The Little Prince

Being this fable is only ~100 pages, It's likely I'll read it more than once. Being a story-wide allegory what the various elements in the story (including the little prince himself) represent is not immediately obvious to me; perhaps this is one of those stories the reader must ponder and revisit multiple times before they understand the themes.

With the aforementioned considered, technically the novella didn't frustrate me in any meaningful way. It appears repetition as a literary device is present throughout the story as a character developing tool and functions somewhat poetically, presenting the narrative as similar to an Aesop fable of sorts through each chapter. Plot-wise, the linear story-line doesn't confuse the reader too much, but sometimes the reader may get lost during conversations between two characters because of the sometimes glaringly lacking dialogue tags showing who's speaking. Contributing to its world-building, the sufficient details of each location is provided, presented as a long journey the main character takes. In fact, through its digestible though surprisingly layered prose, they're many lessons it efforts to present to its targeted readers (which are likely adolescents). If read during this time in one's life, the rich commentary and allegory may, however, still be overlooked and interpreted under the guise of a lackluster, layer-less children's story.

Nonetheless, perhaps The Little Prince (or rather the lessons and commentary it presents) is better understood at different junctions or phases in one life. After all, the story itself nods at this, almost implying that an adult (or “grown-up”) may never understand the allegorical elements of the story—or at least not in the same way—as a child or tween might.