The Fox And The Little Prince

SHORT STORY ANALYSIS

TITLE OF THE STORY: The Fox.
AUTHOR OF THE STORY: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY:
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, officially Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint Exupéry was born in 29 June 1900 in Lyon, France. He was a novelist, essayist, poet and pioneering aviator. He is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) and for hislyrical aviation writings, including Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars.
He was a successful commercial pilot before World War II. He joined the Armée de l'Air (French Air Force) at the outbreak of war, flying reconnaissance missions until the armistice with Germany. Following a spell of writing in the United States he joined the Free French Forces.
On 30 December Saint-Exupéry, en routeto Saigon with his navigator, André Prévot, crashed in the Libyan Sahara desert. Both survived the crash landing, but were faced with the prospect of rapid dehydration in the Sahara. They had no idea of their location.
According to his memoir, Wind, Sand and Stars, their sole supplies were grapes, two oranges, and a small ration of wine. They experienced visual and auditory hallucinations; by thethird day, they were so dehydrated that they ceased to sweat.
Finally, on the fourth day, they were rescued.
Saint-Exupéry's fable The Little Prince, which begins with a pilot being marooned in the desert, is in part a reference to this experience.
He disappeared on a reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean in 31 July 1944 and is believed to have died at that time.

I. THEME:
Thetheme of this short story is Friendship and the sense of life, and how they are understood by a Fox, explained through different metaphors related to its experiences in life.
The author criticizes the way human beings live, and idealize the simple but meaningful life of the Fox.
He describes the humans’ lives as nonsense and empty, as they do not care about understanding the little but essentialthings in life, leaving aside the invisible but important things as friendship, as they are being driven by the material desire.
Responsibility is also a theme of this short story, which seems men had forgotten a responsibility of taking care of what one loves.

II. PLOT:
The Fox is a chapter from The Little Prince by Antonie de Saint Exupery and it is about one of the Little Prince’sadventures.
The Little Prince came across a fox when he was looking for men and for friends on the Earth, and asked him to play with him, but the fox refused as he was not “TAMED”. “Being tamed” meant for the Fox “the act of establish ties”, something often neglected. For the Fox the Little Prince was a boy just like a thousand other boys, and the same was him for the Little Prince, but if the LittlePrince tamed him, he would be unique for him and vice versa.
The Prince remembered his rose and recognized that he had been tamed by her.
When the fox found out he lived in another planet, he was excited about that there were no hunters, but disappointed because there were no chickens.
The Fox asked the Prince to tame him as his life was monotonous, he just hunted chicken and men hunted him.But if the Prince tamed him he would recognize his steps from any others and the wheat fields, which meant nothing to him, would remind him the Prince’s golden hair.
As the Prince was worried about making friends and understanding things, the Fox explained that one understands what one tames.
As men had no time to understand things, for they buy already made things at shops and there was noshop to buy friendship, men had no friends. Men, just were “disturbing hunters who raised chickens” for the Fox.
According to the Fox’s words, if the Little Prince wanted a friend he should tame him.
When the Prince agreed the Fox explained that he should be patient and sat down at a certain distance from him, and he would look at the Prince out of the corner if his eye and the Prince should...