Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince, Chapitre 4 (Les grandes personnes vs. Les jeunes)

Si je vous ai raconté ces détails sur l’astéroïde B 612 et si je vous ai confié son numéro, c’est à cause des grandes personnes. Les grandes personnes aiment les chiffres. Quand vous leur parlez d’un nouvel ami, elles ne vous questionnent jamais sur l’essentiel. Elles ne vous disent jamais : «Quel est le son de sa voix? Quels sont les jeux qu’il préfère? Est-ce qu’il collectionne les papillons?» Elles vous demandent: «Quel âge a-t-il? Combien a-t-il de frères ? Combien pèse-t-il ? Combien gagne son père?» Alors seulement elles croient le connaître. Si vous dites aux grandes personnes : «J’ai vu une belle maison en briques roses, avec des géraniums aux fenêtres et des colombes sur le toit…» elles ne parviennent pas à s’imaginer cette mai- son. Il faut leur dire: «J’ai vu une maison de cent mille francs.» Alors elles s’écrient : «Comme c’est joli!»

Ainsi, si vous leur dites : «La preuve que le petit prince a existé c’est qu’il était ravissant, qu’il riait, et qu’il voulait un mouton. Quand on veut un mouton, c’est la preuve qu’on existe» elles hausseront les épaules et vous traiteront d’enfant ! Mais si vous leur dites: «La planète d’où il venait est l’astéroïde B 612» alors elles seront convaincues, et elles vous laisseront tranquille avec leurs questions. Elles sont comme ça. Il ne faut pas leur en vouloir. Les enfants doivent être très indulgents envers les grandes personnes.

Mais, bien sûr, nous qui comprenons la vie, nous nous moquons bien des numéros ! J’aurais aimé commencer cette histoire à la façon des contes de fées. J’aurais aimé dire:
«Il était une fois un petit prince qui habitait une planète à peine plus grande que lui, et qui avait besoin d’un ami…» Pour ceux qui comprennent la vie, ça aurait eu l’air beaucoup plus vrai.

Car je n’aime pas qu’on lise mon livre à la légère. J’éprouve tant de chagrin à raconter ces souvenirs. Il y a six ans déjà que mon ami s’en est allé avec son mouton. Si j’essaie ici de le décrire, c’est afin de ne pas l’oublier. C’est triste d’oublier un ami. Tout le monde n’a pas eu un ami. Et je puis devenir comme les grandes personnes qui ne s’intéressent plus qu’aux chiffres. C’est donc pour ça encore que j’ai acheté une boîte de couleurs et des crayons. C’est dur de se remettre au dessin, à mon âge, quand on n’a jamais fait d’autres tentatives que celle d’un boa fermé et celle d’un boa ouvert, à l’âge de six ans ! J’essaierai, bien sûr, de faire des portraits le plus ressemblants possible. Mais je ne suis pas tout à fait certain de réussir. Un dessin va, et l’autre ne ressemble plus. Je me trompe un peu aussi sur la taille. Ici le petit prince est trop grand. Là il est trop petit. J’hésite aussi sur la couleur de son costume. Alors je tâtonne comme ci et comme ça, tant bien que mal. Je me tromperai en- fin sur certains détails plus importants. Mais ça, il faudra me le pardonner. Mon ami ne donnait jamais d’explications. Il me croyait peut-être semblable à lui. Mais moi, malheureusement, je ne sais pas voir les moutons à travers les caisses. Je suis peut- être un peu comme les grandes personnes. J’ai dû vieillir.

English Translation: If I have told you these details about the asteroid, and made a note of its number for you, it is on account of the grown−ups and their ways. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about the essential. They never ask you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they demand: “How old is he? How many brothers does he have? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?” Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him. If you were to say to the grown−ups: “I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof,” they would not be able to get any idea of the house at all. You would have to say to them: “I saw a house that cost $20,000.” Then they would exclaim: “Oh, what a pretty house that is!”

Just so, you might say to them: “The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is proof that he exists.” And what good would it do to tell them that? They would shrug their shoulders, and treat you like a child. But if you said to them: “The planet he came from is Asteroid B−612,” then they would be convinced, and leave you alone from all their questions. They are like that. One must not hold it against them. Children should always show great forbearance toward grown−up people.

But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference. I should have liked to begin this story in the fashion of the fairy−tales. I should have liked to say: “Once upon a time there was a little prince who lived on a planet that was scarcely any bigger than himself, and who had need of a sheep…” For those who understand life, that would have made my story truer.

For I do not want any one to read my book carelessly. I have suffered too much grief in setting down these memories. Six years have already passed since my friend went away with his sheep. If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown−ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures… It is for this reason that I have bought a box of paints and some pencils. It is hard to take up drawing again at my age, when I have never made any pictures except those of the boa constrictor from the outside and the boa constrictor from the inside, since I was six. I shall certainly try to make my portraits as true to life as possible. But I am not at all sure if I have succeeded. 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 color of his costume. So I fumble along as best I can, now good, now bad, and I hope at least get in the middle. In certain, more important details I shall make mistakes. But that is something that will not be my fault. My friend never explained anything to me. He thought, perhaps, that I was like him. But I, alas, do not know how to see sheep through the walls of boxes. Perhaps I am a little like the grown−ups. I have had to grow old.

Jodi Picoult, Introduction to “The Outsiders” (Cliques and Categories)

The divisions between peer groups at high school, Kyle suggests, are just like the one S.E. Hinton portrays between Ponyboy’s gang and the Socs. There’s a stereotype of the “other,” but neither group goes out of its way to see if it’s true. And because it’s social suicide to not fit in at all, the mad scramble to be part of a group – any group – is key. Being classified as a geek is still better than not belonging at all – and even if you realize how ridiculous this seems, it doesn’t keep you from trying to conform. Ponyboy wonders aloud why this is so:

What kind of world is it where all I have to be proud of is a reputation for being a hood, and greasy hair? I don’t want to be a hood, but even if I don’t steal things and mug people and get boozed up, I’m marked lousy. Why should I be proud of it? Why should I even pretend to be proud of it?

…The Outsiders’ timelessness owes itself to the fact that as long as there are teenagers, there will be cliques. As long as there are cliques, there will be stereotypes. And as long as there are stereotypes, there will be misconceptions waiting to be erased. Kyle, at fourteen, has moments like Ponyboy – at one instant letting his imagination soar like a child; in the next hanging onto the edges of an adult conversation in the hopes that he might contribute. I sometimes see his desire to grow up fast tempered by the flash of understanding that there’s no going back once you get there. Also – like Ponyboy – every now and then he has a contemplative moment that astounds me. It is while we are discussing similarities and differences between people that Kyle wonders aloud what would happen if, in his own school, everyone could connect with an individual member of an opposing clique. “Then we wouldn’t have separate groups,” he says. “We’d have a community.”

Can change occur so dramatically at the individual level that it becomes global? Like my son, Ponyboy seems to hope so – it is why, he intimates, he is writing this book:

I could picture hundreds and hundreds of boys living on the wrong sides of cities, boys with black eyes who jumped at their own shadows. Hundreds of boys who maybe watched sunsets and looked at stars and ached for something better… Someone should tell their side of the story, and maybe people would understand then and wouldn’t be so quick to judge a boy by the amount of hair oil he wore.

It’s an optimistic thought – one espoused not just by Ponyboy, but by his creator, who was then a teenager herself. It suggests that by the time adolescents become adults, the divisions that separate them – conditions that make adolescence as much about exclusion as inclusion – might be erased in a broad stroke of compassion and understanding. But is that actually what happens?

As Kyle points out to me, the world of grown-ups is no less splintered than that of an average high school – and he’s right. I may not inhabit a world full of greasers and Socs, but mine is split into Democrats and Republicans, Christians and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians, wealthy and poor, white and black – even, ironically, teenagers and adults. The divisions still exist, even if the categories are different.

Long ago, Carol Gilligan suggested that growing up involves forgetting the painful parts of adolescence – but at what cost? Could the careful examination of who we are and who we aren’t that is endemic to adolescence somehow become a casualty during the transition to adulthood? I would go so far as to suggest that teenagers may be more inclined to break through stereotypes than adults, who’ve simply learned to live with them. Perhaps instead of expecting teens to just “grow up already,” adults should be more willing to “grown down” – recalling what it felt like, as a teenager, to believe you could change the world, and remembering what it felt like to recognize your ideals in a powerful book like The Outsiders.

After all, at the end of the day, we see the same sunset.