The Little Prince

The next planet was home to a streetlight and a lamplighter, which the prince found puzzling. While he couldn't understand the point of having a streetlight on a planet with no other residents, the prince did feel that the lamplighter was "less absurd" than the other people he had visited: "At least his work has some meaning. When he lights his lamp, it's as if he's bringing one more star to life, or one more flower" (40).

The prince greeted the lamplighter by asking him why he had put out the light only to immediately light it again. The lamplighter simply replied that he had "orders" (42), further confusing the prince. The lamplighter insisted there was "nothing to understand" (42) and admitted that his job was awful: he used to put out and light the lamp just once a day, but the planet began to spin faster and faster until he began having to light and put out the lamp every minute. To the lamplighter's annoyance, the prince found this amusing but was also touched by the lamplighter's "faithful[ness] to orders" (42). Drawing on his experience of watching sunsets, the little prince explained how the lamplighter could stretch out the length of the day by walking continuously around the planet. The lamplighter retorted that this wouldn't allow him to get the rest he desired, and the prince, acknowledging this, left him to his work. As he went away, the prince once again felt that the lamplighter was the only person he'd met who could have been his friend. What’s more, leaving the planet meant losing the opportunity to see "one thousand, four hundred forty sunsets every twenty-four hours" (43). 

The next planet, which was somewhat bigger than the others the prince had traveled to, was home to "an old gentleman who wrote enormous books" (44). This man greeted the prince as an "explorer" (44)and asked him where he came from. The prince wanted to know what book the man was working on, so the man explained that he was a geographer who kept track of "where the seas are, and the rivers, the cities, the mountains, and the deserts" (44).

This interested the prince, who commented on the planet's beauty and asked if it had any oceans, mountains, cities, rivers, or deserts. The geographer couldn't answer any of these questions, explaining that he wasn't an explorer and how geographers relied on the reports of others. He also told the prince that geographers have to look into the "moral character" of the explorers they consult, because "an explorer who told lies would cause disasters in the history books," and "an explorer who drank too much [would] see double [and report] two mountains where there was only one" (45). Even a trustworthy explorer, the geographer said, has to provide proof that he was where he claimed to be.

The geographer then asked the prince to describe his home planet. The prince explained that there were three volcanoes and one flower, but the geographer dismissed the latter, saying that "flowers are ephemeral," and that geographers were only concerned with "eternal things" (46). Unsatisfied, the prince continued to ask what the word "ephemeral" meant until the geographer defined it as "threatened by imminent disappearance" (47). This unnerved the prince, who began to worry about the safety of the flower he left behind. Nevertheless, he decided to continue his journey, following the geographer's recommendation that he go to Earth.