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 20-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 20 Summary
Finally, the prince came to a road and followed it to a rose garden. He greeted the roses, noticing that they looked like the flower on his home planet. When the roses told him what kind of flower they were, the prince was disappointed because he had thought his flower was unique. He imagined that if his flower were there, "[s]he would cough terribly and pretend to be dying, to avoid being laughed at. And [he]'d have to pretend to be nursing her, otherwise, she'd really let herself die in order to humiliate [him]" (56). Realizing that all he'd owned was "an ordinary rose" (56)and three volcanoes, the prince laid down and started crying.
Chapter 21 Summary
As the prince continued to cry, a fox appeared and greeted him, and the prince—feeling sad and lonely—invited the fox to play with him. The fox explained that he couldn't because he wasn't tamed and asked what the prince was looking for. The prince, confused about the meaning of "taming," continued to press the fox for answers until he explained that it meant "to create ties" (59)and establish a unique, personal relationship. The prince replied that the flower back on his planet had tamed him, and then discussed his home with the fox, who wanted to know whether it was home to either hunters or chickens.
The fox then explained that his life currently consisted only of hunting and being hunted and asked the prince to tame him:
But if you tame me, my life will be filled with sunshine. I'll know the sound of footsteps that will be different from all the rest […] You have hair the color of gold. So it will be wonderful, once you've tamed me! The wheat, which is golden, will remind me of you. And I'll love the sound of the wind in the wheat… (60).
The prince at first refused, but when the fox explained that most humans were no longer interested in making friends, he agreed to return to the same place at the same time each day in order to tame the fox. This pleased the fox, who said the prince's actions would also function as a "rite"—"another thing that's been too often neglected" (61).
Eventually, the prince did succeed in taming the fox, who consequently became upset when the prince announced that he was leaving. This confused the prince, since taming was the fox's idea in the first place. The fox said that he still gained something from the arrangement "because of the color of the wheat"(61). He then urged the prince to look again at the roses. The prince obeyed and realized that those roses weren't like his after all: "But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she's the one I've watered" (63).
Afterwards, the prince returned to the fox to say goodbye, and the fox imparted a "secret" to him: "One sees clearly only with the heart" (63). He then reminded the prince of a "truth" people no longer remember: "You become responsible forever for what you've tamed" (64).
Chapters 20-21 Analysis
The prince's encounter with the fox is one of the most pivotal episodes in The Little Prince. The interaction allows the prince to give voice to what was previously vague guilt over leaving the flower behind on his home planet. The fox's words on taming, as well as the example he provides of this process in action, allow the prince to realize two important and interrelated things. First, the prince learns that developing a personal relationship with someone ("taming" him) changes both people involved in the relationship, in part by shifting their perspectives on the world and what is meaningful within it. The fox, for instance, can no longer be concerned solely with survival now that he is friends with the prince. Where things before were simply useful or useless to the fox, they now take on significance within the context of his relationship with the prince. Second, the fact that this kind of relationship does change its participants means that whoever initiated it has an unalterable responsibility to the other.
Taken together, these ideas change the way the prince understands his relationship to the rose. When he returns to the garden, he realizes that his rose is in fact unique because he has "tamed" and therefore changed her. This in turn leads him to understand that he has obligations to the rose that he simply can't set aside. As a result, by the time he meets the pilot, he is actively trying to return to Asteroid B-612.
Even setting the prince's personal journey aside, however, the chapter involving the fox is one of the most important in the story. For one, it contains what are undoubtedly the most famous lines from The Little Prince: "One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes" (63). This in many ways encapsulates Saint-Exupéry's views on truth, meaning, and the role of imagination in discovering both. The reference to the "heart" also links imagination to love, which—as the taming of the fox demonstrates—is itself capable of uncovering or creating meaning.
It is also the fox who most succinctly sums up the story's views on materialism, and the ways in which it prevents humans from interacting meaningfully with one another: "[People] buy things ready-made in stores. But since there are no stores where you can buy friends, people no longer have friends" (60). In other words, it's not simply greed that inhibits love and friendship in the modern world, but rather a reluctance to invest any time in other people. Because time is limited, it is perhaps the most significant thing humans can spend, and anything one spends it on becomes similarly meaningful. As the fox tells the prince: "It's the time [he] spent on [his]rose that makes [his] rose so important" (64).
