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Rating: 
Summary: A book that speaks to the child within all of us.
Review: "All children, except one, grow up."
With these words begins one of the most beloved of all children's fairy tales. James Matthew Barrie's Peter Pan is an evocative tale of mermaids and pirates and fairies, but more than anything else, it is a nostalgic glimpse into a place where we all have been, but a place which many of us have submersed in our subconscious and forgotten: the magical world of the child, called in this tale the Neverland. Barrie once wrote, "To be born is to be wrecked on an island," and so we may still be enchanted, even if we are not surprised, by his description of the Neverland as an island forevermore beyond the reach of those who have grown up:
"On these magic shores children at play are forever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more."
With stirring words such as these, Barrie begins to weave his spell on us, allowing us to look again through the sparkling eyes of a child, at a world filled with wonder and magic. Because it may be appreciated on more than one level, this book is not just for children. On a superficial level, children may adore this story as a wondrous, whimsical, and touching flight of fancy, but there is much more to this beautifully-written tale. Beneath the glimmering surface, in the murky depths of the subconscious realm, lie rarely-probed truths - perhaps monsters of the deep - that offer food for thought for even the most jaded and cynical adults.
The original title of the play upon which this novel is based was "Peter Pan, or, The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up," and this title cuts right to the heart of the story's message: In growing up, we lose something wondrous. Every child knows that growing up is something to be avoided. Children learn it when they hear their mothers say, "Oh, why can't you stay like this forever!" and this conviction is reinforced daily when they see how petty and joyless - and how without ideals - the lives of the adults around them are. As Peter so passionately put it in the story: "I don't want to ever be a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun. So I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long long time among the fairies." Refusal to grow up - on the surface, this is what this children's classic is all about. But beneath the surface lies the forbidden realm of children's sexuality; few have been foolhardy enough to probe these perilous depths, yet the book's sexual under-currents are there, strong and undeniable. Children's secret sexuality lies near the very core of the story's deeper meaning, and it is in the following passage, that the sexual overtones of the Peter Pan story come fully into view:
"Peter, what is it?"
"I was just thinking," he said, a little scared. "It is only make-believe, isn't it, that I am their father?"
"Oh yes," Wendy said primly.
"You see," he continued apologetically, "it would make me seem so old to be their real father."
"But they are ours, Peter, yours and mine."
"But not really, Wendy?" he asked anxiously.
"Not if you don't wish it," she replied; and she distinctly heard his sigh of relief. "Peter," she asked, trying to speak firmly, "what are your exact feelings to me?"
"Those of a devoted son, Wendy."
"I thought so," she said, and went and sat by herself at the extreme end of the room.
"You are so queer," he said, frankly puzzled, "and Tiger Lily is just the same. There is something she wants to be to me, but she says it is not my mother."
"No, indeed, it is not," Wendy replied with frightful emphasis. Now we know why she was prejudiced against the redskins.
"Then what is it?"
"It isn't for a lady to tell."
"Oh, very well," Peter said, a little nettled. "Perhaps Tinker Bell will tell me."
"Oh yes, Tinker Bell will tell you," Wendy retorted scornfully. "She is an abandoned little creature."
Here Tink, who was in her bedroom, eavesdropping, squeaked out something impudent.
"She says she glories in being abandoned," Peter interpreted.
He had a sudden idea. "Perhaps Tink wants to be my mother?"
"You silly ass!" cried Tinker Bell in a passion.
She had said it so often that Wendy needed no translation.
"I almost agree with her," Wendy snapped.
Here the deeper meaning of the Peter Pan story unfolds. Peter Pan starts out in the story by seducing Wendy away from her sheltered life as a child, and teaching her to fly - not in an aircraft, mind you, but, in a state of ecstatic transport, to fly her body (an allegory for orgasm). She becomes a woman and an ersatz mother in the imaginary Neverland as a result of this eloping nuptial flight - a flight which was a sort of make-believe sexual communion in which her two younger bothers became her babies, and Peter's. Peter and Wendy live (and sleep) together on this imaginary island as husband and wife with the orphaned lost boys as their pretend children. Tinker Bell, whose fairy dust gives Peter the power of flight, is in love with Peter and shows unmistakable signs of sexual jealousy when he uses the power she gives him to teach Wendy to fly. Wendy, too, seems jealous when Peter is pursued by other girls, like the Indian maiden, Tiger Lily, so it is clear that all the girls in the story want him as their exclusive intimate partner. But Peter is only a boy and all boys are impotent (that is, unable to experience orgasm, and consequently unable to inseminate girls, and to sire children) and so, having never had the epiphany of the first orgasm, Peter is simply unable to comprehend what girls want from him. Unlike boys, though, girls - no matter how young - are fully-functional sexual beings. To be sure, pre-pubescent girls are sterile (that is, they are unable to become pregnant) but they are as capable of fully partaking of sexual intercourse and are as capable of achieving orgasm as are fully grown women. This, then, is the genesis of the sexual tension underlying the story: Every girl in Peter's life is in love with him and wants to "fly" with him (i.e., wants to consummate her love with him sexually - orgasmically) but he is clueless and unattainable by virtue of his boyish impotence. His unattainability makes him all the more desirable to the girls, for it is human nature for people to want most what they can't have. On the other hand, what Peter really looks for in girls is an unconditionally-nurturing mother figure to replace the one who abandoned him as a baby. He said "I ran away the day I was born," but more likely he was - like all the lost boys - lost in Kensington Gardens by an inattentive nursemaid, which makes it clear that his mother wasn't there for him even as a baby. If Peter were to, one day, achieve sexual potency he would no longer be unattainable, which would likely make him less desirable to girls. Perhaps they would even then say of him, as many women say of all men: "Men are like dogs - they all think with their Peters." Moreover, once his natural addiction to communal ecstasy had made him a father, he would then, ever after, be not only a slave to his sexual hunger, but to the selfless support of his wife and children as well, thus drawing to a close his halcyon days of carefree youth.
Beyond the sexual aspects of the story (the aspects of fleeting delight), there is a somber pathos that pervades Peter Pan's existence. Without having had loving, wise, and unconditionally-supportive parents as role models, Peter has never seen anything to be admired in adults so he never wants to become like them. This is why he never wants to grow up. Peter's hatred for adults stems from the fact that he had been deserted by his mother at a very early age. Like every child, he came into this world trusting in a mother's unconditionally-nurturing love for her child, but she abandoned him when he needed her most. This made him withdraw from the world of the adults who betrayed this sacred faith of a child, and when he tried to return, the windows to his room were barred to him, and there was another little boy sleeping in his bed. It was the cold heartlessness and perfidy of adults - particularly that of his mother - that created the eternal child, Peter Pan. His development was forever frozen - fixated in the pristine state of childhood - for he wanted no part of becoming like the heartless adults who hurt him, abandoned him, indeed discarded him, as if the child he was were nothing more than human refuse. Perhaps every time an adult is unfair or cruel to a child, every time a mother betrays the faith of the child in the sacredness of the maternal bond, every time a child is abandoned to the care of uncaring strangers, another child's development is frozen, and another Peter Pan is made. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that such an eternal child would have contempt for adults, would see children as the only nobility and beauty in the world, and would hope to form affectionate bonds with those at a similar stage of development (though they might be much younger in actual years) when those children are most susceptible to such seduction by virtue of their own betrayal, disillusionment, or abandonment at the hands of cruel or uncaring adults.
Perhaps the saddest part of the story of Peter Pan is that in the end, even the children that he has seduced to fly away with him ultimately forsake him. They return from their flight with him, and enter the grown-up world to become boring and hateful adults (to Peter's way of thinking), and forget him on all but a repressed, subconscious level. Because they have a good mother's love to return to, and good parental role models to emulate, the returning children are able to move on, while he is left behind, alone on the shores of Neverland, with only fairies and other lost boys to keep him company. In his sleep, Peter cries often over the puzzle of his existence, but while he is awake his mind protects itself by a carefree forgetfulness that gives him respite from his anguish, but which often verges upon a heartlessness equal to that of the mother who abandoned him (as, for instance, when he can't recall what happened to Tinker Bell, but he "expect[s] she is no more.") In addition to this, Peter's character has yet another flaw, and that is a flaw that almost all children (and, sadly, most of today's adults) have: selfishness. It is only natural for one like Peter to have this flaw, though, for unselfishness and self-sacrifice are usually only learned when one becomes a parent, and even then it is only learned by those few who become good parents. Despite his tragic flaws, Peter Pan is worthy of our tears, for he is the eternal child, ever abandoned by all, and had the story ended here this tale would have been a heart-rending tragedy. But in order to avoid the supremely tragic fate of an eternal child condemned to eternal suffering, Peter comforts himself with forgetfulness, and returns again and again, ever to delight in seducing new generations of children away from the drab and often cruel world of adults, on enchanted fairy flights to Neverland. This book touches the heart, and speaks to the child within all of us.
- Review by Khan Amore, author of HYPATIA
Rating:
Summary: How can you pass this up?
Review: There is no way I can pass this book up everytime I'm in the bookstore. And I own two different copies of this fantastic tale. Yet, I still pick the book up and flip through the first few pages, smiling ear to ear at the wonderment that makes up Peter Pan. Peter is a boy that refuses to grow up. He lives in Neverland with his fairy, Tinkerbell, and the Lost Boys. He visits the nursery of Wendy, Michael, and John Darling to hear Wendy's marvelous stories, and one night loses that pesky shadow. When he comes back to get it and tries to stick it back on, Wendy discovers this new boy in their nursery and soon learns about his amazing lifestyle. Entranced by thoughts of pirates, mermaids, and fairies, Wendy, Michael, and John embark on an amazing adventure into a world so unlike ours. It's bittersweet, it's insightful, it's magical, it's everything and more a child or an adult could ask for in a story. You won't want to leave Neverland, and some days, you may find yourself staring out the window, looking for that hint of light that is Tinkerbell or the boy effortlessly flying between trees and buildings. Without a doubt the greatest children's story of all time, one that we've all heard, whether it was through a movie or a stage production. Experience the real magic though, and read Barrie's brilliant novel about the boy who won't grow up.
Rating: 
Summary: Disney didn't stay all that true to the story
Review: Why only three stars, well because it just didn't move me as an adult and I don't really think I'd want to read this (the real) version to a 5 year old at bedtime.
I understand that as an adult we're supposed to look longingly back on our childhood as we read this book, but I guess the 100+ years that have passed since this was written just don't accomplish that longing. Plus, Peter is not depicted as a happy go lucky little boy who refuses to grow up. He is depicted as a selfish little brat. He wants everything his way and he doesn't care who he hurts to achieve it.
I certainly wouldn't recommend reading this to a 5 or 6 year old before they drift off to sleep. There are just too many references to the fact that Dad in particular, may not have wanted all three of those children. There is also a very healthy amount of violence that you just might not want your elementary kid listening to. Peter cut off Hook's arm and threw it to the crocodile. The lost boys are always fighting either the "redskins" or the pirates. And if you're into the politically correct, this book is not. Instead of using the modern day "native American" we're given "redskin". I don't have a problem with it, but I can just see the furor it would cause if Jr. goes to school and calls his little native American classmate a redskin.
This may be a classic that is past its prime.
My star ratings:
One star - couldn't finish the book
Two stars - read the book, but did a lot of skipping or scanning. Wouldn't add the book to my permanent collection or search out other books by the author
Three stars - enjoyable read. Wouldn't add the book to my permanent collection. Would judge other books by the author individually.
Four stars - Liked the book. Would keep the book or would look for others by the same author.
Five stars - One of my all time favorites. Will get a copy in hardback to keep and will actively search out others by the same author.
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