The story “The Little Prince”, written by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry, talks about a little prince who travels the universe from a tiny planet to the Earth, seeking wisdom, friendship, and love. On his journey, the little prince meets the unpredictable nature of adults, including the king, the conceited man, the tippler, the business man, the lamplighter, the fox, and the rose. Among them, the character of the tippler gives me the deepest impression because of his ridiculous behaviors. The tippler always keeps drinking. He wants to forget that he is ashamed of drinking so he keeps drinking. He thought drinking could help solve the problem of being shameful about drinking. Let me explain in detail.
What the tippler wants and what he actually does are inconsistent, which leads to a dead loop. The tippler likes to drink and he keeps drinking. Drinking itself is fine, but he drinks too much, becoming drunk or alcoholic. The tippler, then, cannot talk articulately, think logically, or behave normally. Therefore he does a lot of stupid things, which is very shameful. Those shameful things make him very unhappy and he tries to forget about them. He thought drinking was the only way to forget about shame. In other words, the tippler “wants” to stop drinking because it is shameful, but he “ends up” drinking even more. This is ridiculous of the tippler. The tippler has informed the readers that people’s mind and their actions should be corresponding to each other, or people would be trapped in the dead loop.
The tippler’s drinking problem brings me to consider the reasoning behind drinking. Little amounts of alcoholic beverages are appropriate, like celebrating some meaningful events or attending a wedding. But alcohol abuse, or drinking too much, would bring risks and problems that would harm people emotionally and physically, even losing their jobs. Most people only see the negative results of drinking, but they forgot to go back and investigate the reason why they want to drink. Everyone has his own reason to drink. Maybe the tippler was not satisfied with his current situation so he drinks to comfort his feelings. Or maybe the tippler feels lonely or bored so he drinks to kill the time. No matter what the reasons are, the most important thing is that people need to find out the main reason why they want to drink. Only through finding the cause of why a person is drinking could really help him get rid of the drinking problem.
The tippler helps me reflect that there are more than one ways to solve the problem. The tippler wants to forget that he is ashamed of drinking. He then chooses “drinking” as a solution to help him forget the shameful things. However, drinking is not the only way. There are way more positive solutions to help the tippler to effectively forget the shame of drinking. One way the tippler can do is to talk to his friends or consult an expert to talk the shame out. The more he talks about it, the sooner he will forget about it and become less unhappy. Another way is that the tippler could be very strict to himself by throwing away all the alcoholic beverages and never touching them again. Once he gets used to the new life of not drinking, he will forget the shame he had done before and become happy again. Both ways will be more efficient than going back to drinking. Therefore, people should seek options when approaching a problem.
The tippler is the character in the story who gives me the deepest impression because of the inconsistency between his mind and his actions. The character of the tippler acts as an example to teach me many lessons. When facing problems, people need to be consistent regarding what they want to do and what they are really doing, otherwise the problem would not be solved, even getting worse. In addition, people need to find out the true reason that causes the problem. Without investigation, the problem will still exist and reoccur over and over. At the same time, people need to seek all different kinds of possibilities to solve the problem.
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