Hey there tiktakers! You all know the famous Peter Pan story, the boy who didn't want to
grow up and lived in a distant world of adventure called Neverland. Like many children's stories,
it is full of fantasy and magical moments, but there are also many dark and somewhat
sinister details that surround this work and the life of its author.
You probably already know the plot by heart. Located in London at the end of the 19th century,
its protagonists are three little siblings: John, Michael, and the eldest Wendy, who each
night tucks them in bed with extraordinary stories. They don’t know it, but there is
someone spying on them, Peter Pan, a young man with the power to fly, and Tinkerbell,
the fairy that’s always with him. One of those nights Peter loses his shadow, and Wendy
helps him get it back.
As a reward, he invites the three of them to travel to his world, Neverland, where he
lives with the gang of Lost Children, who have refused to grow up. There they will live
great adventures meeting Indians and mermaids, and facing the evil pirates led by Captain
Hook. But Wendy realizes that they must return home, where their worried parents are waiting
for them. They take the rest of the children with them, except Peter, who decides to stay
and never become an adult.
In the original novel, there are many dark and rough details that were overlooked in
later adaptations. Peter Pan has an immature, selfish, and sometimes cruel personality.
He lives doing what he wants without any responsibility, so he is afraid of becoming an adult and living
in a world of rules and limits. The Lost Children are actually orphans or children abandoned
by their parents, who were found by the protagonist.
In one passage, Mrs. Darling, mother of Wendy and her brothers, tells the story according
to the legend she heard as a child, Peter Pan is in charge of accompanying the dead
children on their journey to the other world so that they do not get scared, as some kind
of Hermes. Elsewhere it is said that the boys on the island are not always the same, they
vary as they disappear. And that when they start to grow, which is against the rules,
Peter gets rid of them, without any explanations.
But if something is clear, it is his hatred for adults. In a moment of anger, he begins
to breathe quickly and continuously. He does it to get revenge, since in Neverland every
time he breathes, an adult dies. In fact, he has a deadly rivalry against the only ones
living there, Captain Hook's gang. Peter cuts off Hook’s hand in a sword duel and feeds
it to a crocodile.
Its author was the Scottish James Matthew Barrie, whose childhood was marked by a terrible
event. When he was only six years old, his older brother David, thirteen, died in a skating
accident, when the surface of a frozen lake broke. He never got over the loss, and his
memory, of an eternal teenager, was the great source of inspiration for his character.
His mother distanced herself from him, and the lack of affection coupled with a growth
disorder caused him an immaturity complex, he did not want to become an adult. In 1897
he met the Llewélyn Davies couple and their five young children, with whom he developed
a special bond. He played a lot with them and even dedicated a novel to them, “The
little white bird”, where Peter Pan first appears, a half-bird baby that can fly.
In 1904, he would make Peter the protagonist of a play, “The boy who wouldn't grow up”.
It was so successful that he adapted it to a novel in “Peter and Wendy”, base of
the story as we know it. Meanwhile, the little Davies, who inspired the protagonist family,
tragically lost their parents, and Barrie took care of them as if they were his own children.
Two of them lost their lives prematurely, one fighting in World War I, and the other
drowned in a lake in a supposed accident that was never cleared up. Barrie himself ended
up dying of pneumonia in 1937, transferring the author's earnings of his famous character
to Great Ormond Street, the country's first children's hospital.
A limited edition of Barrie's original manuscript, held at the New York Public Library was published
in late 2019, featuring an even darker protagonist. Peter Pan is an elf boy who speaks to Wendy
in a challenging and contemptuous tone. The end is harsher, when years later Wendy's daughter,
now an adult, is taken to Neverland without letting her accompany them, marking the distance
between the world of children and the world of adults.
The Peter Pan story tells us, above all, about the fear of getting older and facing the problems
of maturity, although it offers an optimistic ending with some of his characters turned
into responsible adults. What about you tiktakers, have you found any other meaning to the story?
Let us know in the comments!