Back to the Classics #7

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2018.

Peter Pan – James Barrie

The title character is all boy in that he’s all I’s: impatient, impulsive, ignorant, intrepid, and imperious. In short, a guy that would grow up to become a great quarterback, but a terrible boss. But our title character is not going to be anybody like Tom Brady or Our Stable Genius, because he’s determined never to grow up. He tempts three middle-class kids from their happy home with promises of teaching them to fly and having adventures with redskins, pirates, wild animals, and fairies. Ho-ho-ho: who wouldn’t go?

Well, me, for one. I was the kid that kept a low profile to pursue my agenda in peace. I thought the Goldfish in The Cat in the Hat imparted good advice that those dumb kids ignored for silly kicks with that feline trouble-maker. As Bob Dylan said when I was a teenager, “To live outside the law you must be honest.”

Anyway, the problem is that Peter Pan likes constant action, not the down-time that kids – especially reading kids – want and need:

In his absence things are usually quiet on the island. The fairies take an hour longer in the morning, the beasts attend to their young…and when pirates and lost boys meet they merely bite their thumbs at each other. But with the coming of Peter, who hates lethargy, they are all under way again: if you put your ear to the ground now, you would hear the whole island seething with life.

Not only is Peter’s busy-ness creepy and domineering to lazy kids us readers used to be, but also giving us slackers spooky pause is the fact that he lives in an eternal now. Peter takes his comrades through great adventures but he never remembers what he or others did during those adventures. At the end Peter amazes and dismays Wendy with this:

She had looked forward to thrilling talks with him about old times, but new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind.

“Who is Captain Hook?” he asked with interest when she spoke of the arch enemy.

“Don't you remember,” she asked, amazed, “how you killed him and saved all our lives?”

“I forget them after I kill them,” he replied carelessly.

When she expressed a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell would be glad to see her he said, “Who is Tinker Bell?”

“O Peter,” she said, shocked; but even when she explained he could not remember.

“There are such a lot of them,” he said. “I expect she is no more.”

I expect he was right, for fairies don't live long, but they are so little that a short time seems a good while to them.

Wendy was pained too to find that the past year was but as yesterday to Peter; it had seemed such a long year of waiting to her. But he was exactly as fascinating as ever, and they had a lovely spring cleaning in the little house on the tree tops.

Wendy, as she grows up, realizes how different children are from older human beings. Also, the line “I forget them” chills us in light of the line in Chapter 5:

The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out.

I daresay Peter doesn’t remember their names either.

For adults, Barrie is impartial about the lack of mercy of children who come up with the most cutting things in the most innocent manner. On March 18 I was in Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland when I heard a four-year-old girl loudly opine, “Too much cute things in here.” “I’m with you sister, “I wanted to call out but didn’t because I hadn't better be an evil role model.

Plus, Barrie raises a question I’ve had ever since I was a kid as to why obedient personalities regard as fascinating leaders that are aggressive, impulsive, arrogant, commanding and lacking in knowledge, skill, or ability to back their bombast. I confess I don’t understand the conventional fascination for Peter perhaps because when I was a kid I wanted to be older as soon as possible so people couldn’t be telling me what to do. Being a child is being vulnerable to being ordered about and who wants to be having to follow orders all the time?

Read Peter Pan. The story moves at brisk pace, has variety of jokes from word play to stock characters like the hapless dad and ultra-talented canine, and the impressive late Victorian vocabulary that will limber up an 11-year-old for Sherlock Holmes. Keep a box of Kleenex handy for the last chapter!