Of all the figures in The Little Prince, few generate as many doubts as the snake. She is the first creature the boy encounters upon arriving on Earth, she speaks in riddles and reappears at the end in a way that disturbs many readers. After all, what does it represent? The answer surprises anyone who expects to find a villain there.
The snake is not evil
The most common intuition, inherited from other traditions, is to read the serpent as a symbol of evil or as the poison of human evil. In Pequeno Príncipe, however, that is not his role. Despite the poison, the serpent does not represent evil or temptation. To reduce it to that is to miss the essence of the symbol that Saint-Exupéry built.
So much so that the very tone of the work in relation to it is not one of horror, but of enigmatic gravity. The serpent does not threaten the prince; she offers him something, and does so with an almost ritual solemnity.
Death as a bridge and passage
The key to understanding it is this: the serpent represents death, but not as something pejorative, tragic or scary. She is a bridge, an instrument of liberation. It is through this that the Little Prince is able to leave his physical body and return to his planet of origin, where his rose awaits him, a symbol of love, essence and home.
Seen this way, the serpent is not the antagonist, it is the messenger of transcendence. Its bite does not end the story, it completes it: it allows the passage of what is heavy, the body, to rediscover what is essential, the bond. “It seems like he died, but it wasn’t true,” says the narrator. The prince's departure is not an escape or an end, it is loyalty to his rose.
Why does it bother so many readers?
It's natural for the snake to cause strangeness, especially for those who learned the story through the lighter animations and then came across the book. Some feel that their presence makes the tale tragic. But it is precisely there that The Little Prince reveals itself to be deeper than a children's book: it does not hide death, it gives it new meaning.
The work suggests, as do the great spiritual traditions, that death can be a passage, not annihilation. That's why, at the end, the prince asks the aviator to look at the sky: the stars will laugh, and he will remember. The serpent was the threshold for this reunion. To follow this reading in detail, and the answer to the questions that the readers themselves raised, watch the complete class.
Readings from Nous
Read the classics in depth
Our list of more than 130 recommended books, commented and organized by theme, so you don't read in the dark.
See recommended readingsFrequently asked questions
What does the snake represent in The Little Prince?
The serpent represents death, but not as something tragic or evil. It is a bridge, an instrument of liberation: it is through it that the Little Prince leaves his physical body and returns to his planet, where his rose is.
Is the serpent evil or the poison of human evil?
No. Despite the poison, in the book the snake does not symbolize evil. It works as a passage, allowing the Little Prince to return to his essence and what is most important to him, his rose.
Why does the serpent appear to speak in riddles?
Because it represents the mystery of death and transcendence, that which cannot be understood by logic alone. Like any profound symbol, it gains new meanings with each rereading.
Go deeper: The rose and the fox · The essential is invisible to the eye · The Little Prince: summary and analysis
Source class (YouTube): O Pequeno Príncipe, de Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (NousCast)