Human Society and Children Essay

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One may consider the experience of reading a book the same way, as many adults likely have been trained to read quickly, searching for the relevant plot points without considering the merits of a book's particular language or illustrations. In the same way that adult's preoccupations with standards of appearance cause them to ignore an exciting discovery, so too does a learned preoccupation with the elements of a story deemed "important" cause one to miss the depth and humor in an ostensibly "silly" little story about a Prince who lives on an asteroid.

The novella seems to suggest that the adult reading The Little Prince will ultimately fail to recognize the beauty of the story by focusing only on the ending, which is admittedly somewhat melancholic. A child, on the other hand, will be able to enjoy and celebrate the Prince's adventure of discovery in spite of the fact that the story eventually ends on a sad note. This is important to note because the novella is actually quite funny, but if one is only interested in determining the facts of the narrative, such as nature (and number) of the Prince's home, the humor dissolves, leaving the adult unsatisfied and ultimately reinforcing the fallacious standards and mental restrictions that adults impose on themselves in the name of seriousness and responsibility. Of course, this dissatisfaction is the adult's fault, and as such leads adults to be the subject of much of the novella's criticisms and complaints regarding the functioning of human society and interaction.

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The Little Prince is not shy in its condemnation of an adult mindset which serves to preclude the experience of beauty and humor, and it repeatedly criticizes adults safe in the knowledge that adults will be unable to fully appreciate this criticism unless they are able to adopt a more open, childlike perspective in the first place. Children are not only shown to be more inquisitive than adults, but they also are portrayed as asking the right kinds of questions, because the questions children ask are ultimately more fundamental and inquisitive than the questions adults ask, because adult questions are mediated by the imaginative filter of adulthood. Thus, even when adults attempt to inquire about the world or other people, they may only do so in the most mundane way by asking questions that ultimately do nothing to contribute to the sense of wonder borne out of an open mind. As a result of this ideological rigidity, an exotic picture of a boa eating an elephant is reduced to a hat, an exciting discovery is ignored as a result of cultural biases, and even an adult's reading of the novella itself is shown to be woefully lacking. This is not to suggest that all adults will be incapable of appreciating the novella in the same way as a child, but rather that in order to do so, adults must adopt the unbiased and altogether unrestricted perspective of a child exploring the world.

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