小王子英文原版

小王子英文原版The Little PrinceOnce when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called “True Stories from Nature,” about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.In the book it said: “Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion.”I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked something like this:I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.But they answered: “Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?”My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of a boa constrictor,so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this:The grown-ups’ response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.So then I chose another profession, and learned to pilot airplanes. I have flown a little over all parts of the world; and it is true that geography has been very useful to me. At a glance I can distinguish China from Arizona. If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable.In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted, I tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One, which I have always kept. I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding. But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say:“That is a hat.”Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.The Little PrinceI. The narrators’ qualifications as an author of a book for childrenMy father had made me a gift of the first few pages of a book which had just come out; this was “The Aviator’s Story.” But according to the author, this book was not an entirely truthful account. He pointed out that he had to disguise full truth because, if not, not even friends would believe him. In order to be sure of his credibility, he asked me if I was a grown-up. However, I did not answer his question; it was not worth to waste my time for such matters. As a child, I knew that grown-ups are of no use and that only children can understand. I drew for the author a boa digesting an elephant to test his understanding, but he too thought it was a hat. Therefore, I gave up being a painter and became a aviator. After my plane crashed in the Sahara, it was there that I met the Little Prince.II. The story of the Little Prince and his planetThe narrator first spotted a small boy, about the size of a house, who asked him to draw a sheep. The boy is the Little Prince (who calls all grown-ups “naïve”) from the asteroid B-612. The Little Prince tells him about his tiny planet, which, because it is so small, he can admire all the 44 sunsets ina single day. One day a mysterious rose, who threatens to look after him forever, appears. The Little Prince, who loves her deeply, bids her farewell and travels through space.III. The Little Prince’s visits to other planetsThe Little Prince first visits an asteroid with a king who commands nothing, a planet inhabited by a conceited man who craves admiration, a planet of a tippler who drinks to forget his shame, and a planet where a businessman counts stars he doesn’t own. After a long journey, the Little Prince arrives at Earth and meets a pilot of a crashed plane.IV. The Little Prince’s judgment of grown-ups as seen on his visit to Planet EarthAfter looking at a garden of roses identical to his own, the Little Prince is surprised to find that his rose is not the only one of her kind in the universe. His travels have taken him to other planets with other roses, whom he finds not as beautiful or loving as his own, since no one cared for them or listened to them. The narrator admits the loneliness encountered by grown-ups, who cannot enjoy simple things in life, such as stars, as the Prince does. The Prince becomes friendly with a fox he encounters in the desert, who teaches him the value of taming and the importance of human relationships.V. The Little Prince’s departureFinally, the Little Prince leaves Earth to return to his planet and bids the narrator farewell. The narrator, after fixing his plane, decides that he too will now return home, much to the delight of his friends who had given up on him.VI. The narrator’s legacy of the Little PrinceThe narrator expresses his love and sadness for the Prince in the final chapter by explaining to the readers that when he gazes at the night sky, he thinks of the Prince’s laughter and sweet, happy voice echoing through the cosmos, to return their child-like understanding to adults who will listen.。