Meeting ‘The Little Prince’ again
A couple of months ago, my father’s high school best friend and his wife, both emigrants, visited the Philippines with their kids (aged 13 and six) for the first time. My father and I rushed to the bookstore to get gifts for his inaanak—a planner and a Filipino book for the teenage girl, and, after being clueless about what to give to the little boy, my father, a man fond of the classics, saw The Little Prince and thought it was the perfect gift.
I wasn’t as excited about his choice, perhaps because since I consumed the book and the film as a kid, I had always thought that it was overrated. I thought it capitalized on its cute illustrations, the beauty of the French language, and the same idealistic, anti-adulting emotional appeal as that of Peter Pan’s story—romanticizing staying a child forever.
But I am no longer that kid. I am 16 years old now and just recently, I met the Little Prince again—as a freebie from the accessory shop Kriselda Freedom—except in this edition, he speaks Cebuano. People must really like him to adapt him to everything, I thought to myself. When I learned that the UP Film Center would screen the 2015 adaptation, it just felt right to watch.
I did, and indeed, I left the theater having finally understood its popularity.
I realized that its value is in its metaphors that can only be seen using the heart and not the naked eye. It’s very relatable as well—the film in particular, because its protagonist is a girl who had her life meticulously planned out for her by a controlling, perfectionistic mother using what they called the “Life Plan.” This restrictive box would eventually be destroyed by the peculiar old man next door: the pilot who told her about the Little Prince and his story full of metaphors.
The first metaphor that struck me was already mentioned: a box, and how it was used to show the difference in creative thinking between the pilot and the Little Prince, for the latter thought outside the box (about what’s inside it).
We need not antagonize adulthood, but instead remember our own Little Prince, our inner child, in trying to be good grownups.
There were also the six characters from the other planets: The King, Conceited Man, Tippler, Businessman, Geographer, and Lamplighter, each arguably representing one of the Seven Deadly Sins. The exception is the Lamplighter, who I think represents blue-collar workers and their seemingly endless work in a capitalist society. This theme is more widely apparent in the world of the Prince that the girl enters. It’s only populated by robotic adults. In this world, the Prince, called “Mr. Prince,” is a grown-up misfit janitor who greedily caged the stars to power the business offices.
On the roof of one of the buildings, the girl spots Mr. Prince and convinces him to remember who he was before he was put into a box. Together, they free the stars, which I think can represent people’s dreams, which capitalism exploits and feeds on to sustain itself.
When Mr. Prince returns to his planet, he transforms into a child again. He sees his now-dead rose, the rose that symbolizes first love, because even though there are many roses in the world, the Prince’s love for his rose makes her unique. This also makes the Prince responsible for her; as the fox character says, to be tamed is to depend.
But to be loved is to be changed, just as the girl was changed by her bond with the old man, who reminded her that “growing up is not the problem—forgetting is.” We need not antagonize adulthood, but instead remember our own Little Prince—our inner child—in trying to be good grownups.
I realize that I couldn’t appreciate the story back then because, despite being a children’s book, it was never meant to be fully understood when we were young children. It was meant to be revisited years later.
I agree now that it was the perfect gift for my father’s inaanak, and maybe more for the parents of the receiver, but hopefully in time he, too, will be able to understand and see that what is essential is invisible to the naked eye.
