Reading and Writing in a Digital Age

As soon as I read the prompt, I went straight to my drawer full of books. I opened it up and shuffled around, looking for a good book to write about. Couldn’t find one. So I closed the drawer and bounced a few ideas around my head, then I saw it. On my dresser was a small french children’s book from a few years back. Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

The book is very well-known, translated into plenty of different languages and has been popular internationally. The messages of the book are what makes it so popular. It can be a seemingly simple book, but the themes of the book are some of the most complex ideas that people struggle with. It is not the run of the mill children’s book with a happy ending.

Here is a quote that was translated into English from the book, with a few pictures (everybody likes pictures.)

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/files/2012/03/ElephantInSnake.jpeg 

**Here are the pictures, the first drawing is meant to be looked at before the passage. The second is meant to be seen after reading the end of the passage.**

I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.

But they answered: “Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?”

My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this:

 

This quote from the book makes me think. Before we read this scene, the teacher (who was teaching us this book at the time) came around with the first picture. She asked us all what we thought it was. The first person said hat. Second person said the same thing. Third person, same. I think one person said “Perry the Platypus” but that was as creative as it got. I swear, when I first saw the picture, I thought it was a snake eating an elephant. But, everyone else said hat and the one weird kid said Perry the Platypus so there was absolutely no way that I was going to say a snake eating an elephant. So, I said “a hat.”

We read the passage and saw how are previous attempts were the wrong, boring, and safe answer. I was so confused why I censored myself in the first place. The “adult” in me didn’t want to be set apart from the rest of the “adults” in the room. It was only high school and I was already becoming old and boring. I was even starting to get grey hair… (Little fun fact about me) As we get older and are expected to act like the proper young adults, the more we lose ourselves and who we are. College is a time to mature and grow up, but one should never lose all of the “kid” inside us.

I try not to censor myself too much. I do things that make me happy, not always because it looks good on a resumé. Yes, I’m a little weird. But, I think that everyone would be a little weird if they did not censor themselves because of society.

The whole book focuses on ways that alter your perception of the world. The main character is a young boy. The man who discovers him, learns more from the little boy than the little boy can ever learn from him. I highly suggest reading it. The translations are great but if any of you are fluent in french, then I’d spring for that copy.