On Talking Like a Grownup, A Commentary on The Little Prince

(WARNING: SPOILER ALERT)

The first and the most reiterating concept in The Little Prince is an adult’s supposedly matured way of thinking. We associate adulthood, or to a child’s limited verbiage ‘being a grownup’, to behavior grounded on logic and well-informed decision-making. (Now didn’t that sound like something taken directly out of a textbook?)

This quoted part is very telling of how similar the pilot’s and little prince’s opinion of an adult is. Note that the pilot is narrating and the little prince is making a point.

 “You talk just like the grown-ups!”

That made me a little ashamed. But he went on, relentlessly:

“You mix everything up together . . . You confuse everything . . .”

Case in point, an adult’s responsibilities requires well-informed decision-making. However, there are those, whom you might consider ‘lost in adulthood’, if such expression exists, though this might be the first, who’re reeking of juvenile monotony and losing sight of what is significant. This idea is reiterated through the lamplighter and businessman, both visited by the little prince.

Let me repeat that the pilot and the little prince agrees that thinking like a grownup is shameful. The pilot’s experience is rooted from grownups’ lack of imagination with his drawings. While the little prince’s perception is from the conversations he’s had with different grownups in different planets.

The pilot says, “In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.”

His becoming a pilot was also attributed to the grownups’ inability to appreciate his illustrations which made him give up his dreams of being a painter. That he became a pilot who studied ‘matters of consequence’ such as geography and the sciences.

Adult influence over a child’s dreams is undeniably strong. I guess it’s universal knowledge. Putting a little spin on it, it simply tells us that some of our decisions are made for us, instead of having the strength to make them ourselves, or worse, dwelling in a pool of indecision. People who have power over us are people who we give power to, given either through veneration or through the call of the majority.



Commentary Series Links:
> The Little Prince Book Review
> On Matters of Consequence
> On Loving Figures
> On Grownups Part 1/2
> On Grownups Part 2/2
> On Visiting Earth
> Quotes from The Little Prince