The Rose

Antoine De Saint Exupery

Online Source: The Little Prince

Douglas felt that his little spot on the asteroid was a good one. He lived down a ways from a volcano, which he saw the little prince clean out from time to time. His spot was also out of the way of the legs of the chair that the little prince sat on to watch the sunsets. He didn't see everything that went on on the little Asteroid B-612, but he saw enough.

And so it was, that on one particular morning, Douglas saw a sprout come up out of the ground not far from him. At first, he didn't give much thought to it. "It will just be plucked out like all the rest," he thought to himself. But, it wasn't long after that Douglas noticed that this sprout was different. The little prince noticed it was different too, which is why he didn't pluck it from the ground. As the sprout grew, a bud grew. Douglas saw this and wondered what it must feel like to grow. To finally be out of your seed, stretching out everywhere. "It must be very exciting," Douglas thought to himself.

For a long while nothing happened with the bud. Oh, it would move every now and then, but it was hard to tell what was going on inside.

Then, one day, the bud blossomed. She stretched herself out, and then, seeing the little prince, spoke up.

"Forgive me... I'm still all untidy..." stated the rose. This confused Douglas quite a bit. He could see very plainly that this blossom was quite beautiful. Even the little prince thought so.

"How lovely you are," the little prince told the rose. Even though the rose was red, Douglas could see that she was blushing.

"Aren't I?" she replied. Douglas thought that this was a rather strange answer. Vain, but still strange. After a short while the rose declared to the little prince, "I believe it is breakfast time. Would you be so kind as to tend to me?" And it was from that day forward that the little prince attended to the rose.

At first, Douglas was fascinated by the rose. He, as well as the little prince, was captivated by her beauty. But as the days came and went, Douglas began to dislike the rose. She was a very vain thing, always thinking of herself. She always boasted of herself in her beautiful grandeur. Yet, for all her vanity, the little prince always did what the rose asked. The little prince would talk to her. The little prince would water her. The little prince built a screen for her. Douglas saw this, and it made him rather curious. He wondered why did the little prince would do these things for her. The work seemed so tedious. Douglas could see that the rose seemed to make the little prince unhappy, yet he cared for her just the same.

Watering the Rose

Antoine De saint Exupery

Online source: The Little Prince

As the days came and went, Douglas began to feel a new feeling for the rose; envy. Douglas began to wonder about his own life. He saw the care and attention that the little prince gave to the rose, and wondered if, one day, someone would care for him and give him that kind of attention. If he were to stay on the asteroi, he would never know, for he could never grow. He was too big. He knew that he was not a rose, but he desired the attention all the same.

On one particular morning, Douglas could tell that things were different. The little prince cleaned his planet with much care, much more than usual, and tended to the rose. The little prince then told the rose goodbye. This startled Douglas. The little prince was leaving? If the little prince left, what was to become of him? Douglas panicked. If the little prince left, there would be no one to care and tend to him if he ever grew. But he knew that he couldn't grow because he would just get plucked out like a baobab. If he never grew, he would forever stay in the Asteroid soil, and that was a very sad thought. If Douglas did stay in the asteroid soil forever, this would be a very boring story.

"I must leave too," he said to himself. And so, in a moment of desperation, Douglas sprouted a tiny shoot, and caught hold of the tail of the little prince's scarf. Once safe inside the fibers of the scarf, Douglas retreated back into his seed, and held on for the ride, and the adventure that was to follow. Not to mention the people that Douglas and the little prince would meet, like the geographer.

Author's note: The story of the rose in the book "The Little Prince" is scattered all throughout the book, each part telling a different aspect of the relationship between the little prince and the rose, but I chose to focus on the moment the rose is introduced into the story, seeing as how this would be the only time that Douglas would have direct contact with the rose.

I am now telling the story from the perspective of Douglas. At this point in the story, Douglas does not have the inside knowledge of the feelings of the little prince. He, as well as the pilot - the author - will learn about those things later in the story. For right now, Douglas is just the observer on the little asteroid. I didn't change the actual series of events from the original story, but instead I just focused on retelling it from Douglas' perspective - something I will be doing for the rest of the stories.

Because the premise of my stories are to show the different things that people give their attention to, I thought this particular story to be a good introduction to that. The little prince gave special attention to the rose, which in later stories will be the basis of comparison for other examples of people's attention.

Bibliography: Exupery, Antoine De saint (1943). The Little Prince.