The Narrator

Who Is The Narrator?

The Narrator of The Little Prince is an adult whose life has been marked by isolation and a kind of resignation to loneliness. He’s a pilot, a man whose profession already separates him from the ordinary world. When his plane crashes in the Sahara Desert, his isolation becomes absolute, and that’s when the Little Prince appears to him. The Narrator serves not just as the story’s voice but as the stand-in for every reader: an adult who has gradually forgotten how to see wonder.

What makes the Narrator significant is his capacity to change. He’s not rigid in his adult logic. When confronted with the Little Prince, he doesn’t dismiss him as a hallucination or a symptom of dehydration. Instead, he opens himself to connection with this strange child. He becomes transformed by friendship in the way that only lonely people can be transformed.

Psychology and Personality

The Narrator begins in a state of profound isolation. His profession as a pilot separates him from ordinary society. His imagination, which drew him to aviation as a child, has been dismissed by adults as worthless. He’s learned to stop drawing, stop imagining, stop trying to connect with other people on the level of meaning rather than practicality.

His psychology is characterized by having built walls against disappointment. If you don’t expect connection, you can’t be hurt by its absence. But these walls also mean he’s lived a half-life, existing but not truly living, functional but not engaged. The narrator has accepted loneliness as the price of survival in an adult world that doesn’t value wonder.

When the Little Prince appears, something shifts in the Narrator. He doesn’t question the impossibility of the situation because he’s been alone long enough to know that the impossible is sometimes kinder than the probable. He listens. He tries to understand. He allows himself to care.

Character Arc

The Narrator’s arc is one of gradual awakening and reconnection with his own capacity for wonder. Early in the novel, he establishes himself as someone who failed to fit into adult society because he couldn’t stop seeing meaning in things adults had taught him were meaningless.

His meeting with the Little Prince represents a second chance at the life he might have lived if he hadn’t learned to think like a practical adult. Through caring for the Prince, through listening to his stories, through recognizing that this child understands something true about the world, the Narrator comes back to himself.

By the end of the novel, the Narrator is transformed. He’s no longer the same adult who crashed into the desert. He’s learned through the Little Prince that connection is possible, that caring about someone matters infinitely more than any practical concern. The Narrator’s arc is actually redemptive; the crash becomes salvation.

Key Relationships

With The Little Prince: This is the only real relationship the Narrator has in the novel. The Prince asks things of him: Draw me a sheep. Explain this, explain that. Sit with me. And the Narrator, who has spent years unable to connect with anyone, finds in the Prince someone who sees him, who wants his company, who makes him matter.

With The Reader: The Narrator speaks directly to us. He asks us to remember our own capacity for wonder, our own ability to see beyond the practical. He’s asking us to not become like the adults on the Prince’s planets, so caught up in meaningless pursuits that we forget what we love.

What to Talk About with The Narrator

Conversations with the Narrator on Novelium might explore his life before the crash. What was he searching for in the sky? What made him feel so separate from the ordinary world? When he first saw the Little Prince, what did he feel? Was it relief at finding another being who understood wonder?

You might also ask him about his growth. How did knowing the Prince change him? Does he think he would have become like the other adults if the crash hadn’t happened? What does he think the Prince’s departure means? And what does he do with the meaning he’s discovered?

Why The Narrator Changes Readers

The Narrator changes readers by embodying the possibility of redemption through connection. He shows that even after years of isolation, after building walls against disappointment, it’s possible to open yourself again to wonder and to care. His transformation suggests that the part of us that creates, that dreams, that finds meaning in things the practical world dismisses, doesn’t actually die. It just waits.

The Narrator also changes readers by being the bridge between them and the Little Prince. He’s an adult who maintains his capacity for wonder, who chooses to honor the Prince’s wisdom rather than dismiss it. He gives readers permission to do the same.

Famous Quotes

“All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it.”

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.”

“The fact of his being on my mind made me want to know his story.”