In 5th grade I was known as the girl who never got writer's block. I could write for the whole class time and not have to stop and think about what would come next in my story. The ideas were already written in my head and all I had to do was set my pen to the page and write.
Tonight of all night's I had to get writer's block.
I knew I had to write about The Little Prince and so I spent all week thinking about the narrator of the story but it never occurred to me to write about the little prince. And the amazing thing was- once I thought about the little prince all these ideas came to me about the narrator and there I was again, ready to write.
I began thinking about parent-child relationships. And how at first you think that the parents are in charge of everything... They influence the child and are the number one role model to them. The adult is where the child goes to learn new things, hear new stories, and pick up new life lessons. But then I thought about how much of an influence children have on their parents. Sometimes I wonder what my parents want when they ask me how my day was and what interesting things happened at school. Do they want to learn something from me?
Then I think about when my parents are sick and I want to take care of them... I think about how magnificent it really is that a parent-child relationship can be mutual and not just one feeding off of the other.
That's when I started to think about the little prince and the pilot, and how both of them meet each other as people who don't know what they are, a kid or an adult, and by the end of the story they both turn out to be a care taker and someone who needs to be cared for.
The narrator is someone whose age labels them as a grown up but his heart tells him that he never wants to be big and always wants to live in the innocence and safety of a child. As a kid, he looked for attention and acknowledgment from the grown ups but nobody understood where he came from or what he was trying to achieve. He associated adults as bad creatures who didn't understand life or how to live it. And although his body was growing old his heart and brain weren't allowing itself to.
We don't know much about the little prince's background, just that he was alone when we found him. What I respect so much about him is that he will always be a kid but he still lives on his own and takes care of himself.
I thought a lot about what both of the characters needed or don't have. The little prince needs someone to be there for him, someone to take care of him and keep him company. The pilot needs to have some kind of adult figure that he never had, someone to hear his ideas and his thoughts. But I also believe that one of the biggest steps in growing up is when you find yourself in the position of taking care of another person. Near the end of the book I started to realize that while both characters needed someone to take care of them, they needed to take care of each other, too.
The little prince managed to make the pilot feel like a kid again while the pilot also got an opportunity to feel grown up by wanting to be there for the little prince. The pilot was able to make the little prince feel like a child at the same time that the little prince got to be there for the pilot.
It was during these moments that the little prince didn't feel so lonely, the pilot got to experience the childhood he always needed, and both of them could be the grown up in different situations.
Once both of these characters embraced each of these roles they learned that in life you don't just have to be the parent or the child. I believe that you can honestly be both.
I don't provide the money in my family and I don't have a job. But I do know that regardless of whether I'm a daughter or a parent it's important that I take care of everyone how ever it works for me. In a family, we can all do something for each other. No matter how cheesy that may sound.
