The Prince, The Pilot, and the Man Who Was Both

May 24, 2024

Literature

Nesha Ruther

Writer at Bond & Grace

The philosophical children’s story The Little Prince has enchanted, captivated, and left an indelible mark on readers for over 80 years. Crash-landing in the Sahara, a pilot encounters a little prince from an asteroid barely bigger than himself.

The Prince regales the pilot with tales from his homeland, the sunset, the baobabs, and the beautiful rose that he falls in love with, but ultimately has to leave. The Prince departs his asteroid and travels around the galaxy to learn the nature of life before ending up in the Sahara.

The book, while meant for children, addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, and loss in mature and candid, albeit fantastical ways. The story culminates in the Little Prince ultimately deciding to return to his home planet. He tells the pilot that it will look like he has died, but in reality, his body is just too heavy to take with him. The Prince allows himself to be bitten by a snake, but when the pilot looks for his body he cannot find it.

The Little Prince became a global phenomenon and is the most widely translated text in the world, second only to The Bible.

While The Little Prince is a highly fantastical text, many of the metaphors the book uses are grounded in the real life of its author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Known to his colleagues and friends as Saint-Ex, he was born in 1900 in Lyon to a minor noble family.

His father died when he was four and Saint-Ex and his four siblings were raised by their doting mother, splitting time between their extended family’s beautiful chateaus in Saint-Maurice-de-Remens and Saint Tropez.

Saint-Ex had a beautiful childhood, and it was his family’s magical and gorgeous homes that allowed him to create “an interior world of roses and fairies.”

He later said, “This world of childhood memories will always seem hopelessly more real than the other.”

Unfortunately, childhood magic has to end, and for Saint-Ex it did with the death of his younger brother Francois from rheumatic fever. Francois was only fifteen, and his big brother cared for him until the moment he passed.

Saint-Ex’s later descriptions of this formative event closely mirror the Little Prince’s death at the end of the novel. “He did not cry out, he fell gently as a young tree falls,” he wrote.

After largely unsuccessful stints in the Navy and at architectural school, Saint-Ex turned his eyes to the sky. He had always been passionate about air travel, attempting to invent a flying bicycle at age 12. As an adult, he wrote to his mother “mamam, if you only knew the irresistible thirst I have to fly.”

In 1922 that dream became a reality when Saint-Ex earned his pilot’s license, and shortly after he took a position with the French mail-carrying airline that later became known as Aéropostale.

At the time, French colonies spanned the globe, and the job involved flying for long stretches of time over hostile terrain in rudimentary planes that had no radio to call for help and even more shockingly, no brakes!

In 1930 Saint-Ex met the woman who would prove to be the muse for the Prince’s beloved Rose, Consuelo Gomez Carrillo.

Originally from El Salvador, Consuelo’s small island with its three volcanos is believed to be the inspiration for the Prince’s asteroid home. Much like the Prince and his Rose, Saint-Ex and Conseulo had a tumultuous relationship. They loved each other deeply, but also fought constantly and their marriage was punctuated with significant periods of infidelity.

As Saint-Ex’s writing career took off with the 1931 publication of his second book, Night Flight, Conseulo grew increasingly jealous of his fame and was often vindictive towards him. Biographer Alain Vircondelet told Agence France-Presse: “Consuelo had an exuberant temperament, and [Saint-Exupéry] was a great depressive. His multiple affairs were not the sign of a Don Juan, but of an emotional failing.”

In the mid-1930s, while on an airmail run from Paris to Saigon, Saint-Ex crashed in the Sahara, inspiring the opening to The Little Prince.

Thankfully, he was mostly unharmed, but had to walk for miles to find help, before being rescued by a passing Bedouin.

With the onset of World War II, Saint-Ex traveled to New York to help bring attention to the French war effort. He intended to stay for two weeks but during that time Paris fell to the Germans and Vichy France was established. Saint-Ex was devastated, falling into a deep depression. He had survived another plane crash 2 years prior in Guatemala and was abusing alcohol to help manage his pain. Depressed, physically ill, and in exile, Saint-Ex refused to learn English and became increasingly isolated. It was during this period of profound hardship that he wrote The Little Prince.

The Prince’s journeys through the galaxy, only to eventually choose to return home, must have been a balm for the man watching his beloved country be ravished by war and occupation. The book was published in 1943 (and while banned by Vichy France) it proved to be a global success. Saint-Ex was desperate to help in the war effort and finally left the U.S. to join a French squadron in Algeria.

While initially being grounded due to his alcoholism and significant injuries, Saint-Ex, ever infatuated with the sky, was determined to fly.

He harassed his superiors until they reinstated his flight abilities. Ultimately this decision would prove tragic.

In 1944, one year before the conclusion of the war, Saint-Ex went missing on a reconnaissance mission over Southern France. It took 60 years to find the remains of his plane, and, in an eerie parallel to the Little Prince, his body has never been found.

In his book Wind, Sand, and Stars Saint-Ex wrote: “One doesn’t risk one’s life for a plane any more than a farmer ploughs for the sake of the plough. But the airplane is a means of getting away from towns and their bookkeeping and coming to grips with reality…It plunges a man directly into the heart of mystery.”

This insatiable desire to explore the heart of mystery is not only what made Saint-Ex a French war hero, and “the most metaphysical of aviators,” as TIME dubbed him, but an incredible writer.