Quote 37
…I am not at all sure of success. One drawing goes along all right, and another has no resemblance to its subject. I make some errors, too, in the little prince’s height: in one place he is too tall and in another too short. And I feel some doubts about the colour of his costume. So I fumble along as best I can, now good, now bad, and I hope generally fair-to-middling. (4.14)
Even when he’s not satisfied with his work, the narrator has to keep going. He explains that some pictures are better than others, and sometimes he does a better job of recording the details than others, without being exactly sure of why that is. The most important thing, though, is telling his story and conveying the essence of the little prince to his readers. In order to do this, the narrator simply has to keep drawing.
Quote 38
“Oh, no!” I cried. “No, no, no! I don’t believe anything. I answered you with the first thing that came into my head. Don’t you see—I am very busy with matters of consequence!” (7.16)
Here, the narrator is focusing on the wrong thing. He’s been working so hard to fix his plane (and we admit, that sounds pretty important) that he misses out on something else that’s just as important, only in a different way.
And that’s his conversation with the prince. The narrator doesn’t pay attention to what the prince is saying because he is preoccupied with his plane—but to the prince, his worries are way more important than what the narrator sees as “matters of consequence.” Of course, that’s like grown-up speak and is one thing that the narrator usually tries to avoid.
Quote 39
“This is only his box. The sheep you asked for is inside.”
I was very surprised to see a light break over the face of my young judge: “That is exactly the way I wanted it! Do you think that this sheep will have to have a great deal of grass?” (2.27-8)
There are two kinds of transformations taking place in this scene. We need some twinkly lights or explode-y sounds. First, the narrator makes a drawing that changes a box into a sheep. Poof! Second, the prince’s face is transformed by his knowledge of that drawing. Swoosh! And the narrator is transformed because he realizes that the friend he’s been searching for all his life is in front of him. Ka-POW!