I have been putting off the
Peter Pan post for a few days for a slew of reasons, the first being that this is one of my very favorite books and I have read it several times. I realized that not every would read this as quickly as I did... and I wouldn't want them to read it so fast the first time through anyway. This story is magical and I think it's best to read it when you can take it all in. I took lots of notes this time through, as you can see here:
In fact, scarcely a page went by without a new post-it note hitting the page and me scribbling on it frantically so that my thoughts didn't escape me. But now, as I start out on my first hurrah, I don't quite know where to begin. I suppose I'll begin with why I love this book. Here is a picture of some of my Peter Pan memorabilia. I have more, but did not include it because it is scattered about:
And here's me and my friend Mallory the other day in our Disney tank tops:
And me in my homemade Peter Pan costume for Halloween a few years ago:
Peter Pan has long been one of my favorite stories. When I was little, my sister, brother, and I frequently played Peter Pan. Julianna and Jimmy would pass around the roles of Peter and Hook amongst themselves, but I was always Smee.
Smee! And it's not like they told me to be Smee because I was the youngest or anything like that. I
chose to be Smee. I feel like normal little girls would want to play Wendy or Tinker Bell, but I was a little weirdo. Our knowledge of Peter Pan came from repeated viewing of the Mary Martin stage production. If you are feeling nostalgic or if you have never seen this particular version, please view one of my favorite songs
here. My grandma also owned a bunch of Disney VHS tapes--you know the kind, in their big, puffy plastic cases. Peter Pan was amongst them and so we were familiar with it as well. And of course Hook was a huge hit when we were children. Robin Williams makes a wonderful grown-up version of Peter Pan and Dustin Hoffman is arguably one of the very best Captain Jas. Hooks ever to grace the stage or screen. And then, of course, came the absolutely unbelievable 2003 live action version with Jeremy Sumpter as Pan and Jason Isaacs as Mr. Darling and Captain Hook in the tradition of the original play. Not only is it traditional for Mr. Darling and Captain Hook to be played by the same actor, but it also reflects the tyrannical order in both reality and in the make believe world of the children, though this comparison is never outwardly made in the written word. It was not until after seeing this version of Peter Pan in the theater (it is possible that I went to see it four times on the big screen, but who is keeping track?) that I decided to read the novel, and I have a former acquaintance to thank for that. As we were being seated in the theater, a boy named Caleb told me, when we both said we had already been to see it, that this movie probably best reflected the original story's thematic emotions, darkness, and narration. So of course I had to read it after that.
Here I am babbling about movies and things when we're here to discuss the book! Forgive me. Let's jump right in. My first notes are from the very first page and concern Mrs. Darling's kiss, which no one can seem to get. I think that her kiss is representative of her youth and innocence and the joy of her heart, which is why it is the only bit of her that you can see when she dances and romps. Peter Pan is also described as being very like Mrs. Darling's kiss and he is the purest essence of childhood's joy. Mrs. Darling may be a grown woman who has put most childish things behind her, but the kiss remains and we shall talk more about my opinions on it later. Please feel free to discuss Mrs. Darling's kiss or the subtheme of kisses throughout
Peter Pan.
One of my favorite passages about Mrs. Darling is that when she is tidying her children's minds as they sleep and how every good mother does this. This is how she discovers Peter Pan (though it seems hinted that she herself may have known him once, or at least known about him) and the Neverland, which is always similar but different for every child. The magic of this book is that it makes it seem like we, too, have been there in our own make-believes.
I also find it interesting that twice in the first chapter and on the very same page in my book, Wendy knows something about Peter but doesn't know how she knows: that he is just her size and that he sometimes came to her room and played his pipes for her while she was asleep. Wendy has a great deal of woman's intuition as well as childlike faith.
We're also early introduced to Mr. Darling, who demands to be respected and admired as if these are the highest honors to be received. (This is the same reason that Hook hates Pan. Pan is cocky and has no respect for the very fearsome pirate). His pride is very hurt when he cannot seem to gain the reverent admiration of his family, though he is a weak sort of man when he pours his medicine into Nana's bowl... and nearly has a fit over his tie... and totals up how much each child will cost him, though of course he loves them dearly.
Now, on to Peter Pan himself. I love how, in his adventure into the real world to bring the Darling children to his own world, even the stars are on his side. Though a bit of a know-it-all in his cockiness, Peter is immature and ignorant of real world things. He knows not how to read or write and doesn't understand motherly things like sewing and he cannot tell the difference between real and pretend. When I read Kyle the passage about the Lost Boys having to pretend they have had their dinners, Kyle felt very sorry for them. But to Peter, real and pretend are one in the same. I feel that this is absolutely perfectly demonstrated in Hook during the food fight scene, when the grown-up Peter Pan finally learns the power of pretend. The best clip I could find is of
Insults at imaginary dinner, but the realization that his mind makes it real comes at the end. Even when the island "comes true" Peter knows nothing but make believe, so it is real to him. He actually believes Slightly wearing John's hat to be a doctor, for instance. Wendy demonstrates her maturity over Peter from the very start and
SPOILER ALERT this will lead her to return home from Neverland later on.
Peter is described frequently as being cocky. In fact, Barrie states that, "To put it with brutal frankness, there never was a cockier boy." Of course he is cocky, living in a make-believe world where he is the essentially the boss, where he has incredible adventures that swell his head all the more and where no one tells him what to do. Children are pretty cocky by nature. Don't get me wrong, I love kids. However, young children do not always realize that the world is made up of more than their worlds, their perceptions. The difference between ordinary children and Peter Pan is independence. Children dependent on their parents or guardians think only of themselves at times because they are sort of helpless creatures. Peter thinks only of himself because he has no parents or anyone else to take care of him and must do everything for himself. And, being able to take care of himself amazingly, his childhood cockiness is extremely magnified. In many examples throughout the book, we read Peter saying things that may be true or may be complete nonsense because he says whatever comes to mind. This shows that he is completely uninhibited by reason and his imagination is completely free. He, too, possesses a dark streak of pride, shown in his absolute joy in the face of danger and in places like the flight to Neverland with the Darling children, when he saves the falling sleepers at the very last second to show off his cleverness. Indeed, his head is so full of adventures and his cocky pride that he is forgetful of all else, like when he doesn't seem to know the others when he takes off on adventures between London and the Neverland and returns to find the Darlings.
SPOILER ALERT Or when he forgets to come and get Wendy for years on end for their Spring Cleaning at the end of the book.
I'd like to point out a quote from page 44 in my copy (In chapter 4
The Flight) describing how Neverland differs when you are and aren't there:
"In the old days at home the Neverlad had always begun to look a little dark and threatening by bedtime. Then unexplored patches arose in it and spread, black shadows moved about in them, the roar of the beasts of prey was quite different now, and above all, you lost certainty that you would win. You were quite glad that the night-lights were in, You even liked Nana to say this was just the mantelpiece over here, and that the Neverland was all Make believe.
Of course the Neverland had been make-believe in those days, but it was real now, and there were no night-lights, and it was getting darker every moment, and where was Nana?"
I like this passage because this is exactly how I feel alone at night. If Kyle happens to be on shift, I spend the night by myself and I never think that I will get agitated or frightened until it gets dark and I do.
In the chapter entitled
The Island Come True (5), the island is described without Peter on it and we see that adventures are not so very adventurous without him. I picture him to be something of a heartbeat to the island itself, and that is why the pirates and lost boys merely bite their thumbs at one another when they meet without Peter. He is the passion and lifeblood of the Neverland. In the 2003 movie version, the Neverland sees winter snow when Peter is away and springtime when he reappears, which helps the pirates recognize that he has returned. I tried to find a clip of this scene but I can't. If you haven't seen it, though, you should. I vote this Peter Pan the one you are most likely to get a crush on. I know he's like a 14 year old boy, but he's adorable and charming with the most cunning smile I've ever seen on a Peter Pan. And don't think I am a total creep. I saw the movie when I was in high school, so I was pretty young myself. haha
When Barrie describes each of the Lost Boys in this chapter, I noticed that he narrates not only to us, the audience, but he also addresses characters in the book. He issues a warning to poor Tootles here, which I rather enjoy. This was when I first noticed him speaking to us and to the characters, but it is done throughout the story and sort of adds another layer. My personal favorite Lost Boy is Slightly. If you have footnotes and end notes like my copy does, you know that his name comes from the fact that "Slightly Soiled" was written on his pinafore the day he was lost. He assumes this to be his name, which is pretty hilarious. Slightly is called the most conceited of the boys, but I think he is also the most homesick for his old life. Clinging to his silly misconstrued name as well as pretending he knows much more than he actually knows about our world tell me that he misses his old life, even if he cannot remember it entirely. I have a soft spot for Slightly. He's such a lovable little know-it-all. Who was your favorite Lost Boy?
This chapter also gives us a great introduction to the beasts of the island and the Indians and pirates. I love the bit about Smee having "pleasant names for everything" including his jagged knife, which he calls Johnny Corkscrew. I think that Smee and I would get along famously as I like to name things, too. I name cars and have a list in my head of great names for cats (Nibs and Slightly are on that list) and I even christened a spider who lived near our porch Josephine. (She was not a harmful spider. We googled her to make sure. She kept the bugs down, too).
SPOILER ALERT Captain Hook overhears the boys in their underground home by pure accident and concocts a plan to have them killed by cooking them a cake (I guess we are to assume it is poisoned as it does not actually say so, but they mean for the boys to perish upon eating it), but Wendy becomes their mother in time to prevent the boys from eating the cake and it is briefly mentioned later that the cake hardens and they use it as a missile and Captain Hook trips over it in the dark. The point of Hook discovering their unique home with doors for each of them and deciding to kill them with cake (and what better way to go, I say!) is that he sees things the boys overlook as they don't have mothers. However, we soon find out Peter was using his genius creativity to create a door for each boy and it is a great protection to their home underground. Annnd here's a clip from the Mary Martin stage version to verify that just about everyone in Neverland, not just the Lost Boys, wants a mother!
Captain Hook's Tarantella
Can I ask why the part with Nibs running from the wolf pack is not in any visual version that I can remember? At least I don't recall ever seeing the Lost Boys look through their legs (because they think that's what Peter would do) at the wolves to scare them off... Do you know of any? Because I literally laughed aloud at this part this time through.
Another weird thing that is never referenced is that, at the end of Chapter 6
The Little House, Peter is standing guard over Wendy's lovely house they have just built around her to give her a rest and he falls asleep and some "unsteady fairies had to climb over him on their way home from an orgy." Really Barrie? An orgy? I plan to read this book to my kids someday (it really
is a children's book, after all), but I plan to just replace this word with the word party. However, fairies do seem to be awfully peculiar creatures, mostly without morals.
In Chapter 7
The Home Underground, Wendy gives the boys examinations to see if they can remember their previous homes. These are mostly for the benefit of herself, John, and Michael, but of course the others join in because what is frightfully commonplace to regular children is interesting and exciting to the lost boys and vice versa. This is also seen in places such as Wendy's fascination with fairies when Peter first comes to her home in London, but here we see Peter taking on the role of father as a new adventure, even though it makes it so his adventures consist of sitting on a stool doing nothing sometimes. This demonstrates to me that the Neverland
is imagination and it makes reason forgetful, thus Wendy uses the examination papers to try to jog the memory of reason in her brothers' past lives. Peter has no reason because he
chose to live in the imagination world at such a young age that he rejects it and it rejects him.
Chapter 8
The Mermaid's Lagoon shows a sort of half strength and half weakness that I find particularly interesting in Peter. This is that every unfairness he encounters is like his very first because he soon forgets them altogether. This is a strength in that he does not live with the burden of life's many unfairnesses, but a weakness in that each one he meets dazes him. This unawareness, I think, lends to him being such a gentlemanly fellow that he can
SPOILER ALERT send Wendy to safety when the lagoon becomes a dangerous place and he has no means to escape. He also has his extreme cockiness, but in addition, he holds youth's eternal hope when he thinks that "To die will be an awfully big adventure."
I do enjoy the way Wendy and Peter pretend to be scandalized, uppity, condescending parents to the boys and find themselves convinced to dance only because "it's a Saturday night," which it may or may not have been. They are playing that which they do not entirely wish to become. This is when Wendy asks Peter Pan his true feelings for her. As young as they are, Wendy probably does not quite realize what she is asking of him. It is all part of their make-believe playing house, but she is a reasonable and womanly creature who does have strong feelings, even if they are premature. Peter cannot answer in a way that would satisfy her.
Children are selfish, heartless creatures, to which a mother's love is necessary. Page 100
Wendy's Story SPOILER ALERT They are also spontaneous and unsentimental, as demonstrated when the Lost Boys want to go with Wendy. Page 103
Peter believes that his mother shut the window and forgot about him, which turns him against all mothers but Wendy, who he somehow knows (maybe doesn't know
how he knows) that she will always love him. (I love when Barrie described mothers as "the toads" when he hears Peter's side). Even if it isn't true, he believes it to be true and that makes it true to him.
Page 101
Peter is very like a fairy... sometimes all good and sometimes all naughty, vindictive, angry, or jealous, as when he decides to kill many grown-ups by breathing as quickly as possible (every time you breathe in Neverland, a grown-up dies so the saying went). Page 101
SPOILER ALERT I think that Peter would have been grateful for an outlet for his feelings in a battle with the pirates, but they kind of outsmarted him (even though some didn't really catch on right away) in Chapter 12
The Children Are Carried Off when they beat the tom-tom to indicate an Indian victory, making Wendy and the children feel safe to leave.
In Chapter 13
Do You Believe in Fairies? I noticed that Wendy is described as only a little girl. This is during a time when she is in fear and fascination of Captain Hook. In times of adventure and home life with the Lost Boys, she is considered a mother and authority, but she quickly shies back to a child in times of distress. Perhaps since she made the decision to go home, she has realized her place and position are not right for her here. Later on in the story, the boys are described that same way, as only boys.
There are also fascinating passages about Peter in this chapter, such as those that show a somewhat passive aggressive nature in him when he laughs instead of cries when he realizes how Wendy would hate it and how he won't take his medicine for the same reason. I'm sure he'd never have done those things in front of her. And what are Peter's painful dreams about? Does he miss his own mother? Is it because he is aware that Wendy must grow up? Is it some fear that he does not know when he is awake? Whatever it may be, when he is awakened by Tink, he knows that he must rescue Wendy from the pirates without hesitation, just as he rescued her from womanhood when he took her from her home.
Tinker Bell's very famous scene in which she
SPOILER ALERT drinks the poison Hook poured into Peter's medicine and must be revived by children who believe in fairies touches my heart because Peter calls upon children in our world to save her, not upon those he knows in the Neverland. Thus, in dreaming, Neverland becomes a reality.
Chapter 14
The Pirate Ship explores Captain Hook's origins as a former Eton College student (this is in the footnotes, in case your book does not have them) and his obsession with good form. As we saw in the previous chapter, the villain is humanized in his fear of going down
Slightly's door. He hates Pan but is also petrified of him. I also
liked the bit about him not being all bad in that he loved flowers and
music. His value of good form and distaste for bad form point toward his pride. Good form = a reason to be prideful without being so, but later he shows bad form in taking out anger on the boys because "they had seen him unbend" (Chapter 15). How realistic it seems to me to hate someone all the more when they see your shortcomings!
SPOILER ALERT We witness his heartbreak when he is shamed in Chapter 15
"Hook or Me This Time" when Pan reveals himself. And we see the contrast between the children and the pirates in representing joy/goodness and bitterness/evil/despair/depression/sorrow respectively.
SPOILER ALERT I find it somehow comforting that Hook dies content, finding Peter to have had bad form in his last moment. I suppose this is because he has been humanized. But again we see Peter having a painful dream, and here I think it is because of the lost innocence of himself, the boys, and the Darling children.
Why is Wendy so obsessed with giving them all medicine anyway? Is it because her adventure to the Neverland with Peter would never have happened if not for the episode with her father and Nana and the bowl of medicine?
SPOILER ALERT Why do you think Peter takes on some of Captain Hook's traits once the villain is vanquished?
I find Barrie's narration on Mrs. Darling to be reflective of Peter's in Chapter 16
The Return Home. He scoffs at her absolute love for her children and her want of them to have as much joy as possible, though it lends to her misery while she waits for their return, not knowing if they will.
SPOILER ALERT It is nice to see Mr. Darling's representation of good form when he humbles himself to Nana's dog house as his punishment for the flight of his children.
SPOILER ALERT Peter's last (secret) attempt to keep Wendy is to close the nursery window so that she will believe her parents have forgotten her when she returns home and feel that the best place for her would be the Neverland with him. Wendy is suspended between childhood and womanhood, selfishness and responsibility. Peter hates to let her go, but eventually he does with a "frightful sneer at the laws of nature," wherein he knows that she is not like him and she must grow up because she has chosen to do so. So when Wendy is returned and he sees the happy reunion, this is they joy from which he must be barred. Wendy is this joy. Mother is this joy. Familial love is this joy.
When Wendy Grew Up, Chapter 17, is a sad one to me because the Neverland make-believes come to an end for so many.
SPOILER ALERT Though the Darlings are poor, they do decide to take in the lost boys as their own, once Mr. Darling finds they all will respect him and love him as well as Mrs. Darling. I find his softened pride and tears of vulnerability touching here because it is not so much respect and admiration he wants now as love, even if he does not quite realize it. When Wendy asks Peter if he's like to speak with her parents about a "very sweet subject," she is imploring him to talk to them of marrying her someday, but this would go against the "riddle of his being" and though he loves Wendy, he will not and almost cannot grow up. Wendy is allowed to go back to Neverland for a week each year (I wish I could go!) to help Peter with spring cleaning, a very motherly thing to do, and we see that when Peter leaves, he takes Mrs. Darling's kiss with him--the kiss that no one could ever get. I see this as that innocent joy of her heart, which is Wendy. She has sort of released Wendy's heart to Peter rather than clinging to it herself.
I do love that the Lost Boys realize that it was a mistake to decide to grow up.
Did you see in the end notes that Slightly could not really have become a Lord by marrying a Lady of title? He would be the one to try, wouldn't he?
SPOILER ALERT When Peter returns for Wendy and cannot remember Tinker Bell or Captain Hook, Wendy is distraught, but I do think it makes sense. They no longer exist because the children who believed in them and knew them are no longer part of the Neverland and most of them no longer even believe in it. I do get pretty weepy at the part when Peter forgets Wendy while she waits for him to come for her and Michael whispers that perhaps there is no such person. Leaving childhood innocence behind is heartbreaking for some. Some accept it readily. I was not amongst them, so this scene touches my heart especially. Wendy's baby daughter was surely written in a golden splash in her heart and became her "kiss" though Jane turns out to be as "gay and innocent and heartless" as she and her brothers once were. Wendy's fondness for Peter is so bittersweet in the line "She let her hands play in the hair o the tragic boy. She was not a little girl heart-broken about him; she was a grown woman smiling at it all, but they were wet smiles." And she lets her daughter go to be his new mother... and on and on and on in the fashion of literary comedy. Wendy is essentially reborn as Peter's mother when he finds her daughter Jane, and in turn, her daughter Margaret, and her daughter, and hers, and hers "so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless."
So that was the longest post ever and I forgive you if you didn't read it. I hope to hear some observations, questions, or feedback from any or all of you! I really hope that you enjoyed this book. I know that I did!
Our next book will be
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.
