Peter Pan Readings

"...Nana must go about her duties in a most ordinary manner, so that you know in your bones that she performs them just so every evening at ix, naturalness must be her passion; indeed, it should be the aim of every one in the play, for which she is now setting the pace. All the characters, whether grown-ups or babes , must wear a child's outlook on life as their only important adornment. If they cannot help being funny they are begged to go away..."
J.M. Barrie

In J. M. Barrie's self-amused dedication of the play, Peter Pan, to his childhood chums, I was most struck by the above revelatory stage instructions. Barrie's commitment to the pleasures and benefits of a "child's outlook on life," is obvious as he revels in the prepubescent creativity of the five. In struggling to understand the world's deeply-held affection for Peter Pan and the Darlings, my guess would have to rest with the above instructions. The world that welcomed Peter Pan must be a world that longs for the creative imagination of childhood. It is certainly a world lost to most adults, and I suspect to most children of modernity as well.

As for me, though I also miss the lost world of childhood and its magic, Tinkerbell and Peter Pan fail to return me to those simpler times. Perhaps too much time has past, or the English setting is too off-putting -- but no, that can't be it, for Mary Poppins retains its spark. But there is something overly precious about the story of Peter Pan to my mind, as there is with J.M. Barrie's cutesie dedication pages. But my liking a work or not is not significant in itself, rather I'm hoping it serves as a way into a better understanding of the story's mass appeal.

The fact that Barrie lost his brother at a young age must have sparked the idea of the child who could never grow up, but rather than focusing on the tragic, the story of Peter Pan seems to glory in the magic of staying in the special place of childhood. Grown ups end up losing their imaginations, and having to spend their entire lives slaving away at desks in depressing offices. Barrie's recreation of his own childhood in fiction is an effort to both define that magical time and rue its loss in the adult world.

What strikes me most personally about Barrie's conception of Peter Pan is the idea of the halcyon days of childhood, when everything was perfect and all appeared possible -- even the most fantastical ideas. In culture's attempts to understand childhood, we mustn't ignore this age of innocence and our appreciation for its inevitably lost advantages. I remember when the entire landscape of the world seemed like a big adventure waiting to happen. Days were filled with play and excitement, and there were no storm clouds on the horizon. I can see that innocence in my six-year-old's eyes today and it is a joy to behold. Likely Peter Pan taps into that mine of pleasure that remains when we think back upon that lost world.

I can't help but wonder if this longing for the lost world of childhood surfaces for a reason during this era in human development. As agrarian society shifted to a more urban industrialized age, perhaps the world was recognizing its increasing loss of innocence and simplicity. The huge smokestacks and industrial machinery of Barrie's British Isles were a dramatic change for human culture. Barrie's appreciation of and fictionalization of the magic of childhood can undobutedly be seen as a cultural longing for a simpler time.

Peter Pan is likely to stay with us as long as we miss the simplicity and joy of childhood and find it lacking in our modern adult world. In other words, Peter Pan is here to stay.