Relationships between characters
The little prince and the pilot
The relationship between the little prince and the pilot is a key element in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella The Little Prince. The pilot and the little prince meet in the Sahara desert, where both have literally fallen from the sky. The little prince comes from another star and visits various planets on his journey, including Earth, while the pilot’s plane crashed in the desert.
The pilot hears the voice of the little prince one morning, asking him to draw a sheep. Over time, the two get to know each other better and become friends. The narrator learns more and more about the little prince, although the little prince answers almost none of his questions.
When the little prince asks the pilot to draw a sheep for him, the pilot first sketches a giant snake that has eaten an elephant because he has learned nothing else. Like this, the pilot reconnects with the world of his own childhood. The little prince, unlike the grown-ups, immediately recognizes what the drawing is supposed to represent.
The pilot's worldview meets with understanding and recognition from the little prince for the first time. In the little prince, the pilot encounters his child self. The pilot does not think much of grown-ups. For this reason, he immediately likes the little prince with his childlike informality .
The two characters share key traits, such as imagination and joy. They contrast strongly with the adults whose acquaintance the little prince has made on his journey. In the meantime, however, the pilot seems to be a character more like the "grown-ups".
At a certain point, he no longer listens to the little prince's worries because he is preoccupied with "matters of consequence" (22%), namely fixing his airplane. This enrages the little prince, who does not understand how an airplane can be more important than the eternal struggle of flowers against animals. To comfort his friend, the pilot puts aside his tools.
The two characters are similar: both feel lonely and are searching for true friendship. When they walk together through the desert to find a well, the similarity of the two characters becomes particularly clear: both experience the mysterious glow of the...
