Peter Pan was wrong

aka never growing up turns you into an amoral, self-centered person that only cares about instant gratification

(Source: Disney's Peter Pan)

I’ve just now read Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. Of course I know the story already. I have seen the Disney movie and a theater play, so I know what’s going on. The story is universally regarded as a fun and whimsical tale of childish imagination. Never having to grow up and instead spending your days having adventures on the island of Neverland seems to many a dream come true. Shirts with the slogan “Peter Pan was right” are worn, because being an adult isn’t all that /it’s cracked up to be/ and really being a child had been so much nicer and simpler and thus, Peter Pan was right in refusing to grow up.

What struck me in reading, however, is the way in which Peter is portrayed. Because he isn’t portrayed to be the friendly and playful fun guy he is in the movie (and in pop culture). It already begins when he leads the Darlings to Neverland. He has absolutely zero regard for their safety or comfort, they matter to him so little, that he momentarily forgets they’re even there. It is mentioned that Wendy is scared for their lives, because they are utterly at Peter’s mercy here.

When they reach Neverland the disconcerting instances and descriptors of Peter’s behavior continue:

• The most obvious unsettling aspect is that he’s super murder happy. Adventures for him often mean killing people (or animals) and he rejoices in a kill with glee. “He might have forgotten it [an adventure] so completely that he said nothing about it; and then when you went out you found the body” “‘There’s a pirate asleep in the pampas just beneath us’, Peter told him. ‘If you’d like, we can go down and kill him.’”
• While the children admire Peter as their leader, it is clear that they are also very scared of him. He demands complete obedience and punishes disobedience. He is unpredictable in his moods and his judgements. The lost boys are willing to kill for him without a second thought and after making a mistake one of the boys actually expects Peter to kill him for his failure. Furthermore, he always wants to be the best in everything and does not allow for competition.
• Something more subtle that I found very unsettling is that make-believe is real for him and he for example does not need to eat because if he pretends he’s eating he will get nourishment from it. The boys, however, don’t. So, they often go hungry. Everything is a game to him, even the things that genuinely scare and hurt the children. It’s obvious that he doesn’t care for the children where they don’t concern him, because he does what he wants and what he feels like doing without any regard for anyone else. He has apparently no concept of time and his memory is unreliable at best. Later, after Tinkerbell dies, he even forgets she ever existed.
• Even when Peter does something heroic, it is made clear that his motives are mostly selfish. When he comes to rescue the children from the pirates, he doesn’t really do it because he wants to save them, but because he wants to kill Hook once and for all.
• The following sentence is to me one of the most unsettling: “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” Not only do the children Peter snatches up regularly get killed on the island, the sentence implies that Peter himself kills them when they get older.  

In the end we follow Wendy as she grows up and has a daughter of her own. Peter Pan comes to take her daughter away to Neverland and her daughter after that and so forth. He stays exactly the same but has forgotten most things he did before like he has forgotten Tinkerbell’s existence. The children in the real world grow up and change and make new experiences and learn new things and build a character and a life while Peter can do none of those things. He comes to the window from time to time to take a girl with him to be his mother for a while until they leave to live their lives. He stays lonely, moving from one exciting adventure to the next, because that’s all he can do. While the end is written in a much happier tone than that, it still makes me sad.

Over and out

P.S. The Honest Trailer of the Disney movie mentions some of this as well.