摘 要

《小王子》是一部蕴含着丰富哲理的童话，为法国安东尼•德•圣埃克苏佩在二战期间创作。该书至今全球发行量已达五亿册，被誉为“阅读率仅次于《圣经》的最佳书籍”。它以充满智慧光芒和任性真理的童话故事表达了作者对人的内心世界和爱情的深入思考。

该书讲述了小王子与玫瑰、狐狸之间的爱情故事。本论文将对小说主人公的言行和内心活动进行详细解读；比较其旅行前后的感情变化；分别解释对爱的理解和责任的意义；并结合作者自身的经历，分析作者的爱情观和其现实意义，把爱与责任的主题直观展现在读者的面前，反映出交往的真谛。综上所述，本论文通过分析《小王子》中主人公们之间的关系，从不同人物角度解读“爱与责任”主题，从阐释对爱情的理解深入到爱是责任，探讨作者笔下爱的升华，进而挖掘对现代人具有的启示意义。

关键词：《小王子》；爱情观；责任；爱情

Abstract

The Little Prince, created by French writer and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry during World War II, is a fairy tale which contains the rich meaning. Sold five hundred million copies worldwide, the book is known as “the best books whose reading rate is exceeded only by the bible”. The author expressed his inner world and insightful reflection on love by this novella full of wisdom shine and capricious truth. The book told a pure love story among the little prince, the rose and the fox. This paper will interpret psychology activities and deeds of protagonists in The Little Prince in detail; and explain the understanding towards love as well as the meaning of responsibility. Combined with the author's own experience, this paper will analyze the author's view of love and its practical significance. Thus, the theme, love and responsibility, is intuitively presented to readers. To sum up, this paper aims to interpret “love and responsibility” by analyzing the relationships among the protagonists in The Little Prince from the perspectives of different characters. Furthermore, the paper will explore the author's attitude towards love and deeply dig the enlightenment significance of modern society.

Key Words: The Little Prince; love view; responsibility; love

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and The Little Prince 1

1.2 Literature Review 2

1.3 Layout of the Paper 2

2 Speculations about Love 4

2.1 The Little prince’s Love to the Rose 4

2.2 The Fox’s Love to the Little Prince 5

3 Speculations about Responsibility 7

3.1 Change of the Little Prince’s Emotion to the Rose 7

3.2 Process of the Little Prince Taming the Fox 8

4 Practical Significance of Love View in The Little Prince 11

4.1 Love View in Author’s Marriage 11

4.2 Relationship of Love and Responsibility 12

5 Conclusion 14

References 15

Acknowledgements 16

Love and Responsibility: Interpretation of Love View in The Little Prince

1 Introduction

This chapter mainly introduces the author and the background of the novella; then analyzes the basic content of domestic and foreign research; and thus teases layout of the entire paper.

• 1. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and The Little Prince

Born in Lyon, France in 1900, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is not only a vanguard of French pilot, but also one of the greatest French writers who won several of France’s highest literary awards. Saint-Exupéry is a lifetime adventurer and freedom fanatic. He was a successful commercial pilot, devoting his whole life to aviation. In 1944, he disappeared on a flying mission, and was believed to have died at that moment, which becomes a mysterious legend in the history of French literature.

Besides, exploring depths of the soul through writing is another perpetual fondness. He published some lyrical aviation writings, such as Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight. His best literary work, The Little Prince, laid his stature to national hero status in France after death. When his novel was first published, those spectacular scenes in his book made readers refreshing and extremely thrilling. Saint-Exupéry's works as it were the portrait of his lifetime thought and action. He always expected the dawn in the darkness of night, and seek own planet in the bright starry sky.

A seraphic but sad love is described in The Little Prince. In the distant 612 star has a little boy, named the little prince. The rose is too arrogant to tolerate. After the conflict with his own rose, the little prince ran away from home and traveled the other planets. In the journey, he experienced various people and learned what the real love is by taming the fox. And finally he chose to back to his plant for his rose. The whole story is described as the perspective of the pilot, a character in reference to the author’s experience of being marooned in the desert. Saint-Exupéry utilized the symbolism as the high degree of professional proficiency, and eventually expressed his love view.” For what you have tamed, you become responsible forever.’’(Antoine, 1998: 84).

1.2 Literature Review

Appreciating the novella The Little Prince written from pluralistic narrative perspectives and rich symbolic significance, a great number of outstanding scholars all over the world explored it from many angles. Among the foreign researchers, for example, Paul Webster (Webster, 2003) paid the attention to the study of the life and the death of the little prince as early as in 1967, which believes that the life and death of the little prince symbolizes the experience of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry who deeply loved his country and died for France during an air war. Most overseas researchers prefer to explore the substance of The Little Prince combined with the author's life and his other works.

And meanwhile, domestic scholars’ studies flourish on the work itself. For instance, the study of symbolism in the little prince from binary opposition (Lin, 2001) plays an important role in developing the work. In the part of its language features, the figure of the novella is explored from the perspective of metaphorical theory (Gong, 2013). Some researchers study on it in terms of alienation, which focus on the innate character (Li, 2005).

Besides, existentialism is presented thoroughly in the paper (Qiu, 2014). As a fairy tale reflecting the society, it contains symbolism which is interpreted from the aspect of animal images (Huang, 2011). In addition, owing to the social background of The Little Prince, the realistic meaning of The Little Prince came to conclusion that it images the age of the Second World War through analyzing symbolism in the novella. Digging into the novel, some researchers focus on the Underlying philosophy of The Little Prince. The analysis on the gist of the work reveals the internal love of The Little Prince (Zhang, 2011). Also, some researchers pay attention to contrast the escaping and returning of the little prince to explain the truth of love in the work (Jiang, 2007).