Peter Pan

In J.M. Barrie's novel "Peter Pan", one is able to see that values such as freedom, love, loyalty and friendship are a reflection of his life and the society to which he belongs. Growing up in a middle class family, losing a brother to death and dealing with a mother who could not rebound after losing a child is just the beginning of how J.M. Barrie gets his outlook on life, combined with a society whose values were sometimes unrealistic and cruel would help to shape J.M. Barrie into the man he became.

As a child Barrie did not want to grow up just as Peter Pan does not want to grow up. "I don't ever want to be a man; he said with passion, 'I want always to be a little boy and to have fun (Barrie, J.M. p.41-42)". In the novel Peter Pan, Barrie uses the character Peter Pan to go back to his own childhood and experience both the pleasure and fears of youth. By never growing up Peter Pan is able to escape the responsibilities of adulthood. He can live forever in Neverland playing games, having fun and being free. Peter does not realize the cost of his freedom; losing his friends, the Lost Boys, and Wendy just so he could remain a boy.

In London at this period of time being a child without parents or someone to care for you is anything but freedom.

"Very few social observers chose to

discuss whether the conditions of London

itself brutalized or dehumanized theses

small children; the reality was too

over-whelming, and too palpable, to elicit

any cogent analysis beyond the imagery

of bestiality and savagery, (Ackroyd, Peter

p. 650)".

The reality was that the children of the streets of London were in a way like Peter Pan, as it was most likely that they would also never grow up, they would die very young. In most cases they did not have the time to play because they needed to work or steal to get food. "They had little to celebrate in their unhappy lives, yet they were allowed to play, and become children again, for one day of the year (Ackroyd, Peter p. 651)".

One wonders if J. M. Barrie is trying to send Society a message when he writes the novel Peter Pan. Is he trying to make everyone see that childhood is very important and children should have freedom and should not be burdened with the responsibility of trying to survive. James Barrie believed that playfulness and dreams were important things in life and should always be considered before seriousness and politeness (Smith, L. Margaret). A child needs someone to love and care for them so they are not afraid to grow up and become adults.

In the novel we see how Peter rejects the love and affection a mother could give him by pretending that they are no good and he does not need any.

"Wendy, you are wrong about mothers'....

'I thought like you that my mother

would always keep the window open for

me; so I stayed for moons and moons and

moons, and then flew back; but the window

was barred, for mother had forgotten all

about me, and there was another little

boy sleeping in my bed(Barrie, J.M. p.153)."

Here the reader is able to see how much faith he has lost in the idea of motherhood. James's mother Margaret is reflected in the mother figure that Wendy becomes. Peter Pan wants a mother figure but is unsure, if any can be trusted.

Peter Pan is always pretending; pretending that Wendy is his mother, pretending that one of the Lost Boys is a doctor when Wendy gets shot with an arrow; just a J.M. Barrie's mother pretended her son did not die. "She would talk to the dead David as if he were there, (Holdback, David p. 73)." J. M. Barrie felt abandoned by his mother just as mothers abandoned many of the children who lived on the streets of London. "Most of such children had been abandoned by their masters, or by their parents, to