The Tragedy of Peter Pan

Peter Pan is a delightful adventure that conjures pirates, fairy dust, mermaids, and being up long past bedtime. Peter Pan himself is the magical boy of eternal youth that can steal you away from your window and carry you to Neverland. But, as the book points out, there is no such thing as eternal youth--everybody must grow up. Except one.

Peter Pan is famous for insisting that he will NEVER grow up. Consequently, he will also never mature. He will retain his youth along with his juvenile worldview and emotions. While it is wondrous to see the world through the eyes of a child, a child's comprehension is very limited, and their entire focus is on their own well-being. Peter Pan is extremely limited in this respect, and his millennia as a never-aging child give him a rather sinister quality.

For example, after he first meets Wendy and turns to go, she entreats him to stay by saying she could tell him lots of stories. The narrator tells us that Peter "came back, and there was a greedy look in his eyes now which ought to have alarmed her but did not" (Barrie 26). He wants Wendy (or rather, her stories) for himself, and he intends to take her. While persuading her to come, Peter "had become frightfully cunning. 'Wendy,' he said, 'how we should all respect you'" (27).

He does convince the Darlings to accompany him to Neverland. It's a long way, and they get tired. Sometimes, they fall asleep and drop out of the sky, and Peter catches them, but "he always waited till the last moment, and you felt it was his cleverness that interested him and not the saving of human life" (32). 

While the Narrator is describing Neverland, he notes that "the boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they got killed and so on; and when they seemed to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out" (39). That is one of the most disturbing things the Narrator has told us yet--Peter kills off the Lost Boys if they get too old. Another rather violent suggestion the Narrator makes is in the discussion of each boy's unique, perfectly-fitted entrance to their tree-house: "if you are bumpy in awkward places or the only available tree is an odd shape, Peter does some things to you, and after that you fit" (56).

Peter's undiminished hatred toward adults is also evident throughout the story, from his ban on all talk of mothers to the moment when he deliberately takes as many quick, short breaths as he can because he heard a saying that doing so kills grownups (65). It is indicated that Peter was abandoned as a baby and afterward came to Neverland; his resentment and abhorrence for adults is obviously a result of this incident. It is ultimately this that makes him tragic: he can never grow up, and so he hates those who can and will never understand the things they understand or have the love they have.

All of these examples show that eternal youth, especially when that means perpetual childhood, is actually a horrible fate. Peter is only capable of a child's selfish love and seems to have lost his appreciation for the sanctity of human life. He has become extremely manipulative and cunning. He plays with others' lives casually and eliminates them when he is bored. Additionally, because of his immature state, he is incapable of the relational love between a man and a woman: "'You are so [strange],' he said, frankly puzzled, 'And Tiger Lily is just the same. There is something she wants to be to me, but she says it is not my mother'" (81). 

Perhaps the most tragic moment of all occurs when Peter is looking back through the window at the happily reunited Darling family and the newly adopted Lost Boys, and knowing that "he was looking through the window at the one joy from which he must be forever barred" (126). All Peter can do is forget and find new children, all over again.

Peter's whole personality is summed up perfectly by the Narrator's description of every child: "Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive, and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be embraced instead of smacked" (85). Peter can never grow up to be the one doing the embracing. And that is tragic.