The Little Prince Group

Question:

lilliecardin13
lilliecardin13
Student
High School - 9th Grade

According to the story, how do adults respond to the drawings?

the pilots drawing

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Posted by lilliecardin13 on Monday August 17, 2009 at 11:55 AM and tagged with adults, drawings, response, the little prince.

Answers:

  1. loriink
    loriink

    eNotes Editor

    They don't understand them. The pictures, to the narrator, show a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. The first picture is mistaken by the adults as a hat. A second picture, more detailed, just makes the adults uncomfortable and confused, and they tell the child to stop drawing things and pay more attention to other school subjects, like math and history. This discourages the child (our narrator) from becoming an artist. He believes that adults don't understand things that children inherently understand, and that it is "tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them."

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    Posted by loriink on Thursday August 20, 2009 at 9:42 AM

  2. kkosach
    kkosach Teacher
    High School - 9th Grade

    eNotes Editor

    The adults think that drawing is a waste of time, and that the artist ought to spend his time focusing on subjects like "geography, history, calculus and grammar".  Thus, the artist abandons his hopes of being a great painter and decides to become an airplane pilot.  The drawings inspire neither fear nor understanding, as the adults cannot see that the "hat" the author has drawn is actually an elephant that has been swallowed by a boa constrictor.

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    Posted by kkosach on Thursday August 20, 2009 at 10:21 AM