80 pages • 2 hours read
The Little Prince
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Chapters 16-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
The pilot interrupts the prince's story to describe Earth and its inhabitants as they relate to the prince's journey.
It contains one hundred and eleven kings (including, of course, the African kings), seven thousand geographers, nine-hundred thousand businessmen, seven-and-a-half million drunkards, three-hundred-eleven million vain men; in other words, about two billion grown-ups. […] Before the invention of electricity[there were] four-hundred-sixty-two thousand, five hundred and eleven lamplighters" (47, 48).
He describes the actions of these lamplighters as looking "like a ballet" (48) from a distance, as lights appeared and then flickered out in a wave around the globe. At the North and South Poles, however, lamplighters only needed to work twice a year.
Chapter 17 Summary
The pilot worries that in trying to be "witty" (48) about the lamplighters, he has misled his readers about Earth. He notes how the two billion humans on Earth don’t take up much space: "You could crowd all humanity onto the smallest Pacific islet" (49). Grown-ups, however, find this unbelievable, because they "consider themselves as important as the baobabs" (49). He therefore suggests telling them to do the calculation for themselves, since they like numbers anyway.
Resuming his story, the pilot says that the prince was surprised not to immediately encounter anyone when he came to Earth.
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