commentary on Peter Pan?

[JennyD]

 

We just finished listening to Peter Pan on audiobook (narrated by Jim Dale) and I was just blown away.  I know I read and loved the book as a child, but how did I miss all of this .....stuff?!   I am feeling a desperate need for context, however.  Clearly I know hardly anything about Edwardian social norms and even less about children's literature.  Can anyone recommend some commentary that might help me get up to speed a bit?  

[OneStepAtATime]

Which "stuff" might you need some context on?  Can you give a few specifics?  If you do a search on the web for Peter Pan study guides there are a few that might help, but I haven't used them so I can't guarantee they will address your needs.

 

Hopefully someone will respond with a useful suggestion.  :)

[Jean in Newcastle]

If you google Peter Pan context you will get some commentary on it.  Peter Pan was partly based on J. M. Barrie's own older brother who died at a young age and then was immortalized by his mother in stories and her memory, thus "never growing up".

[Jenny in Florida]

I think there's an episode of Radiolab that delves into Barrie's background a bit and might be interesting for you. I think this is the one: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91582-growing-up-is-awfuler-than-all-the-awful-things-that-ever-were/

 

 

[Sara in AZ]

ITS SO CREEPY right?! I read it aloud earlier this year, then prompty gave it away. Never again.

 

Yes! I got a fourth of the way in with my kids earlier this year, but we didn't finish. They lost interest, and it was creepier than I expected. Those lost boys kind of ended it for me. And I had hard time working past the whole dog as nanny concept. So weird.

[Lori D.]

We had an interesting serendipitous experience a few years back when finishing up high school homeschool with DSs -- we read Peter Pan right after Lord of the Flies. Wow! talk about similarities and resonances between the Lost Boys of PP and the children on the island in LotF!

[JennyD]

I think there's an episode of Radiolab that delves into Barrie's background a bit and might be interesting for you. I think this is the one: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91582-growing-up-is-awfuler-than-all-the-awful-things-that-ever-were/

 

 

 

Thanks -- I'll check that out.

 

I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for, but maybe some thoughtful literary analysis that might give me a better sense of how this book reflects -- or doesn't reflect -- the social issues and questions of its time/place.  I mean, yes, it's about childhood, but it's also quite clearly about mothers (or women?) and motherhood (in what I presume was a time of high maternal mortality rates) and then there's all this class stuff surrounding Hook -- what's that all about?   How do these themes play out in other books for children -- or adults -- of the time, or don't they?  That sort of thing.

 

I've looked on the web, of course, but I was just wondering if perhaps anyone had a favorite book or other resource.  And this is for me, not the kids.  

[SarahW]

Maybe the Annotated Peter Pan. I think the commentary is quite extensive in this series.

[Hunter]

I'm currently reading through the ORIGINAL What Your Grader Needs to Know series, AGAIN. I really love this series.

 

Peter Pan is in book 2.

 

I have noticed that Core Knowledge has been creating their own Core Classics series.

https://books.coreknowledge.org/home.php?cat=299

 

In the past, I haven't been so keen on the idea of adaptions, but…after reading some of the originals, I think I appreciate this Core Classics series. Peter Pan hasn't been added to the series, and I wonder if it is planned.

 

As part of "cultural literacy" it's really not the book that is part of our culture, but the play instead. I'm wondering if I should be planning a viewing of a live play or a film, rather than planning to read the book.

[JennyD]

Maybe the Annotated Peter Pan. I think the commentary is quite extensive in this series.

 

Oh wow, that looks great.  

[Ellie]

 

As part of "cultural literacy" it's really not the book that is part of our culture, but the play instead. I'm wondering if I should be planning a viewing of a live play or a film, rather than planning to read the book.

 

:iagree:

[Ellie]

ITS SO CREEPY right?! I read it aloud earlier this year, then prompty gave it away. Never again.

 

I read it myself when my firstborn was just a baby, because I had never read it and I wanted to see for myself if it was something I wanted to read to my dc.

 

No. Just...no.

 

We happily enjoyed the Disney adaptation, and we saw Cathy Rigby as Peter Pan, and we love the ride at Disneyland, and we're good with that. :-)

[Catwoman]

In my mind, Peter Pan is Mary Martin, and it's a movie, not a book. ;)

 

I bought the book (as part of a Sonlight core, maybe?) and I had never read it as a child, so I was all happy about it, picturing it being fun and lighthearted.

 

Well. Not so much. :glare:

 

That was one book I was glad I pre-read, because I know my ds wouldn't have enjoyed it at all.

 

I bought him the animated Disney video, and called it good. :)

[Carolyn in Ohio]

In my mind, Peter Pan is Mary Martin, and it's a movie, not a book. ;)

So very true.

 

Maria in the Sound of Music is also Mary Martin. I had the record as a child, I'm not that old. :)

 

Carolyn

[JessReplanted]

As someone who has never read the original Peter Pan, I am SO curious as to what is so creepy about it!! Could you please fill me in?

 

:bigear:

[Hunter]

I was just about to buy the book, thinking I needed to read it. I think I read part of it as a kid and never finished it.

 

I'm going to investigate what is available on film. Thank you everyone for such a timely discussion of this book, and validation of what I was feeling in my gut, but is so unconventional in the homeschool world.

[Dramorellis]

My just turned 8 year old is reading it now and it is ...not what I expected. He's been begging to read it and is enjoying it but I keep wanting to steer him in a different direction. Fortunately much of the creepier parts are going over his head.

[Ellie]

As someone who has never read the original Peter Pan, I am SO curious as to what is so creepy about it!! Could you please fill me in?

 

:bigear:

 

It isn't indecent or anything, but there are comments made about mothers, and how the Lost Boys never knew if Peter was lying to them when he was gone, and something about him coming back all bloated from pirates' blood..it has been almost 40 years since I read it and my memory has probably tweaked things, but I know I'm pretty close.

[Jean in Newcastle]

J M Barrie had a rather strange relationship with his mother - not physically incestuous but  emotionally so.  The mother was seriously messed up, having J M Barrie dress up in her dead son's clothes for a time and then as a  young man asking him to choose the kind of career that his dead brother would have chosen.  J M Barrie himself was said to be asexual, even though he did marry and divorce a woman.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/1Yf51GCyHyLLvlkwZTx57r2/j-m-barrie  You might look at the books in the bibliography at the end.  

[athomeontheprairie]

As someone who has never read the original Peter Pan, I am SO curious as to what is so creepy about it!! Could you please fill me in?

 

:bigear:

Was thing the exact same thing! I need to read the book so I know what everyone is talking about

[Eileen Aroon]

It is hard to compare it to other books, because there is no other book like it. I think comparing it to Lord of the Flies is completely wrong. I read it when I was around ten. I think I read it in a week. It made a strong impression on me. I still think about some of the beautiful images (a mother tidying up her child's mind while it sleeps, like folding clothes in a drawer), and the hilarious hunting scenes where Hook and his pirates are following Peter and his boys, or maybe it is the other way around, or maybe no one knows. I loved it!

 

Then I introduced it to my kids by reading some of it aloud. Maybe just the first 10 pages. I found I didn't like it. I didn't understand it anymore. I was heartbroken. It meant I had grown up, and had forgotten how to believe and enjoy pure fantasy. My 4th grader continued to read it on her own.

 

From an essay by Michael Clay Thompson: "Peter has a Quixote-like dream of loyalty and honor. Peter's sense of integrity and honor are of the kind that grown-ups later demote as impractical, unrealistic, or naive, but as the book keeps reminding us, grown-ups forget. Peter presents, in its purest form, the not-yet-jaded, not-yet crushed enthusiasm for life, the exploratory joy of the young mind. He crows, he flies, he laughs, he encourages children to be with him, to join, to stay with him in forever-land."

 

I am glad I read it as a child, because it is possible that as an adult I would have just been confused by its sheer imaginative genius. I wish I had read the Wind in the Willows for the same reason.

[stripe]

Yes! I got a fourth of the way in with my kids earlier this year, but we didn't finish.

We stopped because my daughter was terrified.

 

I don't know, somehow I associate it strongly with Michael Jackson. The desire to never grow old. The man-child. Yuck.

 

Hunter -- don't buy it, you can download for free

Http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16

[VeritasMama]

It was a play before it was a book, the book is an adaptation of the play nd I think that it is a poor one. Although I prefer the musical adaptation of the original play ;). But honestly, I don't feel strongly about this work one way or the other.

 

It is a fantasy, about how children imagine they would love to be free of their mother's rules. The Darling children indulge this fantasy by running away with Peter Pan and living in total freedom with the Lost Boys. But living without rules turns out to be terrible, and they find that in the end it is better to have order and a Mother to keep you safe, and Peter matures enough to go against his own wishes and take the Darling Children home.

 

In the original play, Nanna the dog was simply a comedic device, the original staging of the character included some slapstick. It was purely an appeal to children's silly sense of humor.

 

Honestly, if you don't read it as a fairy tale it will be creepy. But plenty of people are also creeped out by traditional fairy tales, to each his own.

 

There was a movie that explored the origins of the play starring Johnny Depp as Barrie called Finding Neverland. It also stars Kate Winslet. I don't know how accurate the film is, but I remember it got good reviews.

[Lori D.]

It is hard to compare it to other books, because there is no other book like it. I think comparing it to Lord of the Flies is completely wrong.

 

Just wanted to reassure you that my intention was not at all to sully anyone's beloved childhood memories of a special book experience. :)

 

In fact, I wasn't even trying to suggest there is a direct link or comparison between PP and LotF. Rather, I trying to explain that reading them close together brought out some interesting things for our family to explore… I'm finding this happens more frequently, the more classics I read. I see it as different aspects of The Great Conversation that are the classic books coming out and having something to say directly to us when we are reading them in close proximity, as well as one book can shed light on another, whether or not that was ever intended by the author, or even whether or not one author knew of a different author's work.

 

Hope that helps to clarify. :)

 

 

I've always felt that, while some books get read aloud to children, and that they can be enjoyable to some children at that young age, that really, those books were not written to be children's books. Certainly to be able to discuss and see all that is in the book requires an older more mature reader… Peter Pan definitely falls in that category to me. Wind in the Willows, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, and Huckleberry Finn are all also in that category to me.

 

Peter Pan definitely has a dark edge to it, and there are some subtle unsettling things in there for examining with older high school students. I had read it when I was about 20, and didn't really see it as a children's book, so it was not one I ever thought to do as a read-aloud when DSs were young. We did it in late high school.

 

Another interesting "serendipitous book" to read along with Peter Pan is Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray -- the story of a young man who wishes to never grow old (Peter Pan wanted to never grow up), and so he essentially makes a "deal with the devil" that the portrait of him will age and show all the signs of his choices instead of him. It was interesting to think of Peter Pan's Wendy character alongside the female actress character in Dorian Gray, and to think of Captain Hook and Peter's co-dependent relationship that is a series of skirmishes and attempts to destroy one another, alongside Dorian Gray's older male friend who both desires and envies Dorian's youth, and ultimately chooses to lead Dorian to dissipation and ultimate destruction.

 

Not at ALL suggesting that Barrie was familiar with Oscar Wilde's work, or that there are strong similarities between the two books -- just extremely interesting to ponder how they reflect on one another, and on the late Victorian/Edwardian times in which both books were written (Dorian Gray = 1891; Peter Pan = various versions published 1902-1911).

 

Just my musings and ramblings for the day! ;)

[Ellie]

J M Barrie had a rather strange relationship with his mother - not physically incestuous but  emotionally so.  The mother was seriously messed up, having J M Barrie dress up in her dead son's clothes for a time and then as a  young man asking him to choose the kind of career that his dead brother would have chosen.  J M Barrie himself was said to be asexual, even though he did marry and divorce a woman.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/1Yf51GCyHyLLvlkwZTx57r2/j-m-barrie  You might look at the books in the bibliography at the end.  

 

I never read anything about him, but I suspected something hinky had gone on.

[Chris in VA]

I loved the book. It was one of the first books I read on my own that I was able to analyse, just a bit. I saw how Peter is a boy, and how Wendy is hitting puberty--his behavior is frustrating to her, as she's on the edge of wanting a more mature "man." Tinkerbell sees what Wendy is just beginning to be about--Tink is actually the most "mature" character! IIRC, Barrie says something like, "children are cruel." Not that they mean to be, but they are self-centered and that immaturity can seem uncaring.

 

Anyway, I think it has much to recommend about it!

[VeritasMama]

I loved the book. It was one of the first books I read on my own that I was able to analyse, just a bit. I saw how Peter is a boy, and how Wendy is hitting puberty--his behavior is frustrating to her, as she's on the edge of wanting a more mature "man." Tinkerbell sees what Wendy is just beginning to be about--Tink is actually the most "mature" character! IIRC, Barrie says something like, "children are cruel." Not that they mean to be, but they are self-centered and that immaturity can seem uncaring.

 

Anyway, I think it has much to recommend about it!

The themes you discuss are pretty obvious in both the Disney cartoon and in the film Peter Pan from 2003, which is very faithful to the original. It is a coming of age story for Wendy.