The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Rating: 2/5

Lost References:

This is the title of a Kate-centric episode. The little boy referred to in the title is Aaron, who Kate is raising.

In the book, the prince lives on asteroid B-612, and Danielle Rousseau’s research vessel is called the Bésixdouze, which is B-six-twelve in French.

Also, this story is about a pilot who makes an emergency landing in the desert and meets this weird kid, and ironically, the aviator author later took off on a flight and was never heard from again. The wreckage of his plane was finally found in 2003, but without a body. The mystery lives on.

Thoughts:

The prince was just a little too unbelievable for my taste. A little too out there. Not at all relatable to the target audience except for his overabundance of imagination. He’s too perfect but condescending – instantly sorry for all the grown-ups he meets because of their vices (like the “tippler,” who I was surprised to find in a kids’ book… I guess authors had more latitude for that stuff back in the day).

Inevitably, I have to compare his reaction to Sara in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess, which is a story about a girl barely older than the little prince who has a similar outlook on life. Even though Sara is more perfect than your average schoolgirl, she still has a wider range of emotions than the little prince. Sometimes she gets upset or angry even. And when she feels sorry for someone like the prince does, it’s not just an abstract emotion. She does something about it. She cheers up her fellow servant with stories. She shares her food with equally hungry children. Everything may work out for her in the end, but she’s a whole lot more likeable than Saint-Exupery’s prince.

Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

Rating: 2/5

Lost References:

Jack refers to the Jungle as the “heart of darkness” when he talks with Kate. Charlie calls Hurley Colonel Kurtz, and Sawyer calls Locke the same. There’s a copy of this book in Via Domus.

Thoughts:

Joseph Conrad has the unhappy talent of making absolutely any circumstance sound dull, no matter how exciting they should naturally be. These circumstances can be anything from action scenes, as in the savage attack on Marlow’s steamer, to the horrific, as in the severed heads posted around Kurtz’s house. If these events can be made uninteresting, anything can.

Besides this, the book had a poor effect on history. In its depiction of British colonialsism, it dehumanized Africans and associated them with the jungle’s darkness. This was an unfortunate and inaccurate image of them that lasted for quite some time, so I can’t appreciate Conrad’s work in a human sense any more than I can in a literary one.

Babar – Jean de Brunhoff

Rating: 3/5

Lost References:

Sawyer calls Hurley “Barbar,” and Hurley tells him, “It’s ‘Babar.'”

Thoughts:

It’s a cute kid’s story. Not very deep, not remotely realistic. Still, it’s short and lighthearted and as entertaining as anything for the very young.