80 pages • 2 hours read
The Little Prince
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Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary
The prince first visited several asteroids close to his own, including one only a king inhabited. Much to the prince's confusion, the king delightedly greeted him as his "subject"(28) before objecting to the tired prince's yawning. However, when the prince explained that he couldn't help yawning, the king backtracked and actually commanded the prince to yawn. The prince said that this was equally impossible, because he couldn't yawn on command, so the king finally ordered him to simply "sometimes yawn" (29).
Eventually, the prince learned even though the king insisted on commanding everything around him, including the stars, he took care to only issue orders that could be followed. The king, for instance, responded to the prince's request to make the sun set by asking whether he would be justified in ordering a general to "fly from one flower to the next like a butterfly, or to write a tragedy, or to turn into a seagull" (30). The prince agreed that this wouldn't be fair, and the king replied that he would wait until evening to command the sun to set.
Disappointed, the prince prepared to leave, only to be stopped short by the king offering to make him a minister of justice. The prince objected that there was no one on the planet to judge, and the king told him he could judge himself, which is "the hardest thing of all" (32). When the prince noted that he didn't need to remain there to do this, the king proposed that he instead judge the rat inhabiting the planet, periodically condemning him to death and then pardoning him. The prince, however, didn't want to sentence anyone to death, so he left, the king shouting after him that he was making him an ambassador.
Chapter 11 Summary
On the next planet, the prince encountered a "very vain man" (33)who immediately assumed the prince had come to admire him. When the prince asked about the strange hat the man was wearing, the man explained that he used it to respond to "acclamations" (33), although he also admitted that he never had any visitors. To illustrate his point, he then asked the prince to clap his hands, and tipped his hat in response.
The prince initially found this entertaining and kept clapping to watch the man continue to tip his hat. Eventually, he grew bored and tried to talk to the man, only to find that the man couldn't hear him, because "[v]ain men never hear anything but praise" (34). Instead, the man asked whether the prince admired him, explaining that that meant "acknowledg[ing] that [he was] the handsomest, the best-dressed, the richest, and the most intelligent man on the planet" (34). The prince pointed out that he was the only man on the planet, but also complied with the man's request in order to please him. As he left, the prince remarked that "grown-ups are very strange" (34), just as he had after visiting the king.
Chapter 12 Summary
Next, the prince met a drunkard: "This visit was a very brief one, but it plunged the little prince into a deep depression" (34). When the prince approached the drunkard and asked him what he was doing and why, the man replied that he drank to "forget that [he was] ashamed" (35). The prince, hoping to help, asked what the drunkard was ashamed of, and the man replied that he was ashamed of drinking. Once again, the prince left feeling confused about grown-ups.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
The Little Prince is a highly-allegorical story, and the people the prince meets on his travels all represent, in one way or another, the underlying irrationality of much of what society considers reasonable and practical. For instance, the king's suggestion that the prince spend his days alternately condemning and pardoning a rat suggests that governing is often more about the appearance of accomplishing something than it is about actually achieving anything useful; this cycle of pardons and condemnations would serve no real purpose beyond justifying the prince's ongoing authority as a minister. Similarly, the king himself shapes his orders to preexisting reality and then claims credit for it, all in a bid to retain his imaginary power. The other adults the prince visits are similarly illogical and self-defeating. The self-absorption of the vain man makes him simultaneously obsessed with the opinions of others and completely unable to relate to them, while the drunkard's alcoholism keeps him locked in a vicious cycle of self-hatred and addiction. All of this makes the adult world's condemnation of imagination in the name of being reasonable seem hypocritical and unjustifiable: properly understood, Saint-Exupéry suggests, it is this "reasonable" world that is incomprehensible.
The prince's encounters also underscore other major themes in The Little Prince, like the importance of love and friendship. Although the narcissism of the vain man is a particular obstacle to forming meaningful relationships, all of the adults the prince meets are in some sense trapped in their own isolation. The king, for instance, sees any person he encounters simply as a "subject"(28), in much the same way that the vain man sees everyone as an "admirer" (33). Both men essentially view all other people as interchangeable, erasing their individuality and consequently making any kind of personal connection impossible. The drunkard, meanwhile, is too caught up in his own misery and shame to engage with the prince meaningfully.
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