Structure

The novella The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is divided into 27 chapters, which are numbered with Roman numerals. Many of the chapters are quite short. Each chapter shows great coherence and is not always directly related to the previous or the following chapter. Several flashbacks and time jumps interrupt the chronological flow of the story.

The novella is preceded by a dedication. In this dedication, the author asks the children to forgive him for dedicating the work to an adult. He gives several reasons for this, but finally changes his wording and dedicates the work to the child that this adult once was. The dedication is a preview of an important theme of the work: the contrast between children and adults.

The first chapter provides the outer framework for the narrative. The pilot reports on his life circumstances. He introduces himself in this chapter and tells about his childhood and the reasons for his choice of profession.

In the second chapter, a time jump is made into the inner frame of the narrative. This chapter takes place six years before the time of the narration. Here, the narrator's first encounter with the little prince occurs on the morning after the pilot's plane crash. From this point on, the two main characters spend 8 days together in the Sahara Desert, during which the narrator learns where the little prince comes from and what he has experienced so far, through his questions and stories.

In the fourth chapter, there is an interlude about the discovery of the little prince's home planet. In this chapter, the pilot reflects on the discovery of the planet by a Turkish astronomer and he addresses his own narrative behavior as well as the contrast between the children and the grown-ups.

Chapters 5 through 8 tell about the little ...