J.M. Barrie: Peter and WendyA lady-friend recently wrote her honors thesis about this book, so I figured I'd take a look at it; after all, she'd written some pretty deep shit about it, and it is one of those classic works of childrens' literature that I'd somehow avoided so far in my life. A plot summary is more or less pointless; even for those who haven't read the book, there's still the many film adaptations and Barrie's play Peter Pan, which predated the novel. But in case you're reading this from a far away world where The Boy Who Never Grew Up doesn't ring a bell, here it is: the three Darling children (Wendy, John, and Michael) are swept away one evening from their London nursery by the impish, half-boy-half-Puck Peter Pan, along with his fairy, Tinker Bell. Peter flies the children away to the Neverland, an ever-changing island of childhood fantasy, populated by Redskins and Pirates and fairies and the deadly Crocodile, where Peter and his troupe of Lost Boys never grow up. The story focuses on the Darling childrens' (especially Wendy's) adaption to their new home, and to the ever-deadly war between Peter and the pirate captain, Jas. Hook.
Barrie's prose is flush and descriptive, and there are many parts where, as the thesis writin' ladyfriend would say, he "just gets it." Barrie, a sort of man-child in his own right, understands the nooks and crannies of a child's mind; and the best parts of the story lies in Barrie's poetic description of the Neverland itself:
"There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island, for the Neverland is more or less an island, with astonishing splashes or color here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut going fast to decay...there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needlework, murders, hangings, words that take the dative..."
And so on. There are moments in Barrie's story that are poingant and tense, indeed, yet there were also disappointing moments. Wendy was much more one-dimentional and absent than I hoped, while the boys are off having adventures, she is happy to sit by the fire and darn socks, likewise, Peter is often cruel and a few times is blatantly unlikeable. The tale is also much darker than the films would suggest, perhaps my stomach is too weak for it, but the continuing gruesome deaths of the various pirates are treated with lightness and humor. This, of course, points to the story's origin, the result of Barrie's friendship with the Llwellyn-Davies boys, an extended game of make-believe made real. This also accounts for the many fast saves in the novel, which often stand out like sore thumbs; for example, Wendy and Peter's rescue at sea by, first, a kite which had not been mentioned at all but had existed for a good deal of the novel, and second, by a bird who arrives at the last minute to pull Peter away. These events ensure that the endless world of Neverland continues, but they were too sloppily added into the narrative. Overall, though, the world that J.M. Barrie created has become a part of every child's Lexicon, and after reading the novel, or seeing one of the films for the first time, what child doesn't wait with bated breath every night for the endlessly wonderful and cruel Peter to take them away from the world?
