In The Little Prince (which it’s safe to say is one of Oscar’s main allusions along with Dorothy and Princess Ozma/Tip), he finds himself trapped in a desert with no way to get back to his rose, and meets a snake. The snake tempts him, promising one venomous bite from him would send him to the heavens and he wouldn’t have to be in this world. This is a trick of course, as he phrases it to imply not death, but more like teleportation back to his home planet. The snake decides the boy is too pure and innocent to kill, however. The Prince ignores him at first, but his loneliness and heartache drives him to plot with the snake to return to his rose, and he allows the snake to bite him. He falls to the sand, unconscious. The narrator never finds his body, and is happy, assuming he made it back home. RWBY loves to pull twists, and hmmm what sort of POISONOUS desert creature could be in VACUO right now? Who might have a reason/orders to target Oscar specifically?
Looking at the night sky, the thing that keeps the prince hopeful in the desert is knowing that somewhere out there amongst the stars is the rose he loves, and that they will one day reunite. The stars are beautiful because his rose is somewhere within them. He soon is told that flowers are “ephemeral” and as such can be gone at any moment, killed in one bite by any passing sheep, and he has a breakdown realizing his rose could die despite all her thorns, could already be dead, and therefore the stars, to him, were dead also. He breaks down crying and yelling at the old man (narrator) for considering the mortality of flowers to be unimportant. The man tries to console him, but cannot find the words, not knowing “how I could reach him, how I could overtake him and go on hand in hand with him once more.” So he simply holds him as he sobs. “It is such a secret place, the land of tears.”
Soon after, the prince comes across a rose garden with thousands of roses just like his, and he is hurt that his rose lied to him about being the only flower of her kind in the universe. But his friend, the wise Fox he met along the way, tells him that it is the time and care he has given his rose that makes her so special. That when you “tame,” aka establish ties with someone, like the prince had with the Fox, you become for one another unique in all the world. But it also leads to longing and weeping when apart. It’s a lesson about friendship and bonds that once the prince understands, says, “There is a rose... I think that she has tamed me.” He then tells the narrator that what some try to find by planting a garden with a thousand roses can be found in a single rose and a handful of water.
OH I JUST REALIZED: the Fox is the one who says the famous quote, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Hm, a wise Fox who speaks of the blindness of eyes? In the desert?
There’s a line said by the prince, “What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere, there is a well.” so maybe they’ll find a well or the Vacuo oasis or something of the sort.
He also calls out to a barren landscape, hoping to hear a voice call back, and upon hearing his echo, assumes he is talking with another person who isn’t himself, but can only repeat what he hears. But the voice he hears is only his own. Is it lonely, after the merge? To call out to a barren landscape and find it is only you who remains? Only the echo of yourself you mistake for company?
So uh Oscar having a mental breakdown in Vacuo, anyone? (We are ignoring that the Prince basically chose to die in the desert out of loneliness)
