Introducing Peter Pan

1
Introducing Peter Pan

• English 105 Coming of Age
• Professor Conner
• Washington and Lee University

2

• To be born is to be wrecked on an island.
• J.M. Barrie, Preface to R. M. Ballantynes The
  Coral Island

3
The life of J.M. Barrie

• Born 1860 in Kirriemuir, Scotland, the son of a
  weaver
• Death of elder brother David, age 13, when Barrie
  was 6 (the lesson in dying as a boy, he remained
  a boy forever)
• From his notebooks while a teenager Far finer
  and nobler things in the world than loving a girl
  getting her -- Greatest horrordream I am
  marriedwake up shrieking
• Attends school at Dumfries Academy and University
  of Edinburgh

4
The life of J.M. Barrie (cont.)

• Determines to become a writer
• Begins publishing articles and stories in 1884
• Moves to London
• 1888 publishes first novel, Better Dead
• Early 1890s his plays become great hits,
  gaining him fame and fortune
• 1894 marries Mary Ansell, an actress who had
  starred in several of his plays
• 1895 death of his beloved mother, Margaret Ogilvy

5
The life of J.M. Barrie (cont.)

• In 1897, in Kensington Gardens of London, he
  meets three little boys George (5), Jack (4),
  and Peter (2) Llewelyn Davies
• Barrie says of George There never was a cockier
  boy . . . He strikes a hundred gallant poses in a
  day.
• Soon he meets their mother, Sylvia Llewelyn
  Davies, and her husband Arthur (on whom the
  Darling family would be based)
• 1900 Tommy and Grizel, his novel about a mans
  desire to remain a young boy (and his wifes
  frustrations at his refusal to be a man)
• 1902 The Little White Bird, his novel based on
  his experiences with George, published

6
Versions of Peter Pan . . .

• Barrie begins telling the L-D boys about another
  young boy named Peter Pan, who can fly and lives
  with the fairies . . . He and the boys engage in
  a wide range of games, adventures, make-believe,
  imagination
• First version 6 chapters in Barries novel, The
  Little White Bird
• The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island, a
  chronicle of their adventures during the summer
  of 1901 (includes Lost Boys, a dread pirate named
  Captain Swarthy)
• 1902 begins notes for his fairy play (Barries
  father dies same year)
• 1903 begins writing the play that would become
  Peter Pan, or, the Boy Who Wouldnt Grow
  Uppremieres in 1904, a huge success
• The novel Peter and Wendy, 1911
• Barrie constantly revised, refined, altered,
  tinkered . . . really no finished version

7
The life of J.M. Barrie (cont.)

• 1907 Arthur Llewelyn Davies dies
• 1909 Barrie divorces his wife for her adultery
• 1910 Sylvia Llewelyn Davies dies, names Barrie
  one of the guardians of the children
• Legally adopts the five Llewelyn Davies boys
  after Sylvias death
• Dies in 1937

8
The Great Themes

• The impossibility of second chances
• The tension between change and changelessness
• Permanent truth vs. provisional, Protean,
  ever-changing reality
• Reality vs. illusion, time vs. a frozen eternity
  of youth
• Time . . .
• Satire vs. tragedy (in the book, and in life)

9

• Barrie seems to have argued throughout his
  writings that escape from time and so from death,
  whether through the fantasy of Neverland or
  through various art forms, cannot be a wholly
  satisfactory solution to the human situation.
  (R.D.S. Jack)

10

• The central Barrie contradiction at the heart
  of Peter Pan you cannot win, Peter and Wendy
  are both losers, because each part of the
  equation invalidates the other. Consolation lies
  in human tenderness and love, and in the gradual
  recession of pain which is the healing nature of
  accepted time. (Peter Hollindale)

11

• Of all the men I have ever known, Barrie was
  the wittiest, and the best company. He was also
  the least interested in sex. He was a darling
  man. He was innocent which is why he could
  write Peter Pan.
• Nico, 5th and youngest of the Llewelyn Davies
  boys

12

• What is genius? It is the power to be a boy
  again at will.
• Barrie, in his novel Tommy and Grizel