Please read the play first.
Read Chapters 1-3 and the final chapter, 17 of the 1911 novelization created by J.M.Barrie.
You can also download the book at Project Gutenberg.
If you choose you can listen to the novelization
You may also be interested in looking at the optional “Peter Pan in Kensington Garden”, the story in which Peter first appeared. The edition linked here includes illustrations from Arthur Rackham, who we encountered earlier this semester, and offers a very different perspective of the character.
As you read these texts, choose a quote that you have a strong response to and post it below.
14 thoughts on “Peter Pan – The Texts”
“ A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don’t find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.” from the preface of the play “Peter Pan”.
“he was born so long ago he has never had a birthday, nor is there the slightest chance of his ever having one. The reason is that he escaped from being a human when he was seven days old; he escaped by the window and flew back to the Kensington Gardens”.
She is making the box say ‘Come home, Wendy.’ You will never see Wendy again, lady, for the window is barred!She has laid her head down on the box. There are two wet things sitting on her eyes. As soon as they go away another two come and sit on her eyes. She wants me to unbar the window. I won’t! She is awfully fond of Wendy. I am fond of her too. We can’t both have her, lady!
The quote “Mary, don’t pamper him. When I was your age, Michael, I took medicine without a murmur. I said ‘Thank you, kind parents, for giving me bottles to make me well.” I believe this is a very strong quote because it makes me think of how parents speak nowadays. They may tell someone not to pamper their child, and that they weren’t pampered in that way. This just made me laugh a bit, and it was relatable.
“I don’t know whether you have ever seen a map of a person’s mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child’s mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time.” this quote was interesting since the Mrs.Darling is trying to understand her children’s minds.
I agree, a instresting quote
“Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless. It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly.”
“As time wore on did she think much about the beloved parents she had left behind her? This is a difficult question, because it is quite impossible to say how time does wear on in the Neverland, where it is calculated by moons and suns, and there are ever so many more of them than on the mainland. But I am afraid that Wendy did not really worry about her father and mother; she was absolutely confident that they would always keep the window open for her to fly back by, and this gave her complete ease of mind.”
“Children have the strangest adventures without being troubled by them. For instance, they may remember to mention, a week after the event happened, that when they were in the wood they had met their dead father and had a game with him.”
“He was ashamed of himself, and yet he did it. It was all owing to his too affectionate nature, which craved for admiration.”
“She had a genius for knowing when a cough is a thing to have no patience with and when it needs stocking round your throat. “
“I don’t know whether you have ever seen a map of a person’s mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child’s mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time.”
“I don’t want to go to school and learn solemn things. No one is going to catch me, lady, and make me a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun.” This quote is from the play, and it was said by Peter Pan. This shows that Peter Pan does not want to grow up and he’s very immature.
“She had looked forward to thrilling talks with him about old times, but new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind”- from Chapter 17 in Peter and Wendy