How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Perhaps you will ask me, “Why there are no other drawings in this book as magnificent and impressive as this drawing of the baobabs?”
The reply is simple. I have tried. But with the others I have not been successful. When I made the drawing of the baobabs I was carried beyond myself by the inspiring force of urgent necessity. (5.20-1)
In this passage the narrator explains just how much he has kept on going. He “ha[s] tried” again and again to make all his drawings “magnificent and impressive,” but the one that has the most of these characteristics is the drawing of the baobabs. The reason the narrator thinks this drawing is more snazzy than the others is because of the subject. The baobabs themselves are so significant that the drawing reflects their significance.
Quote #5
“Oh, no!” I cried. “No, no, no! I don’t believe anything. I answered you with the first thing that came into my head. Don’t you see—I am very busy with matters of consequence!” (7.16)
Here, the narrator is focusing on the wrong thing. He’s been working so hard to fix his plane (and we admit, that sounds pretty important) that he misses out on something else that’s just as important, only in a different way.
And that’s his conversation with the prince. The narrator doesn’t pay attention to what the prince is saying because he is preoccupied with his plane—but to the prince, his worries are way more important than what the narrator sees as “matters of consequence.” Of course, that’s like grown-up speak and is one thing that the narrator usually tries to avoid.
Quote #6
“The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her… I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! […]” (8.27)
The prince admits he should’ve worked harder to understand and get to know his flower. She made it hard for him to know her or see the real her. He looked at the obvious and didn’t see what really mattered. If he’d looked harder, and persisted, then he would’ve gotten to know her better.