The Healing Nature of Peter Pan

Alyssa Banas

Introduction: J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan made its stage debut on December 27th, 1904. Since that day it has kept its audience captive for generations, inspiring literary critics such as Nell Boulton, Peter Hollindale, Sarah Dunnigan, Ann Wilson, Maria Tatar, and Peter Dudgeon to utilize different lenses to interpret the text. After all, as Matt Freeman, a writer for Reading Today, once stated, “Barrie was one of those rare writers who managed to create a story with close to universal relevance and a prodigious ability to endure.” For this reason alone his tale continuously garners attention and scholarly intrigue. Yet, no matter how many times it has been studied only two possible recurring meanings have been put forth, both of which Nell Boulton mentions in her essay “Peter Pan and the Flight From Reality: A Tale of Narcissism, Nostalgia, and Narrative Trespass.” Boulton claims that the tale has a “curiously divided reputation” (307). She notes that some critics, like Freeman, have found the story to be “one of the immortals of literature” and “a symbol, even an archetype, of eternal childhood and innocence” (Boulton 307). While others, she finds, read the tale as “morally suspect, even verging on the abusive” (Boulton 307). In her essay, she discusses the darker interpretation by using Freudian theory to “explore the more perverse elements of Barrie’s vision” and claims that Peter represents Barrie’s suppressed sexuality (Boulton 308). However, I disagree with Boulton’s interpretation. In combining the biographical works of Hollindale and Tatar, and psychologists’ research on the therapeutic nature of fairy tales, I interpret Barrie’s tale as one of innocence with the purpose of healing. While many in the world know this famous tale, not many know the story of the man behind the masterpiece. In the article “A Hundred Years of Peter Pan,” Peter Hollindale, a foremost expert on Peter Pan, recounts the history of this now mythical tale and its somewhat unknown origins. But before he begins his retelling he reminds his audience that “the origins of Peter Pan have become [their own] narrative” and as such they have “affect[ed] the reception of the play,” making interpreters mix

Oracle 2019-2020 42 “biography and text together in a speculative psycho-sexual cocktail” and taking away from the original purpose of the text (Hollindale 201). For this reason, interpreters vitally need to understand the key events that led up to the conception of the tale. Especially since, as Maria Tatar wrote in her introduction to The Annotated Peter Pan, “a recent biography by Peter Dudgeon serve[s] as a cautionary example in substituting speculation for evidence” (Tatar xxxi). In this biography, Dudgeon “paints a portrait of Barrie as a predatory monster” but through her research with “The Morgue,” a collection of letters and other odds and ends written by Barrie, Tatar “discovered that nothing could be further from the truth” (Tatar xxxi). Interpreters and scholars must have a clear understanding of Barrie’s past before psychoanalyzing his most famous work. In knowing that six-year-old Barrie experienced the “traumatic loss” of his brother David on the eve of his 14th birthday one could see how the idea of an eternal boy came to be (Hollindale 202). After all, time continued to move on for Barrie, but “remained fixed for David” (Hollindale 202). This thought was so prominent in his mind that when Barrie wrote about this event in Margaret Ogilvy, the biography of his mother, he said “when I became a man…he was still a boy of thirteen” (Hollindale 202). This knowledge combined with the psychology of fairy tales aids in the understanding that Peter Pan is not a tale of darkness and suppressed sexual desires but one of coping with trauma. In the article “Fairytales, Psychodrama, and Action Methods: Ways of Helping Traumatized Children to Heal,” Rebecca Walters describes how fairy tales, when implemented with psychodrama techniques, “help children” who have experienced trauma “tell their stories, express strong feelings in a safe way, and learn new ways of coping” (Walters 54). Barrie’s Peter Pan is a prime example of this. Through the use of New Historicism, psychoanalysis, and trauma theory, I argue that J.M. Barrie’s novel Peter Pan is more than a stock children’s tale and representation of his suppressed sexuality but rather a subconscious response to the traumatic childhood loss of his brother. The tale thus serves as a coping mechanism to simultaneously heal Barrie’s psyche and preserve his innocence.

Psychoanalysis of Fairy Tales: Although Barrie’s Peter Pan is not considered a traditional fairy tale with its modern conception, having been conceived in the twentieth century and not focused upon a prince or princess, it nevertheless remains a fairy tale. After all, it holds the same elements of the traditional tales. Elements such as wondrous lands, fantastical creatures, and the ability to impart a cultural idea, value, or lesson. J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan fits the first category by mostly taking place in the exceptional Neverland, a

Oracle 2019-2020 43 land that confounds the reader to its existence. After all, “the Neverland is always more or less an island,” residing as a map in the minds of each child and just as each child is different so too “the Neverlands vary a good deal” (19). Yet if it resides inside the minds of children, how then can Peter and the Darling children travel there together? But that is not the end of the puzzle, for Neverland is not just any ordinary magical island, it is also alive. When Peter is away “things are usually quiet on the island” slumbering until it feels “that Peter was on his way back” and again “woke into life” (64). Neverland contains a wide variety of people and creatures revolving around the island in a cycle such as the lost boys who “were out looking for Peter,” the pirates who “were out looking for the lost boys,” the redskins “looking for the pirates,” and the beasts “looking for the redskins,” and the host of mythical creatures such as the mermaids and the fairies (64). Add in the kidnapping of princess Tiger Lily, Peter acting as a knight in shining armor, Hook as the malicious villain, and the societal concept that “all children, except one, grow up” (13) you have all the elements for a perfect fairy tale. For generations, fairy tales have been used to entertain children and teach life lessons. But what about them is so appealing? With the gruesome details and sometimes not so “happily ever after’s,” what keeps drawing people back to these tales? Dr. Meredith Mitchell, a Jungian analyst, believes their draw comes from the heroic struggle found in each of these stories. In her article “Learning about Ourselves through Fairy Tales: Their Psychological Value” Mitchell explains that “stories frequently provide clues as to the basic struggles of human beings” (264). Many of the common personal inner struggles of adults can be found in the fairy tales told to children. As such, the reading and writing of fairy tales allow children and adults to “gain insights into some of our basic human tendencies” (264). She continues her explanation contending that each story “can be analyzed in a practical way” for each person as “a means of developing useful tools” to help in “reflecting upon things that we observe and do in our daily lives” (264). That is, when read, these tales provide a mirror that can illuminate the self and reveal possible sources and solutions to struggles and problems. The process of analyzing fairy tales as a representation “of what goes on inside of us” begins with the “basic assumption that every feature of every story—setting, characters, objects, activities, etc.—corresponds to a factor, principle, or process within the personality” (264). This process is similar to that of analyzing dreams. However, where “dream contents come from the dreamer,” symbols and metaphors found in fairy tales “can be viewed as collective or universal dreams that can apply to all of us,” one of the reasons that fairy tales are so relatable (265).

Oracle 2019-2020 44 Psychodrama: The initial purpose of fairy tales was to covertly assimilate children to cultural ideas such as not entering a home that does not belong to you and stealing things from that home, a lesson found in “Jack and the Giant Beanstalk.” We use fairy tales today in a similar but different manner. Rebecca Walters explains how fairy tales can be used to aid in the healing of traumatized children through the method of psychodrama. Psychodrama is a clinical method of acting out a story with characters and events similar to the people and details involved in the original traumatizing event. It is believed that psychodrama assists in helping “children tell their stories, express strong feelings,” and learn to cope with the “overwhelming feelings” left from their experience (54). Over time, this practice will “increase their ability to self-regulate and develop better social skills,” helping them look less “disturbed and more like regular kids” (54). This is possible because, as stated in Marilyn Fleer and Marie Hammer’s article “Emotions in Imaginative Situations: The Valued Place of Fairytales for Supporting Emotion Regulation,” “fairytales represent a long-standing cultural practice” of “supporting children’s social and emotional development” that when told in a collective setting that allows them to roleplay the stories the “fairytales help” in “collectively develop[ing] emotion regulation,” something that everyone needs to learn at one point or another if they want to become functional members of society (Fleer and Hammer, 240). Through the rest of her article, Walters details how psychodrama can help rewire the way a child thinks about themselves, the people around them, and the possible actions they can take in a given situation. She describes how children who have been told repeatedly that “they are the problem child in the family” can be put in a psychodrama group where “their impulsivity can be harnessed and guided into spontaneity” through the action of the protagonist (55). And how, with adults as well, the psychodramatists can “sometimes see a protagonist becoming overwhelmed,” when this happens the dramatist aids the patient in changing “who they are'' in the story, “when or where the scene takes place,” and “who [they] bring in for support” (55). This method helps in allowing the “protagonist to get the physical and emotional distance they need in order to regulate themselves emotionally” (56). This space is known as “the Window of Tolerance,” the state in which a “trauma survivor can tolerate emotion” and process information rather than being forced into the “fight, flight, or freeze'' state of mind (56).

Oracle 2019-2020 45 Fairy tales are used specifically because they are a well-known part of what Walters calls the “cultural conserve” and “can be used to address children’s fears,” aid them in “telling their stories,” and give them training in role-playing “an approach that honors the children’s window of tolerance” (56). They also help because “the younger the children are, the more intense the trauma” and what child doesn’t love a good fairy tale (56). Walters then emphasizes the importance in considering “the background of the children'' they work with and finding “stories from their own diverse culture” because those will have a better effect than tales the children are not as familiar with. However, fairy tales also present a challenge because they have been integrated into popular culture and as such have more than likely been turned into a movie. This creates a struggle because “the creation of the characters are in the hands of the studio” instead of “the child’s own imagination” (57). This leads to “great distress” as the kids began to say “that’s not the way it is in the movie” and it is at this point where certain elements of the story have to be restructured so that the tale is not as recognizable to the children (57). But no matter if the fairy tale is familiar or unfamiliar “a safe container” has been created, one “in which children can create a new narrative and address their own personal story” (60). And this is exactly what Barrie did with his story Peter Pan.

Contextual Information: Society’s seemingly eternal fascination with Neverland and the boy who would not grow up has created great intrigue about the man behind the story. Because of this, there are several biographies one could turn to for information on the author’s life. For this paper, I chose to use Peter Hollindale’s essay “A Hundred Years of Peter Pan” and Maria Tatar’s “J.M. Barrie in Neverland: A Biographical Essay” from the annotated Peter Pan. I chose to use Hollindale’s essay because in writing it he chose to omit “all reference to academic criticism” leading to a more reliable biographical account (Hollindale 199). Meanwhile, I also chose to use Tatar’s essay because she wrote it using what Peter Davies, Barrie’s adopted son, called “the Morgue, a set of letters and documents” written by Barrie with David’s commentary in the margins giving her essay firsthand insight into Barrie’s life instead of a biography of speculation (Tatar xxxi). For those that know the basic background of Peter Pan and the man behind the story the initial reaction to jump to a darker interpretation of the story is strong, especially with, as Tatar points out, the “cultural associations” such as “Michael Jackson’s Neverland Valley Ranch, pop psychologist Dan Kiley’s Peter Pan Syndrome, and Jacqueline Rose’s The Case of Peter Pan, or The Impossibility of

Oracle 2019-2020 46 Children’s Fiction” (lxvii). In fact, this jump is exactly what Piers Dudgeon did in his book Neverland: J.M. Barrie, the Du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan, as well as Nell Boulton in her essay “Peter Pan and the Flight From Reality: A Tale of Narcissism, Nostalgia and Narrative Trespass.” Both Dudgeon and Boulton claim that Peter Pan is a representation of Barrie’s narcissistic and suppressed sexual tendencies. But these associations simply provide “more reason to look closely at the man who created the character of Peter Pan” (lxvii). Doing so will aid in understanding “the cultural stakes” in Barrie’s works and help us to “identify the extent to which his own fears and desires permeate a story about childhood innocence and adventure” (lxviii). Many people attribute the creation of Peter to the friendship shared between Barrie and the Llewellyn-Davies children. But as Hollindale points out, although James M. Barrie was a man when he finally wrote Peter Pan, the “crucial events” and ideas “were fixed and finished long before Barrie” even met the boys in the park (202). They “belonged to his own childhood” (202). This concept of an eternal boy stemmed from the death of his brother David who was killed in a skating accident on the eve of his fourteenth birthday when Barrie was six (202). This event was a “massively traumatic loss for Barrie’s mother” and “for Barrie himself” (202). It is no wonder that experiencing trauma at such a young age would have a psychological effect on the rest of Barrie’s life. However, despite this traumatic event, Barrie’s childhood was by no means unhappy. Hollindale points out that “his happiness was just as arbitrary and fatal as his grief” (203). A lover of stories, he continued to be an active child and “staged amateur theatricals in the family washhouse” until his childhood “reached its apotheosis” and “at thirteen” was sent away “to school at Dumfries Academy,” which he said “were the happiest five years of his life” and the “genesis of that nefarious work” meaning Peter Pan (203). It was at Dumfries that Barrie was given “an extended lease on his boyhood” where his “friendships allowed his imagination to flourish” in what can be considered a “happily asexual paradise” (203). Unfortunately, like his novel states, “all children except one must grow up” including himself (Barrie 13). Even as he aged, Barrie continued to have an active imagination, transferring his focus from active play to writing, which soon became “the only satisfactory adult substitute for childhood games” (Tatar lxxiv). But writing was not a new pastime to Barrie. As a child and after the death of his brother “storytelling came to be…an antidote to loneliness,” a therapeutic past time that he turned into preparation “for the career of author” (Tatar lxxiv). After all, as he claimed in Margaret Ogilvy “there could be no hum-dreadful-dum profession” for him; “literature was [his] game” (Barrie 51). And an author he became, at first unsuccessful, but nevertheless an author.

Oracle 2019-2020 47 Years later, long after Barrie became a famous playwright, he happened upon the Llewellyn-Davies family—"first the older children” at Kensington Gardens, then” by chance their mother,” Sylvia, “at a dinner party”—taking the chance to “infiltrate the household” and claiming “the surrogate family of boys” that he wanted but could not himself father (Hollindale 203). His friendship with the boys stemmed from “being physically stuck in childhood,” in the Davies boys he found “ready-made confederates” who with “he could repossess the adventurous and asexual happiness” that painted his childhood (Hollindale 203). Unfortunately, it is this friendship that has haunted today’s society with claims against Barrie of pedophilia. Claims that continue to go unfounded. If such a thing were true why then would “Barrie’s friendship with the boys…seem[s] to have been acceptable to both the boys’ mother and Edwardian society” (Hollindale 201)? This unfounded accusation says “something about our own age’s paedophile phobia”: we have become a society obsessed with seeing evil, making “it near impossible for a male adult to develop any friendship with children” (Hollindale 201). An obsession that turns “justified terror of paedophile assault” the wrong way, making it “mutate into witch-hunts aimed at the innocent” driving the “proscription of harmless contacts between male adults and children” (Hollindale 201). However, as much as I would like to say that these accusations are completely unfounded, they simply do not just spring up out of nowhere. Both Piers Dudgeon and Maria Tatar point out that Barrie’s characters and stories seem to have a “biographical turn,” either being an outright biography like Margaret Ogilvy, by her son, J. M. Barrie, or a coming-of-age tale such as Sentimental Tommy, a tale that has loose connections to Barrie’s own life, and one that moves “backward rather than forward” to discover what sort of boyhood Tommy the adult had (Tatar lxxxii). Everything he writes seems to reflect the people and events in his life in one way or another. Such as “his mother’s childhood” which provided “him with a model for Wendy” who would go on to star in Peter Pan years later (Hollindale 203). Regrettably, this tendency also included his novel The Little White Bird, in which the narrator is “an eccentric bachelor, a thinly disguised version of J.M. Barrie” who goes back and forth “into the world of childhood” smearing the “boundary between fantasy and reality” acting out his “fantasies about fatherhood” (Tatar lxxxiv-lxxxv). It is from this novel that the allegations of pedophilia rise. For within it the Bachelor becomes good friends with a little boy, David, and as one reads “his attachment to the boy cannot but seem morbid and teetering on the edge of pedophilia” to the casual observer (Tatar lxxxvi). This is due to a scene in which the Bachelor has David over for the night. Within this scene the Bachelor helps David get ready for bed, something that any parent would do and no one would bat an

Oracle 2019-2020 48 eye at. But it is the description of this mundane task that plants the seed for the allegations. The narrator describes his thoughts at this moment as “I think I remained wonderfully calm until I came somewhat too suddenly to his little braces which agitated me profoundly,” then quickly moves forward to say “I cannot proceed in the public with the disrobing of David” (Barrie 206). Dudgeon, like many others, interpreted this scene to point towards Barrie having a dark desire toward little boys. However, while this scene is a little disconcerting, if you know of Barrie’s past you know that this is not a man wanting to harm the child but one with fatherly instincts to protect the child. For the first time in his life, the narrator can live out his “fantasies about playing father to a child,” a fantasy that both Barrie and the narrator shared (Tatar lxxxvii). By declaring he cannot continue to describe the nighttime routine the narrator is protecting the fictional child’s innocence and providing privacy from the observing audience. The Little White Bird is not only the novel that sparked the claims of pedophilia, but it is also the novel in which Barrie was enabled “to conceive of a ‘lost’ boy who runs away from home in order to avoid growing up,” this boy would later become known as Peter Pan (Tatar lxxxvii). In consequence of this connection, Barrie’s novel Peter Pan also became associated with ideas of sexual desire.

Psychoanalysis: Since the first moment Peter made his appearance, he captured the hearts and minds of his audience, while simultaneously creating a divided reputation among his literary critics. When most people think about Barrie’s Peter Pan, they think of the 1953 Disney animated classic, a tale depicting an eternal child forever searching for adventure in Neverland. However, Disney’s version fails to capture the true nature and purpose of the story. For most literary critics, like Boulton, who chose to analyze the original play or novel, they interpret the story to hold a darker twist reading Peter as “morally suspect, even verging on the abusive” (307). They believe that this tale symbolically represents Barrie’s own suppressed sexuality. In response to this claim I would say that for those who have read the book, Peter’s abusive nature is quite clear. After all, when the lost boys grow up he “thins them out” (64), and when Peter returns to the nursery years later and encounter’s grown-up Wendy’s daughter, in denial, he “steps toward the sleeping child with his dagger upraised” as if to kill her before deciding that she would make a good new mother (180). Yet, I disagree that Peter’s tale holds undertones of sexuality. Peter is an eternal child and as such is exempt from developing sexually. But do not get me wrong, many schools of thought suggest all children hold some conceived notion of sexuality and I am not contesting this belief. Instead, I am arguing that Peter is exempt from these beliefs because by living on Neverland Peter has

Oracle 2019-2020 49 not been exposed to sexual ideas. This is shown in the scene when Wendy asks to give Peter a kiss as gratitude for the way he talks about girls. When Wendy leans in to kiss him, Peter holds out his hand believing a kiss is something tangible. Surprised and slightly disappointed, Wendy puts a thimble in his hand making Peter believe that a kiss is a kind of small object (57). Boulton frames her argument using Freud’s personality theory and functional theory of the mind. She claims that Peter remains stuck in the latency period of development and that Neverland is symbolic of latency itself. For “Neverland is a place where issues such as sexuality are rarely directly tackled” yet they are still “hinted at as part of the Darling children’s experiences” (309). The most notable of these experiences is the flight from the nursery to Neverland. Boulton believes Barrie’s descriptions of this flight are “reminiscent of Freud’s idea that dreams of flying represent wish-fulfillment phantasies of sexual pleasure” (309). Yet as far as the audience knows this experience is not a dream. The children truly do leave the nursery and head to Neverland. Boulton continues her argument by turning her attention to Peter directly. She describes him as “a charismatic figure who seems to typify the latency child’s sense of certainty” which demonstrates “the child’s need to defend against the fear of uncertainty that adolescence” brings forward in a child (309). This fear is clearly depicted in Peter’s rule of the island. Many creatures are found on the island, but only one calls Peter their leader and that would be the lost boys. The lost boys come to the island after they have fallen out of their prams and have been forgotten by their nursemaids, hence the name “lost boys.” His number one rule for the boys is to never grow up. A rule that indicates his anxiety over uncertainty toward aging. However, I would say that this anxiety not only points toward aging but also death. Unfortunately for the lost boys, Peter is the only child on the island capable of following the rule. For this reason, the number of boys on the island varies “according as they get killed and so on,” it is “when they seem to be growing up” that “Peter thins them out” (Barrie 64-65). Boulton sees this thinning as “a sadistic pleasure” of Peter’s, believing that Peter does not view death “as a disturbing fact of life” (309), but rather as “an awfully big adventure” (Barrie 190). Conversely, I disagree with Boulton’s interpretation of the thinning out of the lost boys. While this may make him appear cruel, it only further points towards Peter’s young age. Children do not understand the concept of death, it is something that has to be taught to them. Support? Consequently, as a child, Peter is forgetful, even casually mentioning to Wendy that he “forgets them after [he] kills them,” talking about both the lost boys and the pirates (Barrie 209). This clarification of Peter’s young age begs the question of how a fictional child could come to symbolize the perverse nature of sexuality to literary critics.

Oracle 2019-2020 50 Looking further at Peter’s character it is clear that he has “omnipotent confidence, distaste for sexuality,” and above all the “desire to never grow up,” these qualities “speak to the part of the latency child that wishes to defend against…the realities of adult life” (Boulton 309). However, the difference between an ordinary child going through this latency phase and Peter is that “for Peter there can be no development,” no learning, no maturing, no ability to overcome his fears (Boulton 309). This creates a somewhat negative effect on Peter’s psyche. He is continuously living in the land of make-believe, unable to tell the difference between reality and imagination; to him “make believe and true are exactly the same thing” (Barrie 117). This may be the reason Peter has no trouble "thinning out" the lost boys who have grown up (Barrie 65). In his mind, he is unable to "distinguish between the idea of a thing and the thing itself" (Boulton 312). The confusion of symbol and object is representative of “an unconscious attempt to avoid the painful task of mourning,” but for infants, the use of symbols is a “healthy means to overcome loss” and in some ways, Peter is like an infant (Boulton 312). After all, he is very forgetful, when he was taking the Darling children to Neverland he would often shoot off toward an adventure and when he came back “he had already forgotten what it was” or he would sometimes “not remember them” upon his return and they would have to reintroduce themselves (Barrie 55-56). Like an infant, he knows the object when it is with him but as soon as it is out of his sight he has no recollection that it even existed in the first place. Karen Coats, author of Looking Glasses and Neverlands, presents the idea that for an author’s work to carry a dark interpretation, such as Barrie’s Peter Pan, “the desire of the writer must in each case somehow become the desire of the reader” (78). Therefore, for Peter Pan to be interpreted as a tale of sexuality, the writer must have had some desire for little boys and the interpreter must have a need to see that desire in the text. Yet, Coats also points out that for such tales to become popular with children, they must first pass the approval of the parents and for such a thing to happen “any scent of a perverse desire in these tales must be firmly repressed” (78). While I agree with Coats’ claim that a parent would not allow a child to read a story with perverse desires, I disagree that Peter Pan holds these desires at all. The origin of these “desires” come from Barrie’s relationship with the Llewelyn Davies boys and Barrie’s novel The Little White Bird. Most literary critics who choose to interpret Barrie’s novel look toward this relationship as the inspiration for the tale, disregarding Barrie’s early history, specifically the death of his brother and his time spent at an all-boys boarding school. Not to mention that there is no proof of a sexual nature in Barrie’s relationship with the boys. Quite the opposite with the youngest of the boys, Nico Llewelyn Davies, publicly declaring his anger toward “the accusations levelled against

Oracle 2019-2020 51 Barrie” (Hollindale 204). Telling reporters that he did not “think Uncle Jim experienced a stirring in the undergrowth for anyone” and “of all the men [he had] ever known, Barrie was the wittiest…[and] also the least interested in sex” (Hollindale 204). Barrie is in every way an innocent: “which is why he could write Peter Pan” (Hollindale 204).

Trauma Theory: Keeping this argument in mind the character of Peter then becomes representative of David and Barrie. David died as a child and as such will never grow up. Similarly, Barrie remains stuck in the thrall of childhood, looking to return to the happiest days of his life when he was playing make-believe with his friends at the academy. Through his stories and plays, he gains the ability to return in short spurts to the childhood realm of imagination. But with the aid of his friendship with the Llewelyn Davies boys, Barrie is finally able to return to his childhood for longer spurts of time. Peter Pan thus works as Barrie’s method of psychodrama. By writing a tale in which a boy lives on a magical island with the mermaids and pirates from his childhood games, Barrie has created for himself a world in which he can go to confront his personal fears and anxieties remaining from his childhood. This tale aids in his healing of the traumatic loss of his brother, by confronting his fears about death and aging. Within the story Hook symbolizes adulthood, concerned with “good form” and hunting Peter, always full of “jealousy and malice” toward the youthful boy (Barrie 200). While the crocodile represents time, following Hook around showcases that no one can escape time. During the battle on board the Pirate ship at the end of the novel Peter loses his happy thoughts and falls to the ship. Right before Hook kills him Peter smiles. Shocked by Peter’s reaction to death Hooks asks “why are you smiling,” to which Peter replies with one of his most famous lines, “to die would be an awfully big adventure” (Barrie 209). By declaring that death would be an adventure, Barrie symbolically kills his fear of death. Then in letting the Darling children return to their home, and letting the lost boys stay with the Darlings, Barrie symbolically states that it is alright for others to grow up and continue on with their lives. He may be stuck in his childhood imagination, but growing up is a good thing so long as one remembers how to have fun. After all, “everyone knows that it’s good to grow up, mostly, good to be responsible, good to know what’s true and what isn’t,” but it’s also good to retain a connection to our younger selves, so “that people might be able to fly” (Freeman).

Oracle 2019-2020 52 Conclusion: For many literary critics, Peter Pan is a story with a dark twist. Basing their interpretation on his relationship with the Llewelyn Davies boys, Barrie’s novel The Little White Bird, and Freud’s theories, these critics claim Peter Pan is a fictional representation of Barrie’s suppressed sexuality. But in knowing Barrie’s full history and the childhood trauma he experienced, the psychology behind fairy tales, and the use of fairy tales in psychotherapy methods such as psychodrama, I maintain my argument that Barrie’s Peter Pan is not a tale depicting Barrie’s suppressed sexuality. It is Barrie’s own psychodramatic creation used to help him heal from the death of his brother and to overcome his anxieties about aging.

Oracle 2019-2020 53 Works Cited Barrie, James M., and Maria Tartar. The Annotated “Peter Pan.” W.W. Norton & Company. 11 October 2011. Boulton, Nell. “Peter Pan and the Flight from Reality: A Tale of Narcissism, Nostalgia and Narrative Trespass.” Psychodynamic Practice, vol. 12, no. 3, Aug. 2006, pp. 307–17. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/14753630600765709. Coats, Karen. Looking Glasses and Neverlands: Lacan, Desire, and Subjectivity in Children's Literature. University of Iowa Press, 2004. Fleer, Marilyn, and Marie Hammer. “Emotions in Imaginative Situations: The Valued Place of Fairytales for Supporting Emotion Regulation.” Mind, Culture, and Activity, vol. 20, no. 3, July 2013, pp. 240–59. Taylor and Francis+NEJM, doi:10.1080/10749039.2013.781652. Freeman, Matt. “A Century and Counting for Peter Pan.” Reading Today, vol. 22, no. 2, Nov. 2004, pp. 38–38. EBSCOhost, https://seu.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com /login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=14673307&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Hollindale, Peter. “A Hundred Years of Peter Pan.” Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 36, no. 3, Sept. 2005, pp. 197–215. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s10583-005-5970-3. Tatar, Maria. “Introduction to J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.” The Annotated Peter Pan. W.W. Norton and Co. 8 December, 2014. Tatar, Maria. “J.M. Barrie in Neverland: A Biographical Essay” The Annotated Peter Pan. W.W. Norton and Co. 8 December, 2014. Walters, Rebecca. “Fairytales, Psychodrama and Action Methods: Ways of Helping Traumatized Children to Heal.” Zeitschrift Für Psychodrama Und Soziometrie, vol. 16, no. 1, Apr. 2017, pp. 53–60. Springer Link, doi:10.1007/s11620-017-0381-1.

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