Quarantined at home due to the epidemic, I read Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince" again, and the dedication at the beginning of the book was written to dedicate the book to the child that adults used to be, and said that all adults were originally children, but few people remember. However, I will say that this book has to be dedicated to adults, to adults who have been children.
The plot of "The Little Prince" is simple, the little prince lives on a very small planet, and his daily job is to clean the three volcanoes on the planet and uproot the baobab tree seedlings that will burst the planet when they grow up. One day, when he was pulling out the baobab seedlings, he found a rose seedling, he watered her and removed the caterpillars, the rose was carefully dressed and finally bloomed her beautiful light, I believe that the little prince knows that he loves roses, but the rose is vain and proud, she does not admit how much she depends on the little prince's care for her, she said that she can use the four thorns on her body to resist the tiger's claws, and at the same time let the little prince cover the glass cover for her to block the wind, the little prince felt hurt and decided to leave the rose, Leave the small planet you live on. When leaving, he watered the rose one last time, he wanted to cry, said "goodbye" to the rose twice, rose finally admitted that she also loved the little prince, but she was too proud to keep the little prince in the end, so the little prince left his planet with a flock of migrating migratory birds.
The little prince who left his planet traveled to several other planets, including Earth, and he met the lonely king, who never ordered others to do what he could not do, and who said that authority must first be based on reasonableness; He met a vain man who always wanted others to adore him, thinking that he was the best, rich, and intelligent man in the world; He met a businessman who wanted to have all the stars just to count them over and over again; He also meets an alcoholic and a very busy but not for his own helm, some wise, some greedy, but none of them can become friends with the little prince, and finally he comes to Earth, meets foxes and snakes, and meets the author who fell into the desert due to a plane failure.
The little prince has always thought that the roses on his planet are unique, but after he came to Earth, he saw a garden, there were five thousand roses in the garden, they looked exactly like his roses, which made the little prince very disappointed, while feeling that his roses were not unique, and worried that his roses knew that they were ordinary and sad, at this time the fox appeared, the little prince wanted the fox to play with him to solve the loss, the fox was happy to be friends with the little prince, but it asked the little prince to "domesticate" it, It wants the little prince to sit away from it first, and then sit closer to it every day, so that it can slowly observe the little prince and accept him, it wants the little prince to come to him at a fixed moment every day, and it can look forward to that beautiful moment that is different every day. After the "domestication" ceremony, they became friends, that is, in the process of this "domestication", the fox guided the little prince to recognize his heart, so that the little prince understood that an ordinary thing will become special because of his own efforts, as Lin Qingxuan said, a grass is insignificant, but because it is watered by himself, it becomes noble. The fox also told the little prince that domesticated things are responsible for each other, and always responsible for what they domesticated, at this time the little prince realized that he and the rose are also domesticated by each other, for him, his rose is different because of his care, even if she is proud and vain, he is still responsible for his rose, here it can be said that the little prince's awakening interprets the true meaning of love, that is, responsibility, dedication and tolerance. The fox finally told the little prince a secret, that is, he can only see things with his heart, not with his eyes, because important things cannot be seen clearly with his eyes, so the little prince knows how to read her dependence and need for him through the language of rose pride. This secret of the fox can be said to be the essence of the whole book, it expresses the simple philosophy of looking at the essence through the phenomenon, although this philosophy is simple, it is not easy to do, and once you can do it, you can master the operating rules of all things in the heavenly way, and you will understand that no matter how complicated the world is, in fact, the longitude and latitude behind it are unchanged, which can be described as the simplicity of the road. The little prince was reluctant to leave, and at this time he was even more worried about his roses, and he was even willing to die for her, because he said to the five thousand roses in the garden: "You are beautiful, but also empty, because no one will die for you", and his roses, because he watered her, removed caterpillars, covered the glass cover, were more important to him than all the roses combined. Many people who have read The Little Prince will ask what the final ending of the Little Prince is, in fact, the foreshadowing has been laid here. Why the little prince suddenly mentioned the word death here can also be echoed in the book, because before the little prince came to Earth, he also met a man who claimed to be a geographer, he told the little prince that the geography he wrote was about mountains and rivers, it was an eternal thing, the little prince mentioned his roses to him, and the geographer told the little prince that the flowers were "fleeting", and "fleeting" meant that there was a danger of rapid destruction, so the little prince realized that he left in anger, How wrong it was to leave the fragile rose that could have been fleeting alone on the planet, in fact, at this time, the little prince had vaguely understood that without his rose would definitely "die", so he regretted it very much. In the guidance of the fox later, he became more and more aware of the importance of roses to him, and it should be in this process that he slowly developed the idea of dying for roses due to guilt and responsibility. In short, I was very surprised when I first read this, because I felt strongly that the little prince's love for roses was so deep, and at the same time I was faintly disturbed, and I felt that the ending of this fairy tale might not be good.
A strong sense of responsibility and guilt tormented the little prince, and this is when the little prince met the author. The author is an adult, but he insists on remaining innocent in the adult world, and he always uses two paintings as a sign of recognition with people with the same soul. The author's two paintings are actually paintings of a python devouring an elephant, except that in one painting the python does not open its belly, so it looks like a hat, while in the other painting the python opens its belly and you can see the elephant in the belly of the python. In the adult world, the author always uses the first painting to test others, no one sees that it is a snake that devours an elephant, the author is disappointed, only the little prince, he easily points out that it is a snake that devours an elephant, so he easily becomes friends with the author. The little prince asked the author to draw a sheep for him, he imagined bringing the sheep back to his planet to help him gnaw the seedlings of the baobab tree, and he was worried that the sheep would also eat his roses, so the author promised to help him draw a muzzle for the sheep, so that after the sheep gnawed the seedlings of the baobab tree, the little prince put a muzzle on it, and it could not gnaw the rose.
The author drew sheep and muzzles for the little prince, and the little prince also accompanied the author to find a well in the desert, the little prince decided to go back to his planet, the snake had told the little prince that it could send him back to his planet, and the little prince also knew that it was impossible to return to his planet after being bitten by a snake, because he himself had warned the author that snakes were very bad, but he still firmly chose to agree with the snake's idea, because if he could not return to his planet, he could no longer be responsible for his roses, or his roses were "fleeting", No matter what the outcome, it will make him lose the motivation and meaning to live. He made an excuse for himself, he said to the author: "You understand. The road is too far. I can't carry this shell, it's too heavy. "- pretending that he abandoned his shell just to return to his planet, with the sheep and muzzles that the author painted for him.
This fairy tale is over, the ending is really so sad and sad, uncomfortable, through a strong understanding of all the truth but too late vicissitudes helpless, so I don't want to dedicate it to children, even if it is dedicated to those adults who have been children, I think it is still necessary to dedicate it to all adults who have been children, may we cherish it when we are in time, and have the ability to bear it when it is too late, because bearing, after all, is still too heavy for children.