Summer Reading

Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie, Illustrated by Arthur Rackham.

2003, Book of the Month Club, New York

Review by Mark Ungar

Did you ever vow never to grow up? Were you one of the brainwashed Disney minions who were persuaded as a child that it might actually be possible to retain the superior insight of your childish outlook? I wonder if my generation was the first to be tempted to yearn for this improbable goal, or if throughout time there have always been children who stopped, suddenly suspended in a moment of timeless insight, and realized that adulthood was a terminal sentence, and that they were perfect in consciousness exactly as they were in that moment.

No one has quite captured the essence of this dilemma like J.M. Barrie did with Peter Pan. Peter has become such a powerful icon since his creation in 1906 that it’s almost as if he had always existed, and was merely waiting to be uncovered. When I was growing up, we never missed the annual TV broadcast of the 1954 Mary Martin stage production of Peter Pan, and we clapped with all our might and chanted that we DID believe in fairies to save Tinkerbell’s life. And then of course there was Disney, whose great mauling paws mangled and bent Peter the way they did Winnie the Pooh and so many other of our classic stories and characters. Is it any coincidence that Walt was an orphan himself, and so founded the cult of perpetual childhood? With the Disney/ABC/ESPN empire showing no signs of loosening its hold on the minds, hearts and wallets of children and adults everywhere anytime soon, it’s important to go back to the roots of the archetypes that are being so skillfully wielded and subtly re-purposed as tools of Consumer Stimulation.

Not surprisingly, I had never read the original Peter Pan myself. This is a beautiful little volume, designed by Shonna Dowers. The illustrations are by Arthur Rackham, who is a bit of an icon himself, having indelibly influenced the way we visualize fairies…certainly the Brian Froud crowd owes him a great deal. However, the illustrations included actually belong to the book Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, published in 1906. This book, Peter Pan, was originally published in 1911 as Peter and Wendy. Thus there are no actual pictures of Peter and the other characters as we know them.

Peter Pan is not really a children’s book per se. I can’t imagine a child of an age who would most appreciate the story being able to read the book. But it would be a great book for a parent to read to a child, leaving out the bits that the child could not understand or might find frightening. If you have no children and/or are already old yourself, I recommend reading it to yourself, as a loving parent to the child you once were.

Barrie’s writing style is firmly rooted in his Edwardian era, and is thus somewhat polite and formal, but still far easier to read than contemporaries such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Jonathan Swift. Barrie, who famously loved children yet had none of his own, seems to have written Peter Pan not only for children but for their parents as well, and he was skillful enough to leave neither group behind. The story of Peter originated as a play in 1904, and it proved so popular – among adults, obviously! – that Barrie adapted and expanded the play to book form in 1911.

The original play was subtitled The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. Though there is something irresistably fascinating about the idea of actually refusing to grow up, one has to admit that the obstacles in such a chosen path would very likely prove insurmountable. Or perhaps we even know people who have refused to grow up, and can see first-hand the bittersweet fruits of that success. Barrie has obviously given the subject a great deal of thought, and surprisingly, dwells a great deal on the problems inherent in the relationships between boys and girls and mothers and fathers as they age. But he manages to bring our attention to these issues without discouraging us. It’s an almost Buddhistic outlook, in its clear-eyed acceptance of the impermanence of existence and the sadness of relationships that must inevitably end, yet with a lightness that makes that knowledge bearable.

Paradoxically, while we must come to the conclusion that it’s impossible to keep from growing up, Barrie’s character George Darling (the father), shows us that we never really do grow up. Mr. Darling is at his core a silly, impulsive, sentimental man, with “a too affectionate nature, which craved for admiration”. For one thing, he hires Nana, a dog, to be the children’s nanny – what sober adult would do that? Barrie compassionately exposes both Mr. and Mrs. Darling’s foibles in a way which suggests that he himself was very comfortable with and aware of his own child within. His secret seems to be that, while not growing up may be impossible, it is however possible and necessary, by some compromise, to become an adult with one’s essential childlike qualities intact.

In this context Peter is a radical, the absolute embodiment of the elemental principle of young, energetic life-force. He ran away at the age of one week when he overheard his parents discussing plans to send him to school. It is his utter, strict refusal to grow up even one iota that gives Peter his ability to fly. We tell ourselves we don’t care anymore if we fly or not, and we believe it. We feel superior to Peter, and he feels superior to us. Slyly, Barrie has turned things inside-out, and whereas initially we envy Peter, in the end we grieve a little bit for him. He is a tragedy, yet not so tragic because he is unaware of it.

Peter Pan is strongly relevant to our world, even to our heritage as a species. Though we consider ourselves a civilization, in reality we have simply not dealt with many central questions concerning childhood and our relationships to our own child-natures. These issues are at the core of questions like: is it ok to use children as soldiers or slaves? Are Americans simply incapable of delayed gratification? What kind of foreign policy results from complete self-centeredness and immaturity? If we create life, and it does things we don’t like, is it ok to hate it and destroy it? The very idea that children should have a childhood is a relatively new one; Charles Dickens was a strong proponent of children’s rights, and was largely responsible for popularizing the idea that children should be educated and nurtured until fully capable of dealing with the world of work. Barrie is Dickens’ descendant as a pioneer in championing the value of children as real people, an idea that was still radical in turn-of-the-century England and America.

But those are no reasons to read it. Read it because it’s a good book. And read it because it’ll open a door to your childhood, and make you more complete.