The Little Prince
By Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
This classic children’s fantasy narrates an aviator’s miraculous meeting with a mysterious boy called Little Prince in the Sahara Desert. It is one of the most read books of the 20th century.
Crash landing in the remote Sahara, the aviator is visited by a golden haired boy. The Little Prince is from a tiny asteroid with lots of vegetation and three small volcanoes. He had been cleaning the volcanoes and weeding out the harmful vegetation. He speaks of a rose that he cultivated which demands much attention, but also shows him love.
Previous visits to six other planets are mentioned, where he meets a few absurd men—a king without subjects who issues orders that can only be obeyed; a drunkard who drinks more to forget the shame of being a drunkard; a solitary man on a planet, obsessed with being praised and admired as the only admirable person; a lamplighter on a very tiny planet where a day is only thirty seconds, and a geographer who has never travelled or observed the things that he writes about. These are representatives of the adult world. The key message the Prince gives is what he learnt from a friendly fox: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Other gems: “lt is better to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom.” “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”
The Little Prince tells his friend that, to think of him, he needs only look at the stars and recall his laughter and it will as if all the stars are laughing. A snake whom he befriended helps him die by biting him. But the next day the aviator finds that the body also has disappeared.
The Small Miracle
By Paul Gallico.
Paul Gallico’s novella is a tale of the triumph of simple, innocent faith, recalling St Francis of Assisi. Pepino, a ten-year-old war orphan, lives in Assisi with his only possession—a docile donkey named Violetta. They are everything to each other. Pepino boasts about Violetta’s special smile. They earn their meagre livelihood running errands for the townspeople and rest in a little cave together at night. One day Violetta falls sick. Pepino is desperate. He is a devotee of St. Francis, who he knows was a great lover of animals. He requests the compassionate Father Damico to allow him to take Violetta to St Francis’s crypt beneath the Basilica to pray for a miracle cure. But that is not possible because donkeys are not allowed inside the church. There is a narrow underground pathway sealed off with brick, but it will not be broken for the boy and his donkey.
When his request to the Franciscan superiors is denied, Pepino entrusts Violetta to his best friend, and goes all the way to Rome to ask the Pope himself. He is sent away by the Swiss guards and the clerics. Pepino buys a small bouquet of flowers, attaches a greeting card to it with a request addressed to the Holy Father and hands it to the Swiss Guard. The guard is about to throw it away, but changes his mind and hands it over to a priest. Finally it reaches the Pontiff and Pepino gets his way. The Pope gives him a written order for the crypt to be made accessible for the donkey and the boy. Before they open the underground passageway, Father Damico tells the boy: “Because of your faith in St Francis, he will help you and heal your donkey. But had you thought perhaps that he who dearly cared for all of God’s creatures might come to love Violetta so greatly that he would wish to have her at his side in Eternity?” At first it is unthinkable for Pepino to lose his donkey, but then he murmurs, “I will give – if I must…” While the passage is being opened, a leaden box falls out of the brickwork. It contains things associated with St. Francis. The boy and the donkey finish their pilgrimage. We are not told whether the donkey was cured or not. But we are made to look at a child’s pure and tenacious faith which opens doors and our hearts.
Dr.Gigy
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