Quote 13
“No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What does that mean—‘tame’?”
“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. “It means to establish ties.” (21.15-16)
In a way, by meeting each other the prince and the fox both get what they want. The prince wants friends and the fox wants to be tamed. The two see friendship and taming as different things, but are they really the same thing?
Quote 14
“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.” (21.52)
This moment is both sad and glorious. It’s sad because the prince is telling the flowers that they “are nothing.” They don’t know what taming is and haven’t experienced it. Without that knowledge or experience, they aren’t anything; they don’t stand out from the crowd. However, it’s also a glorious moment, because in it the prince is finally realizing how special his fox and his flower are because they are his friends.
Quote 15
“It is a good thing to have a friend, even if one is about to die. I, for instance, am very glad to have a fox as a friend…” (24.8)
The Little Prince just keeps on bringing the sad, doesn’t it? Here, the prince is facing the possibility of his own death. What makes that death even more piteous is that the prince is so “glad to have a fox as a friend.” He is less focused on the sadness of dying and more focused on the gladness of having a friend. But all of this just makes the sadness even sadder, doesn’t it?