by J. M. Barrie
Incorporating Khan’s Analysis of
“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.
once wrote, “To
be born is to be wrecked on an island,” and so we may still be
2 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,
“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
“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.”
3
“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 t he 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 Wend y 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
4 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, the n, 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 th ere
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 rôle 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
5 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 rôle 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
[This favourable review of