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the

screen; because it is she that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.”

Finally, he realized that what made the desert beautiful was that somewhere it hid a well; the house, the stars, the desert – what gave them their beauty was something that was invisible. As he said, “The thing that is important is the thing that not seen… It is just as it is with the flower. If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are abloom with flowers…”

Hence, the author understood, in this world, it’s nothing serious for a little sheep ate a flower, but for the little prince, was just liked “all his stars will be darkened”.

In the end, in the first anniversary of his departure from his planet, the little prince let the snake bit him, so that he could “get rid of the body’s weight” and returned to his B-612 planet as well as at his proud and fragile flower’s side.

The little prince left, who liked the little match girl flied to her grandma in the world without cold and hunger, ran to his forever love.

The author always missed him, and their happy time. He said,

“What moves me so deeply, about this little prince who is sleeping here, is his loyalty to a flower – the image of a rose that shine through his whole being like the flame of a lamp, even when he is asleep…” Actually, the little prince is a cherished child.

When he left, in order to decrease the author’s sorrow, he told him, “And when your sorrow is comforted time soothes all sorrows you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure… And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, ‘Yes, the stars always make me laugh!’”

What a naive and virtuous child!

When I saw the last page, I deeply felt how the author missed the little prince. I want to ask the little prince - did you hear your friend’ call in the B-612 planet? Did you feel the deepest missing from your friend?

When it comes to the end of the little prince, opinions are widely divided. Some people consider that he had despairingly died on the earth because he couldn’t go back to his planet. On the contrary, the others believe that he went back to his planet and led a happy life with his beloved rose.

As I see it, I strongly insisted that the little prince returned to his planet. Because he had ever promised to his rose, he would return home. Besides, after hearing the fox’s words, he realized that he was responsible for his rose, forever, for what he has tamed.

Perhaps when he returned his planet, he would say to his rose, “Dear, I have come back… Maybe I don’t understand enough for you, but, I love you!”

Yes, it is such a simple reason, just for I love you, so I return here with you!

When I look at the starry sky at night, I strongly believe that the little prince is putting his flower under the glass globe, playing with his little sheep in a small plain star, smiling happily, without sorrow and loneliness.