80 pages • 2 hours read
Antoine de Saint-ExupéryThe Little Prince
Fiction | Novella | Middle Grade | Published in 1943A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
On the fifth day, the prince asks whether sheep eat flowers, and the pilot says they eat anything they find, including flowers with thorns. This leads the prince to question what purpose the thorns serve. The pilot is worried about running out of water and is busy trying to fix his plane, so he distractedly says that thorns are "just the flowers' way of being mean!" (19). The prince retorts that he doesn't believe that and continues to pester the pilot, who eventually grows annoyed and snaps that he's "busy with something serious" (20), causing the prince to complain that he sounds like a grown-up.
The prince then accuses the pilot of being like a man he knows on another planet, who does nothing but add up numbers and claim he's being serious. Growing angrier, the prince asks why it isn't "serious" to wonder about the purpose of "thorns that are good for nothing," or the "war between the sheep and the flowers" (21). He hints that he knows a flower back on his planet, explaining: "If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars […] But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him, it's as if, suddenly, all the stars went out" (21).The pilot feels terrible to see the prince upset and tries to comfort him, hugging him and promising to draw a muzzle for the sheep.
Chapter 8 Summary
The pilot later learns more about the prince's flower, which is unlike the other, simple flowers that tend to grow on his planet. Where most of these other flowers live only a single day, this flower took a long time even to blossom, "selecting her colors with the greatest care and dressing quite deliberately, adjusting her petals one by one" (22)before finally opening one morning at sunrise.
The prince immediately praised the flower for her beauty, and the flower—who had previously claimed to be "untidy"(22)—agreed with him. She also asked if the prince would mind watering her, and the prince did so, realizing that the flower "wasn't any too modest" (23)but admiring her nonetheless.
Before long, the flower became a problem for the prince. She boasted, for instance, that her thorns would protect her from tigers, and then objected when the prince told her that tigers wouldn't eat her anyway. She went on to say that she fears drafts, asking the prince for a screen to shelter her and a glass to place over her at night. She began to complain that it was colder on the prince's planet than she was used to, but then—realizing the prince knew she had lived on the planet her whole life—"coughed two or three times to put the little prince in the wrong" (24).
The prince did his best to comply with the flower's requests but grew increasingly frustrated with her vanity and manipulations. He now regrets this, telling the pilot that he ought to have judged the flower by her actions: "She perfumed my planet and lit up my life. I should never have run away! I ought to have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions" (24-25).
Chapter 9 Summary
Eventually, the prince decided to leave his planet to escape from the flower. Before going, he went through his usual morning routine by raking out the three volcanoes (two active, one extinct) on his planet so that they would "burn gently and regularly, without eruptions" (25). He then pulled up whatever baobab shoots he could find and went to water the flower, nearly crying as he said goodbye to her.
The flower at first refused to speak to the prince, but finally asked for his "forgiveness," explaining that she had "been silly" (27)but that she truly loved him. The prince, who had expected her to be angry with him, was confused—particularly when she told him not to worry about covering her with the glass. He tried to warn her about animals, but the flower simply said she would have to "put up with two or three caterpillars if [she] want[ed] to get to know the butterflies," and that her thorns would take care of the "big animals" (27). Finally, in an attempt to hide her tears, she told the prince to go.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
The story of the prince's relationship with the flower begins to sketch out Saint-Exupéry's views on human relationships. The flower herself is widely believed to have been modeled on Saint-Exupéry's wife, Conseulo, with whom he had an intense but turbulent relationship. It's certainly the case that the flower in The Little Prince is not easy to love, thanks to her vanity and pretensions. Much of her posturing, however, seems to be a way of hiding her real fears and weaknesses. Her insistence that she's afraid of drafts is a way of masking her real defenselessness from creatures that might hurt her. Tellingly, when the prince himself broaches this topic, the rose insists that no animal will harm her despite the meager protection her thorns offers. Even more importantly, the rose's behavior is a way of deflecting from her vulnerability within the context of her relationship with the prince. Deep down, the flower loves the prince, which opens her up to being hurt at his hands. The fact that meaningful relationships do entail this kind of vulnerability is a key reason why, later in the story, the fox will imply that the prince has a responsibility to whatever he "tames" (60)—the flower included.
The relationship between the flower and the prince also illustrates the ways in which love and friendship give life meaning. The knowledge that the flower is still living on Asteroid B-612 shifts the prince's perceptions of the world. When he looks at the stars, he is reminded that the flower is somewhere out among them, causing the stars themselves to take on added significance. This lays the groundwork not only for another of the fox's lessons, but also for the changes the pilot himself undergoes over the course of the book—the little prince tells the pilot to think of him everytime he looks into the night sky. The fact that this kind of meaning is so personal (i.e. specific to the individual) also offers another way of thinking about the adult fixation on numbers. Focusing primarily on how much we have of something flattens out the "uniqueness" of any single, meaningful thing (like the prince's flower), making it interchangeable with anything else. By contrast, it will become increasingly clear that a truly profound relationship, like the one between the prince and the rose, actually transforms each participant into a more unique and irreplaceable individual.
