At the college level, The Little Prince is frequently taught alongside philosophical texts rather than as a standalone children's story, particularly in courses touching on existentialism, phenomenology, or French literature more broadly. Saint-Exupéry's own background as a pilot and his preoccupation with mortality and meaning make the novel a natural companion to writers like Camus or Sartre, even though it predates much of the formal existentialist canon.

Framing the course around questions of authenticity, such as whether the adults on each asteroid represent a failure to live authentically by hiding behind roles like king or businessman, gives students a philosophical vocabulary to apply to a text they may have first encountered as children. This reframing often produces genuine surprise and engagement, since students realize the book they remember fondly contains far more depth than they initially assumed.

The fox's speech on taming can be read productively alongside existentialist ideas about relationships and the creation of meaning through commitment, since taming in the novel is essentially an act of choosing to invest meaning into something that would otherwise remain indifferent. Students at this level should be pushed to make that connection explicit rather than treating the fox's lesson as simple advice about friendship.

The novel's treatment of death, particularly the prince's ambiguous departure at the end, also opens onto existentialist questions about mortality and meaning that are worth dedicating a full class discussion to before any essay is assigned. College students are generally ready to sit with ambiguity in a way that younger students are not, and the ending rewards that patience.

Essay Prompts for College Level Analysis

Prompts at this level should ask students to build an argument using specific philosophical vocabulary, rather than general literary terms like theme or symbol. A prompt asking students to evaluate whether the prince's journey represents an authentic confrontation with mortality, using specific scenes as evidence, sets a higher bar than a general question about the meaning of the ending.

• Does the prince's relationship with his rose represent authentic commitment or avoidance of freedom?
• How does the novel critique inauthentic living through the adults the prince encounters on each asteroid?
• What does the fox's concept of taming suggest about the relationship between meaning and choice?
• How does the ambiguous ending reflect existentialist ideas about mortality and continuity?
• Can the narrator's grief be read as an authentic confrontation with loss, or a retreat into memory?

Grading for Philosophical Rigor

At the college level, grading should weight the accuracy and integration of philosophical concepts alongside close reading of the text itself. An essay that name drops existentialist terms without connecting them precisely to specific scenes should score lower than one that uses fewer terms but applies them with real precision to the source material.

It is also worth building a rubric category specifically for original synthesis, since the most interesting college level essays on this novel tend to go beyond restating a philosophical framework the professor already presented in lecture and instead extend or complicate that framework using evidence the professor did not explicitly discuss.

Handling Large Sections Fairly

Professors teaching multiple sections of the same introductory literature or philosophy course often struggle to grade consistently across a large number of essays on the same short text. Building a shared rubric with philosophy focused categories, and reviewing a handful of anchor essays with any teaching assistants before grading begins, helps keep standards consistent across sections.

This becomes especially important with a text as widely known as The Little Prince, since students bring uneven prior exposure to it, and grading needs to reward strength of argument in the current essay rather than prior familiarity with the book.

Connecting the Unit to the Broader Course

Placing The Little Prince early in a course sequence, before denser existentialist texts, can work well as a gentler introduction to the course's core vocabulary and questions. Students build confidence applying philosophical concepts to a familiar, approachable text before being asked to do the same work with more difficult primary sources later in the semester.

This sequencing also gives instructors an early, low stakes opportunity to assess where the class stands on skills like close reading and philosophical argument, informing how the rest of the semester's assignments and grading standards are calibrated.