The main characters in Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery are very similar. Tuesdays with Morrie is about how to live and how to die with dignity. Morrie has lessons to teach his former student, Mitch, but the world as well. He was dying from a disease that would eventually choke him to death, ALS, a debilitating, incurable disease that ravages his body, but cruelly, leaves him intellectually lucid. He met with Mitch every Tuesday until his death. He did not preach but said things as they are in life. He talked about forgiveness, meditation, and letting goof the things that you cannot change and more. The Little Prince is about relearning what it means to be a child. There is a downed pilot, who is the narrator of the story and lost in a desert, while trying to fix his plane, meets a magical little boy, the little prince. For eight days, the boy tells his remarkable story, which includes where he is from, what his life was like there, why he left his own tiny planet to visit the Earth, and what he thinks of the flowers, snakes, foxes, and big people he met along the way. The narrator can do nothing but feel more and more awed by and protective of this young boy. The little prince reminds the narrator of the joy of seeing the world through a child’s eyes, even when he is all grown up. These two characters, Mitch and the narrator, undergo a transformation of life vales as a result of their experiences with other characters.
Before they meet Morrie and the little prince, who give the true meaning of the life to them, both of the characters feel lonely and sad even though they have successful careers. In Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch was Morrie’s former student at Brandeis University. He was a man with a good heart who has surrendered his dreams of becoming a musician to dreams of material wealth and professional success. But his dreams were abandoned by his uncle’s death, and it makes him think that financial success is more important to life, because the reason why his uncle died is that he did not have enough money to take medical treatment. For this reason, he stopped his school and being with friends, even spending time with Morrie who is his favorite professor, to become a famous sports writer in New York City. “I stopped renting. I stated buying. I bought a house on a hill. I bought cars; I invested in stocks and built a portfolio. I was cranked to a fifth gear, and everything I did, I did on a deadline. I exercised like a demon. I drove my car at breakneck speed. I made more money than I had ever figured to see” (Albom, 16). This quotation shows that he thinks of only money as the primary life value. In The Little Prince, the narrator, whose first drawing as a child was of a cryptic interpretation of a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant, wanted to be an artist. But all of the adults who saw the picture did not know what his picture meant, and he changed his dream to become a pilot so that other people would think it was a better career. He says that, “so then I chose another profession, and learned to pilot airplanes” (Saint-Exupery, 13). Even though they had their own dreams to become a musician and an artist, they did not follow that they really want. It makes them feel unsatisfied, discontent, and be lonely even though they have successful careers. For example, “My days were full, yet I remained, much of the time, unsatisfied. What happened to me?” (Albom, 34) and “So I lived my life alone, without anyone that I could really talk to, until I had an accident with my plane in the Desert of Sahara, six years ago” (Saint-Exupery, 15). It is because they only value money and their careers, which tend to be the values that most adults share.
But Morrie and the little prince are different in terms of thinking of the emotional values, such as love and happiness, are more important than monetary and career values. In Tuesdays with Morrie, to Mitch, Morrie is the only person who asks about him and is at peace with him, while trying to be as human as he can be. During the lessons, he says to Mitch that money cannot truly satisfy people and you need loving relationships with people. For example, “Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning” (Albom, 127). Also, in The Little Prince, to the narrator, the little prince is the only person that asks him to draw a picture and understands his drawing. During their eight days together, the little prince tells his story about the rose he has left behind and now misses so much, and about the people of the other six planets that he visited. He meets a king, a vain man, a drunkard, a businessman, a lamplighter, and a geographer. All of them live alone and are overly consumed by their chosen occupations. Such strange behavior both amuses and perturbs him and he does not understand their need to order people around, to be admired and to own everything. The little prince also tells about the story of his friend, a fox, who teaches him that the important things in life are visible only to the heart, that his time away from the rose makes the rose more special to him, and that love makes a person responsible for the beings that one loves. For example, the little prince says, “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: it is only with the heart hat one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. It is the time you have devoted to your rose that makes your rose so important” (Saint-Exupery, 167). His story says that the most important things are invisible to the eye, like the emotional value of loving his rose. But all of the adults he has met on the other planets only care about the level of classes, careers, and money and as such are not happy. However, Morrie and the little prince learn that the truly important values in life are the emotional values.
After Mitch and the narrator experience the other characters in their story, they learn about the truly meaningful values in life; they feel very comfortable with their minds and are happy. In Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch says, “I tried doing that in my head and, to my happiness, found that the imagined conversation felt almost natural. I looked down at my hands, saw my watch and realized why” (Albom, 188). Mitch writes a book, which is something that he really wants to do, and promises Morrie that he is not doing it for money. Also, in The Little Prince, the narrator says “Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves: is it yes of no? Has the sheep eaten the flower? And you will see how everything changes… And no grown-up will ever understand that this is a matter of so much importance!” (Saint-Exupery, 217) this quotation shows how the narrator rediscovers his childhood and becomes more imaginative. Both of the characters, Mitch and the narrator, find love with oneself and each other and are no longer afraid of being unique people, who does not negotiate with the values of common people; they learn that the most important things in life are the values of being truly happy with themselves.
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