French language Q&A Forum

 I am reading "Le Petit Prince" and noticed that sometimes, passé composé is used in the description (NOT the dialogue)  instead of passé simple. In simple sentences like "J'ai ainsi vécu seul" and "J'ai vu un petit bonhomme tout à fait extraordinaire". 

There are instances where you can (or *have to*???) use passé composé in literature? I can't find any pattern so can someone explain this to me?  

Are there any more examples you could give us? I used the direct object le with the apostrophe and it was marked wrong. How can we tell what word should be accented? Is ça always correct as opposed to le, la? In other words, are there certain times when the direct object must be before the verb or certain times when it has to be after the verb? Thank you.

"Mais saviez vous que..."

I am a bit confused here.. why saviez and not savez? In English we often say "did you.." but that is a quirk and actually means "do you?" and it is heard as present tense. I see saviez as "did you use to know".. implying that you might have forgotten.. This is clearly an active question and I thought that French was more particular than that on its use of tenses.