SOURCE: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Twayne Publishers, 1984, pp. 120-42.

In the following excerpt, Robinson provides an analysis of The Little Prince.

[Le Petit Prince], so often mistaken for "only" a children's book, is in fact a delicate crystallization of Saint-Exupéry's philosophy of life, in allegorical form. The success of this book has been so great that Saint-Exupéry is often thought of simply as "the author of the Little Prince," and the book itself has become a beginning French reader in America. It is, indeed, sad that such sensitive, exquisitely wrought writing should be subjected to the impatient deciphering of beginning students, as a butterfly being dissected to see what makes it fly. As Maxwell Smith says: "To analyze in detail so lovely and fragile a tale would be like removing the petals of a rose to discover its charm" [Knight of the Air, 1956].

It is perhaps...