What is the character of the little prince? Encyclopedia of fairy-tale characters: "The Little Prince"

Image The Little Prince. The Little Prince is a symbol of man - a wanderer in the universe, looking for hidden meaning things and your own life. The soul of the Little Prince is not shackled by the ice of indifference and deadness. Therefore, a true vision of the world is revealed to him: he learns the value of true friendship, love and beauty. This is the theme of the “vigilance” of the heart, the ability to “see” with the heart, to understand without words. The little prince does not immediately comprehend this wisdom. He leaves his own planet, not knowing that what he will look for on different planets will be so close - on his home planet. The little prince is a man of few words - he says very little about himself and his planet. Only little by little, from random, casually dropped words, does the pilot learn that the baby has arrived from a distant planet, “which is the size of a house” and is called asteroid B-612. The little prince tells the pilot about how he is fighting with the baobab trees, which take such deep and strong roots that they can tear apart his little planet. You need to weed out the first shoots, otherwise it will be too late, “this is a very boring job.” But he has a “firm rule”: “...get up in the morning, wash your face, put yourself in order - and immediately put your planet in order.” People must take care of the purity and beauty of their planet, together protect and decorate it, and prevent all living things from perishing. The little prince from Saint-Exupery's fairy tale cannot imagine his life without the love of gentle sunsets, without the sun. “I once saw the sun set forty-three times in one day!” - he says to the pilot. And a little later he adds: “You know... when it becomes very sad, it’s good to watch the sun go down...” The child feels like a part of the natural world, and he calls on adults to unite with it. The kid is active and hardworking. Every morning he watered Rose, talked with her, cleaned the three volcanoes on his planet so that they would give more heat, pulled out weeds... And yet he felt very lonely. In search of friends, in the hope of finding true love, he sets off on his journey through alien worlds. He is looking for people in the endless desert that surrounds him, because in communication with them he hopes to understand himself and the world around him, to gain the experience that he so lacked. Visiting six planets in succession, the Little Prince on each of them encounters a certain life phenomenon embodied in the inhabitants of these planets: power, vanity, drunkenness, pseudo-learning... The images of the heroes of A. Saint-Exupery's fairy tale “The Little Prince” have their own prototypes. The image of the Little Prince is both deeply autobiographical and, as it were, removed from the adult author-pilot. He was born out of longing for little Tonio, who was dying within himself - a descendant of an impoverished noble family, who was called in the family “Sun King” for his blond (at first) hair, and in college was nicknamed Lunatic for his habit of looking at the starry sky for a long time. The phrase “The Little Prince” itself appears, as you probably noticed, in “Planet of People” (like many other images and thoughts). And in 1940, in between battles with the Nazis Exupery I often drew a boy on a piece of paper - sometimes winged, sometimes riding on a cloud. Gradually, the wings will be replaced by a long scarf (which, by the way, the author himself wore), and the cloud will become asteroid B-612.

Familiar not only to children, but also to adults.

Saint-Exupery "The Little Prince" main characters

The main characters of the story “The Little Prince” are:

• The pilot - the story is told on his behalf
• A little prince - main character, who perceived it completely differently the world. He was able to appreciate all its diversity and noticed the unusual in the most inconspicuous.
• Fox is a symbol of wisdom and knowledge of life
• Drunkard
• Lamplighter
• Baobab
• Dealer
• Rose is a symbol of beauty
• The snake is a symbol of wisdom and immortality
• Switchman
• Geographer
• An ambitious person is a person who strives for an honorable position and craves fame.
• King
• Turkish astronomer
• Business man
• Flower with three petals

A little prince- the main character of the work, a child living on asteroid B-12, symbolizes for the writer purity, selflessness, and a natural vision of the world.

Fox- this is a very important character, he helps to reveal the very essence of the philosophy of the entire fairy tale, helps to look into the very depths of the story. And it guides the plot.

The tamed fox and the insidious snake are important, plot-shaping heroes of this work. Their importance in the development of the narrative cannot be overestimated.

Characteristics of the Little Prince

The Little Prince is a symbol of a person - a wanderer in the universe, looking for the hidden meaning of things and his own life. The soul of the Little Prince is not shackled by the ice of indifference and deadness. Therefore, a true vision of the world is revealed to him: he learns the value of true friendship, love and beauty. This is the theme of the “vigilance” of the heart, the ability to “see” with the heart, to understand without words. The little prince does not immediately comprehend this wisdom. He leaves his own planet, not knowing that what he will look for on different planets will be so close - on his home planet. The little prince is a man of few words - he says very little about himself and his planet. Only little by little, from random, casually dropped words, does the pilot learn that the baby has arrived from a distant planet, “which is the size of a house” and is called asteroid B-612. The little prince tells the pilot about how he is fighting with the baobab trees, which take such deep and strong roots that they can tear apart his little planet. You need to weed out the first shoots, otherwise it will be too late, “this is a very boring job.” But he has a “firm rule”: “...get up in the morning, wash your face, put yourself in order - and immediately put your planet in order.” People must take care of the cleanliness and beauty of their planet, together protect and decorate it, and prevent all living things from perishing. The little prince from Saint-Exupery's fairy tale cannot imagine his life without the love of gentle sunsets, without the sun. “I once saw the sun set forty-three times in one day!” - he says to the pilot. And a little later he adds: “You know... when it becomes very sad, it’s good to watch the sun go down...” The child feels like a part of the natural world, and he calls on adults to unite with it. The kid is active and hardworking. Every morning he watered Rose, talked with her, cleaned the three volcanoes on his planet so that they would provide more heat, pulled out weeds... And yet he felt very lonely. In search of friends, in the hope of finding true love, he sets off on his journey through alien worlds. He is looking for people in the endless desert that surrounds him, because in communication with them he hopes to understand himself and the world around him, to gain the experience that he so lacked. Visiting six planets in succession, the Little Prince on each of them encounters a certain life phenomenon embodied in the inhabitants of these planets: power, vanity, drunkenness, pseudo-learning... The images of the heroes of A. Saint-Exupery's fairy tale “The Little Prince” have their own prototypes. The image of the Little Prince is both deeply autobiographical and, as it were, removed from the adult author-pilot. He was born out of longing for little Tonio, who was dying within himself - a descendant of an impoverished noble family, who in his family was called the “Sun King” for his blond (at first) hair, and in college he was nicknamed Lunatic for his habit of looking at the starry sky for a long time. The phrase “The Little Prince” itself appears, as you probably noticed, in “Planet of People” (like many other images and thoughts). And in 1940, during breaks between battles with the Nazis, Exupery often drew a boy on a piece of paper - sometimes winged, sometimes riding on a cloud. Gradually, the wings will be replaced by a long scarf (which, by the way, the author himself wore), and the cloud will become asteroid B-612.

Characteristics of Rose “The Little Prince”

Rose was capricious and touchy, and the baby was completely exhausted with her. But “but she was so beautiful that it was breathtaking!”, and he forgave the flower for its whims. However, the Little Prince took the empty words of the beauty to heart and began to feel very unhappy. A rose is a symbol of love, beauty, and femininity. The little prince did not immediately discern the true inner essence of beauty. But after a conversation with the Fox, the truth was revealed to him - beauty only becomes beautiful when it is filled with meaning and content. “You are beautiful, but empty,” continued the Little Prince. - You won’t want to die for your sake. Of course, a random passerby, looking at my Rose, will say that she is exactly the same as you. But to me she is more precious than all of you...” Telling this story about Rose, little hero He admits that he didn’t understand anything at the time. “We were to be judged not by words, but by deeds. She gave me her scent and illuminated my life. I shouldn't have run. Behind these pitiful tricks and tricks one had to guess the tenderness. The flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young and didn’t know how to love yet!”

The prototype of the capricious and touching Rose is also well known; this is, of course, Exupery’s wife Consuelo - an impulsive Latina, whom her friends nicknamed “the little Salvadoran volcano.” By the way, in the original the author always writes not “Rose”, but “la Aeig” - flower. But in French it is a feminine word. Therefore, in the Russian translation, Nora Gal replaced the flower with a Rose (especially since in the picture it is really a Rose). But in the Ukrainian version there was no need to replace anything - “la fleur” easily became “kvggka”.

Characteristics of the Fox “The Little Prince”

Since ancient times in fairy tales, the Fox (not a fox!) has been a symbol of wisdom and knowledge of life. The Little Prince's conversations with this wise animal become a kind of culmination in the story, for in them the hero finally finds what he was looking for. The clarity and purity of consciousness that had been lost returns to him. The fox reveals to the baby the life of the human heart, teaches the rituals of love and friendship, which people have long forgotten and therefore lost friends and lost the ability to love. No wonder the flower says ABOUT PEOPLE: “They are carried by the wind.” And the switchman is in a conversation with the main character, answering the question: where are people rushing? notes: “Even the driver himself doesn’t know this.” This allegory can be interpreted as follows. People have forgotten how to look at the stars at night, admire the beauty of sunsets, and enjoy the fragrance of the Rose. They submitted to the vanity of earthly life, forgetting about the “simple truths”: the joy of communication, friendship, love and human happiness: “If you love a flower - the only one that is no longer on any of the many millions of stars - that’s enough: you look at the sky and you feel happy." And it is very sad for the author to say that people do not see this and turn their lives into a meaningless existence. The fox says that for him the prince is only one of thousands of other little boys, just as he is for the prince only an ordinary fox, of which there are hundreds of thousands. “But if you tame me, we will need each other. You will be the only one for me in the whole world. And I will be alone for you in the whole world... if you tame me, my life will seem to be illuminated by the sun. I will begin to distinguish your steps among thousands of others...” The fox reveals to the Little Prince the secret of taming: to tame means to create bonds of love, the unity of souls.

Regarding Fox, there were many disputes about prototypes and translation options. This is what translator Nora Gal writes in the article “Under the Star of Saint-Ex”: “When “The Little Prince” was published in our country for the first time, there was a heated debate in the editorial office: Is the Fox in the fairy tale or the Fox, again, feminine or masculine? Some people believed that the fox in the fairy tale was Rose’s rival. Here the dispute is no longer about one word, not about a phrase, but about the understanding of the entire image. Even more, to a certain extent, about understanding the entire fairy tale: its intonation, coloring, deep inner meaning - everything changed from this “little thing”. But I am convinced: a biographical note about the role of women in the life of Saint-Exupéry does not help to understand the fairy tale and is not relevant. Not to mention the fact that in French it is 1e hepags! male. The main thing is that in the fairy tale the Fox is, first of all, a friend. Rose is love, Fox is friendship, and the faithful friend Fox teaches the Little Prince fidelity, teaches him to always feel responsible for his beloved and for all his loved ones.” We can add one more observation. The unusually large ears of the Fox in Exupery's drawing are most likely inspired by the small desert fennec fox, one of the many creatures tamed by the writer while serving in Morocco.

“After all, all adults were children at first, but 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-Exupéry. This allegorical story is the author's most famous work. It was first published in 1943 (April 6) in New York. An interesting fact is 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-Exupéry(French: Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exupéry; June 29, 1900, Lyon, France - July 31, 1944) - famous French writer, poet and professional pilot.

Brief summary of the story

At the age of six, the boy read about how a boa constrictor swallows its prey and drew a picture of a snake swallowing 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 quit this nonsense - according to them, he should have studied more geography, history, arithmetic and spelling. So the boy abandoned his 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 understanding than the others - and everyone answered that it was a hat. It was impossible to talk heart to heart with them - about boa constrictors, the jungle and the 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 enough water left for a week. At dawn, the pilot was awakened by a thin voice - a tiny baby with golden hair, who somehow ended up in the desert, asked him to draw a lamb for him. The amazed pilot did not dare refuse, especially since he new friend turned out to be the only one who was able to see in the first drawing a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant. It gradually became clear that the Little Prince had come from a planet called “asteroid B-612” - of course, the number is only necessary for boring adults who adore numbers.

The whole planet was the size of a house, and the Little Prince had to look after her: every day he cleaned three volcanoes - two active and one extinct, and also weeded 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 there lived a lazy person who did not weed out three bushes on 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 moving the chair after the sun. Everything changed when wonderful flower: she was a beauty with thorns - proud, touchy and simple-minded. The little prince fell in love with her, but she seemed capricious, cruel and arrogant to him - he was too young then and did not understand how this flower illuminated his life. And so the Little Prince cleaned out his volcanoes for the last time, pulled out the sprouts of the baobabs, and then said goodbye to his flower, who 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 invited the Little Prince to become a minister, and the little one thought that adults were a very strange people. On the second planet there lived an ambitious man on third- drunkard, on the fourth - business man, and on fifth- lamplighter. All the adults seemed extremely strange to the Little Prince, and he only liked the Lamplighter: this man remained faithful to the agreement to light the lanterns in the evenings and turn off the lanterns in the mornings, although his planet had shrunk so much that day and night changed every minute. Don't have so little space 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!

On the sixth planet lived a geographer. And since he was a geographer, he was supposed to ask travelers about the countries from which they came in order to record their stories in books. The little prince wanted to talk about his flower, but the geographer explained that only mountains and oceans are written down 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 resentment had not yet passed, and the Little Prince moved on, but he only thought about his abandoned flower.

The Earth was with the seventh- 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 regretted his planet. And the Fox taught him to be friends. Anyone can tame someone and become their friend, but you always need to be responsible for those you tame. 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 into the desert - to the very place where he fell. That’s how they met the pilot. The pilot drew him a lamb in a box and even a muzzle for the lamb, although he previously thought that he could only draw boa constrictors - outside and inside. The little prince was happy, but the pilot became sad - he realized that he, too, had been tamed. Then the Little Prince found a yellow snake, whose bite kills in half a minute: she helped him, as she promised. The snake can return anyone to where he came from - she returns people to the earth, and returned the Little Prince to the stars. The kid told the pilot that it would only look like death in appearance, so there is no need to be sad - let the pilot remember him while 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 repaired his plane, and his comrades rejoiced at his return. Six years have passed since then: little by little he calmed down and fell in love with looking at the stars. But he is always overcome with excitement: he forgot to draw a strap for the muzzle, 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 become different, but not a single adult will ever understand how important this is.

The Little Prince is the central character of the fairy tale. The action takes place in the Sahara Desert "a thousand miles from any inhabited land." The fairy tale, written for children, became so widely known due to the exceptional poetic atmosphere created in it, and the fact that the fairy tale was addressed by the author not only to children, but also to “adults who remained children.” The plane crashed in the desert, the situation is hopeless, and then M. p. appears - a boy, it is unknown how he ended up in this deserted desert. He talks with the pilot and asks him: “Please... Draw me a lamb!” - but none of the lambs painted by Saint-Exupery suits him. After all, the planet from which he flew, taking advantage of the “birds of passage”, is so small... There are only three volcanoes on it, which must be cleaned daily so that they do not smoke, and, most importantly, his beloved Rose blooms under a glass cover. Rose is proud, capricious, “the only one in the world.” “Planet of the King”, “Planet of the Drunkard”, “Planet of the Lantern Lighter”, “Planet of the Geographer” - each contains stages of symbolic “knowledge of the world” for M. p. For example, on planet Earth, M. learns the concept of death. It should be treated stoically, this is taught to M. by the wise Snake. You just have to look at the starry sky and think that there, among the stardust, there is a star of the friend who left you. “His body was too heavy,” he left it as an unnecessary shell on Earth and freely ascended in spirit to the stars.” One of the central episodes of the fairy tale is M. p.’s acquaintance with the Fox, who tells him: “You must tame me,” “After all, you can only know those things that you manage to tame,” “You need patience.” The Fox's secret is simple: you can see and understand well only with your heart. The rest is hidden from human eyes. “The time you spent for your Rose is what makes her so meaningful to you.”

This is a fairy tale about a child, but a fairy tale that has taken the form of a philosophical parable. It has an addressee, dedicated to a friend Leon Werth. The plot of this fairy tale is fantastic, a meeting between a pilot who suffered an accident and an alien from other worlds - a funny, tiny man. Small...

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