Abstract

In The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry poses the question of how signs acquire, lose, and regain reference through misunderstood pictures, a title that outlives its social context, numbers that displace objects, and an unseen force that changes physical beings. I suggest that the novella differentiates two conflicting semiotic practices. One is exemplified by the adults who live on the various planets; their signs exist within a closed system of power, admiration, property, and knowledge that operates without any proper subject, object, or effect. The other practice emerges in the prince’s encounters with the rose, the fox, the desert, and the well. I analyze dialogical exchanges, repetition, pictures, points of view, physical isolation, and repeated imagery, concluding that while the book appears similar to Jean Baudrillard’s concept of simulation, it does not finally complete the movement into simulation. While Umberto Eco details conventional codes that tie expression to content, Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott examine the space between visual and verbal narrative, and Paul Ricoeur shows how a text can point toward a real world, the book itself establishes the key distinctions between these practices. Uncertainty about the sheep and the rose finally reaffirms reference not as certainty but as commitment, making interpretation an ethical act in which signs remain accountable to reality.