Back from the Neverland

I guess I never bothered to mention that I finished Peter Pan. I had meant to write about it when I finished, but rather forgot. I suppose it's not worthy of too much consideration, but the truth of the matter is, it was a fascinating read, once you got over the killing.

The whole reason I could ever recommend that book to anyone (besides its sheer classic value), is because James Barrie was truly a genius. Throughout the whole story you get the feeling that he was as baffled as you are, as to why the story unfolded the way it did. He sounded so helpless, often, as if it pained him that the story follows certain paths, and it pained him that he couldn't just make up whatever he pleased. There was one point in the book where he was talking about all the adventures the children had on the Neverland, and he spent a while trying to decide what story to tell. Shall I tell the one about the mermaids? Or the battle with the Redskins? Or the time when Tinker Bell tried to float Wendy away? Or when Peter fought the lions? Eventually, James Barrie claimed to have tossed a coin to decide which story to tell, and ended up telling the one about mermaids, though he was awfully sorry it hadn't been another story, but that's just the way it was.

It just cracked me up, how much James Barrie feels a part of the story. You almost feel as if he were really a part of it, like you'd have a much different view of everything, had someone else attempted to tell it.

Another part I liked? That when they wanted to tell time on the Neverland, someone would wander around until they heard the crocodile ticking, and then hang around him until he chimed the hour. At which point they would know what time it was.

But all that aside, there were parts I really didn't like. At the end, when Peter Pan is having the last battle with Hook and the pirates, one of the Lost Boys slowly counts as various pirates get killed off. One. Two. Three. And so on (he gets up to about seventeen, which isn't actually correct, because two, Smee and someone else, I forget who, managed to escape alive). And even the demise of Hook is viewed as a rather lackadaisical affair, similar to spotting the Never Bird in the ocean, or bumping into Tiger Lilly in the woods. It rather creeped me out to have to read it in such a hum-drum manner.

Also, I couldn't decide how old Peter Pan really was. We like to think of him as maybe eight or ten (well, that's how old I might have placed him, if I'd given it any thought), but in the book it says multiple times that Peter still had his baby teeth. Well, I nannied a child who just turned five, and has already lost several of his baby teeth. Is this to imply that Peter was maybe just four years old? I really don't understand how a boy of such short stature could conceivably knock off so many beefy pirates.

Also, this doesn't seem to be common Peter Pan knowledge, but Peter had a terrible memory. He forgot everything. I think it was just to show that he was a child and didn't have to care, but maybe it was because he was four years old, and children of that age don't have a good recollection of anything.

And I could never determine "fact" from "fiction," because the book goes on and on about how they play-acted everything, from meals to mending to medicine. Wendy made the children sleep on the rock for half an hour before swimming after lunch, but then it says that it was rather silly, since their lunch was just play-acting, anyhow. So... did they ever eat? I have no idea.

There's this hilarious part right at the end of the book where we're in the nursery, looking at Mrs. Darling as she mourns for her children, and James Barrie had wanted to mock her, because he wasn't so terribly fond of her, but then he saw that she really did miss her children, so he decided to be nice. But there's this hilarious sentence that says, "If she was too fond of her rubbishy children, she couldn't help it." I just liked that the children were described as rubbishy.

Speaking of children, I didn't realize, until reading this original version of the story, that the Lost Children stayed in the "real world." In the Disney movie, didn't they stay in the Neverland? I don't quite recall.

Oh, and Mr. Darling felt so dreadfully remorseful about his part in the children flying away (he had been the one to tie up Nana the night they flew the coop), that after the children left, he kicked Nana out of the kennel and he lived in it until the children returned. He had the taxi bring him to and from work every day (he was excessively fond of taxis, since a taxi had helped him beat the rush to propose to Mrs. Darling before she was a Mrs.) and just never got out of the kennel. Can you say odd?

Whatever the case, the story was well presented, though I found the plot a little strange at times. Odd though it might have been, I have done my duty as a child, and read Peter Pan. I must say, it doesn't make me want to stay a child forever. It makes me happy, in fact, that I'm in full possession of my faculties and in no danger of being attacked by pirates or ticking crocodiles. Sometimes real life feels safer than fantasy.