THE LITTLE PRINCE 英语毕业论文

the little prince AbstractKnown as the French Rose , is a well-known philosophical fairy tale, and it is a moral fable of life. It is a childs tale told through a grown-up narrator, and its themes are unfolding the alienation of adults and mourning for lost innocence. This paper focuses on the analysis of the alienation of adults and childrens redemption through the illustration of the world of both the children and adults. Because of the obsession about love, the little prince left his planet. On his journey, he saw the alienation of adults. Finally the fox, as a wise man, told the little prince the true meaning of love. The comprehension of love by the little prince is the intrinsic manifestation of rescuing grown-ups. Only those who have grown up but still keep childishness are the real human.Key wordsthe little prince; the redemption of children; the alienation of adults; tame摘要被誉为“法兰西玫瑰”的小王子是一本著名的哲理童话，更是一部寓意生命的寓言。它是通过成熟的旁白来向孩子讲述的童话，其主题是揭示成人的异化和哀悼失去的童真。本文通过对小王子里的儿童和成人世界的解说，着重分析成人的异化和儿童的救赎。小王子因为对爱的困惑而远离自己的星球去远行，在旅途中看到成人异化的世界。最终作为智者的狐狸告诉了小王子关于爱的真谛，小王子对爱的领悟也是儿童对成人的救赎的内在体现。只有那些虽然长大了，但却仍然保持了童心的人才是真正的人。关键词小王子; 儿童的救赎; 成人的异化; 驯养ContentsAbstract and Keywords (English)Abstract and Keywords (Chinese)1. Introduction. 12. The Background of Desert.13. The Alienation of Adult World.24. The World of Little Prince.35. The Redemption of Children.55.1 The embodiment of childrens characters.55.2 The redemption of love.66. Conclusion.9Acknowledgements.9Bibliography.101. IntroductionThe story came from an flight accident. The plane which “I” drove was forced to land in the desolate Sahara desert, where with tedious maintenance, the lack of water and the unknown dangers in the future emerging in my mind. The melancholy prince mysteriously appeared in front of me, which unvailed the story: B612 planet, sheep, rose, interstellar travel., the story was gently showed, and it told the little prince mysterious life with a common experience. The story reflected the various appearance of modern life, and a metaphor of pursuing the home of love and heart of modern people.The little prince is a fairy tale, a fable, a prosaic poetry about philosophy. It is a performance of modern adult. Every adult comes from a child. There are lost beauty and the cost of growth in the little prince, with the loneliness and depression of the little prince as well as the wisdom; but the adult is filled with all kinds of desire, which makes understanding and communication between people become troublesome. Adults are eager for understanding, but they are suspicious and wandering, which makes communications become hypocritical lies. Depression and loneliness becomes a shadow which covers sunshine of love in the heart of modern adults. Through the eyes of the little prince, the author reveals the alienation of adult world. It is the pure prince that save the alienated adults by his comprehension of love.2. The Background of DesertThe desert is an unpopulated area in the world. It has not been invaded by modern civilization, and it is the symbol of pure land which seperates itself from the pollution on the earth. The little prince and I met in the deserta piece of pure land without desire and conflict. This is really a collision between catabolic human nature and ideal human nature. Only in this unique space far from the madding crowd can the collision of human nature arouses deep introspection. However, at the same time, the desert gives the warning as well as a gleam of hope. In the era of industrial civilization and high material level, humans are gradually alienated while they enjoy the achievements of progress. The spiritual world becomes a barren desert, which makes people live a hard life because of no root. If the barren desert expand indulgently, the humanity will certainly destroy himself. But the emergence of the little prince brings a gleam of vitality. The aspiration of the author is that the pure nature of little prince can ground in the spirit desert with strong vitality, bloomming and thriving. Bibliography1 周小琴：爱.责任.自由读圣埃克苏佩里的童话小王子，安徽文学，2007年第8期1 3. The Alienation of Adult WorldDuring the interstellar travel,what the little prince saw was the alienation of adult world. A king who was greedy of power, though he only had a mouse to be his subject; a flamboyant individual, except compliments he could not hear any other words; a mercenary businessman,he was busy counting wealth all day; a shame alcoholic,he drank for forgeting his shame; a lamplighter who kept on the rails, he was busy in lighting and putting out the lamp ; a geography without the knowledge of rivers and sea, he focused on conducting his research. The little prince can not understand what he saw in adult world, Adults are strange,2 法安东尼.德.圣埃修伯里：小王子，水清译，外文出版社，20092 he always left a word like that in a hurry. Then what did he see on the earth ? Trains going back and forth in a hurry, the little prince asked: what are people seeking in such a hurry? Facing the people who only knew calculation and had never smelt the sweetness of flowers and never seen stars, the little prince said: this is not a man, but a mushroom. Even the businessman got the idea to sell pills that had been invented to quench thirst, so that you can save fifty-three minutes every week. The little prince was surprised: save the time for what? If it were he, he would like to spend the time walking leisurely toward a spring of fresh water. The little prince also exclaimed: people planted five thousand of roses but couldnt find the things that they need.Adults lose direction in their social and material world. What they chase for is just power, interests, vanity and hypocritical knowledge. Through the eyes of the little prince the author portrays the alienated adult world full of such persons who have not discovered the essence of life. What are those people like? They are paranoic for right, crazy for money, can not help indulging, blind to be loyal to their duties and the doctrinaires. With the saying of the little prince: The grown-ups are certainly altogether extraordinary .3 同23 And the blind passengers and the people who abandoned the poetic life are found on the earth. All those are the figures we can see everywhere in our real life. Just through the view of the prince who comes from the outer space, the funny behavior and absurdity of those people are magnified, which exerts the effect of defamiliarization. This actually indicates that adults in the real life have got lost and been possessed by the devil of lust.4. The World of Little PrinceCompared with the different world of adults, the little princes world is much purer and simpler. Little prince is a magical character, with the great ability to travel between different planets. He wore the gold hair and a long coat, with neither country nor hometown, living in the place far away from human society, and bounded without old behaviors, which is the serene and innocent legendary child character. In his world, he can see the elephant in the pythons stomach, the sheep in the box, and in the vast desert he can find a well, and he never forgets the rose no matter where he wasImagination, simplification, innocence, friendship, love, is all of a piece constituting the world of the little prince, who is transparent. It is very different from the chaos world of adults. As an old saying goes: children have a heaven eye, that is, children can see what adults cant, and they always know the essence. Essence is the thing that cant be seen with eyes but with hearts. That is the way children think.But the world of the little prince is lonely and a little sad. Because as a child he has been forgotten by adults in the process of growing up. The children world full of intelligence also happens to be alienated by the adult world. Many children in their early childhood can imagine that they can happily and freely fly around in the sky; they can imagine themself into many different roles, from a little demon with a dirty face to an full-fledged eagle. But, after a few years of growth, most of them cant fly again like the eagle, they have become some kind of the disabled. Children can not be understood in the adult world. They can only live a lonely life like the little prince, or be prematurely alienated to adults. The golden hair of the little prince in the wind and the lonely silhouette when he was leaving left the infinite sadness behind.The innocence of children is incompatible with the secular and selfish adults. The complexty of the world and the ruthlessness of reality make the prince get no satisfactory answers about his questions, which makes him feel melancholy even cry in sorrow. Emotional vulnerability is the reason of his sadness, but the main reason may be the dead confliction between his persistence of pursuing the truth of the world and the absurd world. There is a world of difference between the values of the prince and those of adults. As a representative of the childrens spiritual world, the little princes world is immaculate and full of love and warmth. The relationships in childrens world are direct and natural, which has never been polluted by the modern civilization and has broken away from the adults logic bondage. As for the adults spiritual world, it is full of “discipline”, is full of traces of modern civilization pollution. The adults succumb to the pressure and the lure of money of the external world. There is no linked value between the two kinds of spirits. 4 胡玉龙：小王子的象征意义，外国文学评论，1998年第一期4 5. The Redemption of ChildrenFacing such a beautiful fairy tale, we have to think about when the adults lost freedom and hope? We have been domesticated by so much fame and gradually lost ourselves. The adults world has fallen into the storm of calculating which is caused by science, technology, business and machine. People are too busy to understand the real life with their mind. They hurry to calculate and have no time to create the contact of love and establish friendship and love.5.1 The embodiment of childrens charactersIn this fairy tale, readers can feel the authors attention and praise to children. He finds that childrens pure feeling make them have more imagination than adults; they can transcend the tradition, rationality and irrationality of this society; therefore it is more likely and frequent for them to find the essence of life. It may be a common hat in the adults eyes, but for children (including the little prince) it is a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. In adults eyes it is just a box; for the children, it may be a little lamb. The author not only feels the childrens happiness, but also understands their mourning: childrens world is not carefree as in the eyes of adults, it is often blue. The heart of the little prince was filled with melancholy and loneliness. He saw 43 sunsets just in one day. During the long time in the past, his only pleasure is to watch the beautiful and mild scene of sunset. Although it may be sorrowful, children still hold hopes for their lives. Adults seem to catch the train hurriedly without knowing the destination. “They are asleep in there, or if they are not asleep they are yawning. Only the children are flattening their noses against the window-panes.” Adults lose interest in their lives; on the contrary, children know what theyre pursuing. Adults were willing to take one pill every week in order not to be thirsty in the whole week while children would rather spend 53 minutes walking to the spring leisurely. The little princes understand that the important thing is invisible and can only be found by a careful heart for the reason that everything is alive in the childrens world.5 黄俊：成人的童话，生命的寓言简评法国童话小王子，语文学刊，2002年第3期55.2 The redemption of love How can the little prince save this fragmentized world of adult? It is love. Musset said, “Love is belief, happiness of human religions.” In the planet where the little prince lived, there was a single and lonely flower. She used her beauty, perversity and vanity to make the little prince happy and worried. The little prince did not know the flowers name until he saw thousands of them in a garden on the earth. Its name is rose. The flower in his planet had told him that she was the only one of her kind in the entire universe. But he found five thousand of them, all alike, in one single garden. The little prince felt very sad. At that moment, the fox appeared just like a philosopher.The fox explained what the true meanings of need and no need, similar and unique insights are.6 蒋露：浅析小王子中爱的哲学，网络财富，2009年8月刊6 The fox told the little prince that to tame was to establish ties. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in the entire world. To you, I shall be unique in the entire world.”7 同27 The little prince finally found the reason why that flower was so precious to him and the reason why she is more valuable than five thousand roses in the garden. The rose had tamed him. This is really a great discovery. Why we can fall in love with someone? Is it because she or he is much more beautiful, richer or more outstanding? In the eyes of ordinary people, the one you loved is a general person; and similarly, the reason why we are loved, is not that we are so exceptional, but we have special “taming” relationship. And the dedications of each other strengthen the “taming” relationship, making the one on each side irreplaceable. The fox also told prince poetically that he didnt have interest in the wheat because he didnt eat bread. But it would be different if the little prince tamed him. He would love to listen to the wind in the wheat, because the color of the grain was the same to the little princes golden hair. This is really what is called love me love my dog. Anything which is connected with the one you loved can lead to a happy feeling. So the little prince finally said goodbye to “me”, and said affectionately when they looked up at stars, “you will have five hundred million little bells, and I shall have five hundred million springs of fresh water.”8 同28 Love, what a magic word, makes the world so lovely and poetical. What is more important is that the little prince recognized a kind of responsibility which was beyond simple love. “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose”9 同29 There comes the new interpretation of love, which breaks through the surface of love but shows up the deep nature of love. Love makes the world become lovely and poetical. The process of “taming” enables us to establish a relationship which can be relied upon. Love is responsible, raising it to a higher level, for the person you love and for the living you make. It is because a major significant taming is ignored, the relationship between adults turn to be naked materialistically. The Little Prince shows us the childrens world which is sincere but a little sad, leading people to understand children in childrens way. In the other word, this is the establishment of contact to tame adults and to save the lost innocence of nature in adults in childrens special way. As the author starts with the sentence: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. And the adults only see matter, money and price,with no significance and value. Therefore, he invites the little prince from distant stars, trying to wake up the human nature which has been lost in the wilderness, not the adults watch for children, but the children watch for adults.6. ConclusionThe Little Prince is a book using childs pure mind as a reference to remind the adults of not getting lost in mentality, it is also a book that only adults can really understand and appreciate its beauty.10李俏梅：心灵的“童年自我”圣.埃克苏佩里的童话小王子解读，名作欣赏，2003年第6期。10 It is a fairy tale which reveals the blindness, loss, and absurdity in the human life. Humans should continue to recall his childhood and acquire the forward driving force from childhood so that they will be not far away form true human life. When we read The Little Prince, we find that the desire for love, beauty and simple life is also the deepest desire in our heart. The little prince is also our own person who has been lurking in our body, because every adult is originated from a child. But we are driven by the principle of secular interest, we continue to suppress him and treat him as immaturity which should be overcome, make him gradually narrowed to be invisible. If he really disappears in our hearts, we are no longer being people, but like the little prince say, being mushroom. As in the end of the book, the author affectionately calls for the little prince to appear again, we also hope that the little prince in peoples hearts will be stronger and be regarded as treasure, because only he can prompt us to continually adjust to the de-orbit life, and to live as a real people. Only pure innocence can save human being. One thousand readers of The Little Prince will be a thousand domesticated adults; the world will become full of love and poetry again.AcknowledgementsI would like to express my gratitude to all those who helped me during the writing of this thesis. I gratefully acknowledge the help of my supervisor, Ms. Guo Haiying, who has offered me valuable suggestions in the academic studies. From planning the thesis to its fulfillment, I benefited enormously from her instructive suggestions, comments and invaluable corrections. Truly, without his painstaking efforts in revising and polishing my drafts, the completion of the present paper would not have been possible.I also owe a special debt of gratitude to all the professors, teachers and tutors in Foreign Languages College, from whose devoted teaching and enlightening lectures I have benefited a lot and academically prepared for the thesis.Last my thanks would go to my friends and my fellow classmates who gave me their help and time in listening to me and helping me work out my problems during the difficult course of the thesis.11