Among the vices that the Little Prince finds on adult planets, one of the most current is alienation: the process by which a person stops inhabiting their own life and starts living outside of themselves. Saint-Exupéry portrays it in two distinct characters, the vain and the drunk, who are two faces of the same loss.
The vain: living from the eyes of others
The vain person does not seek power, he seeks confirmation. Everything he does is aimed in a single direction, the reflection. He doesn't want to be loved or understood, he wants to be seen. His value depends entirely on the eyes of others, and the absence of applause is, for him, the same as death.
Here the work dialogues with Jean-Paul Sartre, who in Being and Nothingness states that, when we are seen, we are transformed into an object: the awareness of someone else's gaze alienates us from ourselves, and we stop being who we are to become what the other projects. What is vain is this alienation taken to the extreme. By seeking the gaze as the only source of value, we condemn ourselves to living in a prison of mirrors. As early as 1943, Saint-Exupéry anticipated the world of likes, selfies and followers, where every gesture is performance and every silence, failure.
The drunk: running away from yourself
If the vain man lives to be seen, the drunkard drinks to not be seen, not even by himself. He drinks to forget that he is ashamed, and he is ashamed of drinking. Alienation, here, is escape: alcohol is just the symptom of the emptiness that it tries to silence. Unlike guilt, which says “I did something wrong,” shame says “I am wrong,” and erodes the sense of essential worth. The drunk is so alienated from himself that he would prefer to forget who he believes he is.
The mask that swallows the face
In both cases, what is lost is contact with one's own being. Psychologist Carl Jung would say that the vain person lives identified with his persona, the social mask that we build to relate to the world. The persona is necessary, but when confused with the totality of the being, it becomes a prison. This is what happens on these claustrophobic planets: men have become just the image of themselves.
The Little Prince does not judge or debate them. Just see, really, and continue your journey, because where there is no listening, there is no encounter. Your departure is a silent invitation: to leave the stage, tear off the mask and, finally, touch what we are. To follow the complete analysis of these characters, watch the class.
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What is alienation in Pequeno Príncipe?
It is the loss of yourself. It appears above all in the vain person, who only exists through the eyes of others, and in the drunkard, who drinks to escape his own shame. Both stopped being who they are.
Which characters represent alienation?
The vain, hostage to applause and reflection, and the drunk, trapped in the cycle of escape and guilt. Each one shows a way of stopping inhabiting their own life.
How does the work dialogue with philosophy about this?
With Sartre, for whom the gaze of others turns us into an object, and with Jung, who warns against confusing the persona, the social mask, with the totality of the being.
Go deeper: The 7 planets and what they mean · Instrumental rationality · The Little Prince: summary and analysis
Source class (YouTube): O Pequeno Príncipe, de Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (NousCast)