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Chapter 7
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Little Prince, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Relationships
The True and the Essential
Exploration vs. Narrowmindedness
Childhood vs. Adulthood
Innocence
Summary
Analysis
The little prince tells the pilot more about his flower, the rose. She appears one day on his planet as a shrub and takes her time growing, blooming one morning with the sun. The little prince is enchanted by her beauty and tends to her, but her vanity makes her a difficult plant to take care of. She asks for a screen and a glass globe to shield her at night, beginning to explain that where she came from, the climate was warmer—before realizing that this was an obvious lie, since she came in the form of a seed and could not know anything of other planets. The little prince begins to doubt her and grows unhappy.
The little prince builds his relationship with the rose by taking care of her each day. However, he discovers that not everything she says is true, which bothers him greatly because he finds importance in truth.
Themes
The little prince confides to the pilot that he did not understand anything then and shouldn't have run away from her. The little prince says that he was too young to know how to love his rose.
Later, the little prince will realize that the truth is not necessarily essential and that the time he spent with his rose, and the care he feels for her, was more important than her lies. Also, he mentions that he was too young back then to appreciate her—which is surprising, considering that youth is usually a positive trait in this book. This shows that some of the divisions between adulthood and childhood are not so clear—both can benefit from exploration and open-mindedness, though it also raises the distinction between growing old and growing wise.
Themes
