#43: “Peter Pan” by J.M. Barrie
I decided to read this book because I’m in the midst of writing a play adaptation of the Peter Pan story. Up until this point, I had been writing based on the memory of the story. My repeated exposure to the Mary Martin musical and the Disney cartoon as a child had impressed the boy-meets-girl-boy-defeats-pirates story into my subconscious. The idea of Never Growing Up carried into my adulthood when “Finding Neverland” was released, along with every other retelling of the story. I wanted to go back to the origin and see what I had been missing.
Did you know that Peter Pan is mostly grown boy who still has all his “first teeth”? That’s all I have to say about that.
In this version of the story, Captain Hook is more of a fool than a villain; a lot of his plot focuses around a poisoned cake that he plants around the Lost Boys’ hideout only to be foiled by Wendy’s motherly “no sweets for you” mentality.
When all is said and done, there are a lot of nuances that I would have probably enjoyed more when I was younger. At this point in my life, I’m more interested in the darker side of the story, elements of which are buried deep in Barrie’s prose adaptation of his play.
