The Auto-fictional Writing Of Antoine De Saint-Exupéry In The Little Prince

In the second half of the 20 th century,many French writers turn to themselves,starting their creation with the meditation on the Self.1977 sees the birth of a new literary concept invented by the French literary critic and writer Serge Doubrovski,which is named autofiction.As a new wave of self-writing,the concept of autofiction has become one of the main characteristics that mark contemporary French literature.In fact,long before the term was coined,a large number of writers had already conducted similar explorations.Going further back in literary history,most novels written in the first person are more or less penetrated by fictionalization of the author’s realistic Self.The Little Prince is the most popular and widely circulated work of French writerpilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.If this book with the appearance of a fairy tale is always sought after by people all over the world,it is because they see themselves in the figure of the little prince.This pure,beautiful,heavenly little man,like an angel,represents what we once were,and the child living within every adult.Saint-Exupéry draws inspiration from his adventurous life at Cap Juby and his crash in Libya in early 1936,to create a double of himself in the literary world,the narrator-pilot.Taking advantage of his magnificent imagination and his marvelous metaphors,he succeeds in fictionalizing the story of the little prince from his image of the Self.Indeed,if one knows how to read between the lines,it is not difficult to see that the legendary story of the little prince corresponds perfectly,on a realistic or spiritual level,to the personal experience of the author,as it was simply an “alter-ego”.Perhaps The Little Prince,instead of being a fictional fairy tale,is one of the “True Stories” as Saint-Exupéry suggests under the title of a book about the primeval forest,or rather a discreet autobiography.Through the staging of the two facets of the same Self,Saint-Exupéry skillfully realizes the meeting of a Self with another Self located in a different spacetime.The intertwining of reality and fiction allows the author to talk about himself,to understand himself and to build himself,to cross the limits of the Self and go towards the others,towards a world of diversity and indulgence,in search of the supreme truth of life.Although some scholars and readers have noticed the uncanny resemblance between the narrator-pilot and the author,the internal link between the narrator-pilot,the little prince and Saint-Exupéry himself needs to be emphasized in a more thorough way.Perhaps it is time to do justice to the solemnity,the spiritual and universal values of The Little Prince.Undoubtedly,the concept of autofiction could provide a new perspective for the interpretation of our little book,helping us to reveal the mysterious veil of the little prince,to glimpse the essence of Saint-Exupéry’s thought hidden under the marvelous metaphors,and to build an “art of living” centered on love,courage and responsibility for contemporary humanity.Our thesis is divided into three chapters:The first chapter uses key information from the story,referring to Saint-Exupéry’s personal experience,to analyze the close connection between the narrator-pilot and the author,to the point of determining the homogeneity of the author and the narrator,also revealing Saint-Exupéry’s deep inner concerns behind the Drawing Number One made by this “I” at the beginning of the text.The second chapter attempts to examine the secret relationship between the little prince and the narrator-pilot,based on a hypothesis about the mystical identity of the sheep,to explore the metaphor of the Self hidden in Asteroid B-612,and finally to declare the Trinity formed by the narrator-pilot,the little prince and the author,who exist in three persons but are of one substance.The third chapter is focused on the interplanetary journey of the little prince,analyzing the different forms of the Self and the successive stages of the process of personal development,symbolized by the six asteroids,to emphasize that it is a journey of individual formation in search of identity,a journey of healing the heart traumatized by the war,a spiritual journey to explore the meaning and the value of life.Therefore,The Little Prince is neither a purely fictional story,nor an autobiography in the traditional sense,but an auto-fictional work whose essence is a self-analysis,a reflection on childhood,on the relationship between Self and others,and on life.