Before my parents moved to New
Mexico this year, my dad gave me a stack of college essays he had written. One of them in particular caught my attention
because he had previously provided me with the book that the paper was written
about: “The Little Prince” written and illustrated by Antoine de Saint
Exupery. It’s this combination of
artifacts, intimately tied and impossible to negotiate independent of the
other, that I have chosen as my topic.
The paper of the essay is thin and
possibly yellowed with age (although I don’t know if there was laser white
printing paper in 1978) and has a title page containing the name of the essay
(“The Little Prince: friends and grown-ups”), the course number, the date
(November 30, 1978) and my father’s name and what I assume is his student
number. Below this the professor has
written his comments on the essay in pencil.
The paper received an “A –“ from the professor.
The paperback copy of “The Little Prince”
was bought at “the bookstore.” The
sticker in the bottom right corner of the book indicates it’s for the “English
318” class which matches the course description on the title page of my
father’s essay. In 1978, my dad bought
this book for $1.75 Canadian dollars. On
the title page of the book is my dad’s youthful signature. He would later perfect a more Ph. D worthy
signature - a signature with sharp discipline, purpose and practice, but this
signature, penned in blue ballpoint looks lackadaisical, youthful, and sort of
juvenile. He was 22 after all when the
essay was type-written for that unknown professor at Trinity Western in
Vancouver, British Columbia. I am 26 at
the time of writing this, which makes me wonder if my child will ever analyze
this text for a similar project during their own undergraduate studies.
There’s a blank page after the title page
and then the pagination starts at two with the Preface. It’s nine pages long, but type-written so the
margins are nearly an inch and three-quarters – I’m guessing around 1,700 words
tops. The type-written text is the best
aesthetic feature of the essay. So much
character. So much permanence – there
are maybe a total of fifteen white out spots and an equal number of grammar
corrections done in pencil by the professor.
As I grow from a preservice teacher to a bona-fide teacher, I will make
it a point for my students to have to print out their assignments and turn them
in so that I may correct them with a thick red pen. Internet drop boxes with comment bubbles are
almost as unsatisfying as corrections done in a #2 pencil. Give me a hard copy or give me nothing at
all.
The annotations of the text are done in
the same blue pen. My mom told me my dad
slept in the same sleeping bag through most of his undergrad years so he
wouldn’t have to wash sheets, so I’m guessing he was a one-pen-at-a-time kind
of student. I had the same mechanical
pencil from second grade till now frankly, so I’m not certain but not entirely
surprised by the frugality. There are
about two or three annotations per page, which is fair because this book is
legendary, piercing and soulful. It’s
eerie reading my dad’s copy of the book because my annotation wouldn’t be much
different – indications of metaphors, double-meanings, clever quips, maxims to
live and die by, and just heart-wrenching reminders of what love, knowledge and
growing old really means.
The only dog-eared page of the book holds
the quote that makes me choke up every time.
It must have this effect on everyone who encounters this text with an
open heart and mind. My dad quoted it at
length in his essay so I will do the same, but some context is appropriate for
it to mean anything. The first-person
narrator crashed his plane in the desert when a young boy happens upon him and
informs him he’s from an asteroid. This
is the Little Prince. The Prince
traveled from his asteroid after cultivating a relationship with a pretentious
rose. Upon his travels he meets an assortment
of adults on various asteroids doing menial jobs. On Earth, his loneliness sets in before a fox
befriends him. After a while he must
leave the fox which sets up this exchange:
“Goodbye,” said
the fox. “And now here is my secret, a
very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is
essential is invisible to the eye.”
“What is essential
is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure
to remember.
“It’s the time you
have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
“It is the time I
have wasted for my rose---” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to
remember.
“Men have
forgotten this truth,” said the fox.
“But you must not forget it. You
become responsible forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose…”
“I am responsible
for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
(87-88)
After quoting the above section, my
dad follows writing:
Maybe then, some things have to be
said.
But, maybe those things are best
said in a children’s story. Most of the
time the matters which really need explanation can only be understood by
children and the child that lives in all of us.
After leaving the fox the Little Prince
happens upon the downed aviator and asks him to draw him a picture of sheep
because he wants to take the sheep back to his asteroid. After a while, the Little Prince and the
aviator-narrator go in search of water, happen upon a well and then
tragedy. The Little Prince must return
to his asteroid and allows himself to be bitten by a poisonous snake. The book ends with the author asking the
reader to consider the Little Prince, the sheep and the flower when one looks
at the stars, and to wonder if the sheep has eaten the flower that the Little
Prince loves.
My dad didn’t share this book with me
until I was in my mid-twenties and I actually chastised him for it after
reading it through: “Why didn’t you read this to me when I was a kid?!”. This book holds power. Ultimately, that’s why he probably never
shared this book with me because if I were to read it aloud with another person
I would cry and that’s something that we reserve the right to reveal (or not
reveal) when the relationship is right.
The most touching part of my dad’s college
essay is the Preface because he recognizes that his children’s literature class
may be the last time he gets to encounter texts that aren’t beating him over
the head with academic (grown-up) jargon.
He writes: “This paper will probably be the last of its kind for
me. And, in some ways I’m glad, but in
others I feel regretful…Responding as an individual takes practice, for it
involves dropping my intellectual shield and allowing an artist through his
play or book to effect [I inherited his trouble with affect/effect] me in way
only he, as one particular person, can do so.
I have not done a lot of that and I blame my education for this
shortcoming.” The professor, in pencil
writes in the margin, “I’m inclined to agree.”
I put “The Little Prince” on a pedestal
which makes it all the more worthwhile to take it down and handle it like I
would any other text. Wikipedia tells me
the author is a French aviator turned writer who disappeared over the
Mediterranean fighting with the French in North Africa during World War
II. An adventurer, highly-regarded
author, turned anti-fascist pilot who didn’t have to return to the World War
climate after a hiatus in North America, well that’s just someone who doesn’t
ever have to come down from anyone’s pedestal.
The book is accessible. It should
be required reading for all students, much more so than other dead white men
because this author, like Hemingway, Camus and Orwell, knew what it meant to
fight evil wherever it may gain traction.
The essay was written at a Christian
college for a 300-level children’s literature course in Vancouver, Canada by a
Chinese twenty-two-year-old son of a truck driver and nurse. The scripture quoted reads, “Greater love has
no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13
[NAS]). My dad would go on to teach at a
Christian institution only to not receive tenure for not sending my sister and
I to overwhelmingly white Christian private schools. This took him to private practicing and
counseling where he remains today.
I value education and knowledge. I hold all institutions in the lowest
regard. My Christian identity is thin at
best and only goes so far as it can support my ideals of resisting power
wherever it arises (“Give unto Cesar what is Caesar’s but give unto the Lord
what is his.”). I can pass for white,
but am willing to admit my mixed-race identity.
I recognize racism, sexism and classism as oppressions based off
arbitrary inheritances given to arbitrary factors of one’s personal
existence. What isn’t arbitrary is how
one criticizes or resists injustices based off social constructs, and that’s
what I choose to align myself with even if I do it haphazardly or not at all at
times (which is a privilege I realize).
If we must quote scripture at length, let us quote the young rich kid
who asks Jesus what he can do to get into heaven. Jesus responds by telling him to sell
everything he owns and follow him, which sends the kid away sad because he was
really rich. This is the cost of being a
revolutionary, a cost I’m not entirely willing to enact at the present moment,
nor a cost I’m entirely sure is necessary given the circumstances of
complacency in the United States today.
The arguments to stay or go are both valid, but the material comfort and
(although thin) security of being an educator in the US still seems to pave the
path of my future. It’s in this light to
remember that what truly matters cannot be seen with the eyes but rather with
the heart.
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