Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince as Scriptotherapeutic Inscription

Abstract

This research paper investigates how Antoine de Saint-Exupery in The Little Prince relates autobiographical elements with fictional ones and the significance of such narrative to deal with trauma. Saint-Exupery in this novella recounts his early days and his youthful days as a pilot but the story is not all about him. The narrative not only recounts what he experienced as a child and as an adult but also brings the fictional little prince into the center of this narrative. It is through the eyes of the little prince, that the narrator makes sense of the alien world and also his own. The writer had undergone childhood repressions and also traumatic experiences in the Second World War and his writing is examined as an attempt to come to the terms with these traumas. This paper draws primarily from the ideas of ‘Scriptotherapy’ from Suzette A. Henke and terminologies to discuss them from trauma theorists such as Cathy Caruth and Dominick LaCapra as well as from life writings, particularly those that focus on the relation between autobiographical and fictional and the importance of performative aspect of writing. Paul de Man’s insight from “Autobiography as Defacement” supports the argument regarding the construction of fictional self. Finally, the paper takes into consideration the therapeutic effect of fictionalizing self redrawing from Henke’s suggestions.