For Tuesday: Wells, The Time Machine, Chapters 1-6 (at least)

NOTE: This is a short work, so feel free to read as much as you like for Tuesday's class. But we can probably only tackle the first 6 chapters in class, so that's a comfortable place to get to for Tuesday's class. 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Though this is a science fiction story about time travel, it also shares a lot in common with our first two works: Frankenstein and Sherlock Holmes. Where might we see the Victor or Holmes influence in these opening chapters? Also, what aspects of the storytelling might Wells have borrowed from his famous predecessors?

Q2: In the future, the Time Traveller is constantly forming theories as to what created such a strange, forbidding world. As he notes, “For the first time I began to realize an odd consequence of the social effort in which we are at present engaged. And yet, come to think, it is a logical consequence enough…Things that are now mere dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and carried forward. And the harvest was what I saw!” (31). What “social effort” does he seem to be describing here, and is he excited or terrified by the “harvest” he sees before him? What might he fear the future has become?

Q3: Strangely, the book opens with a conversation between several gentlemen, none of whom have names other than "The Time Traveler," "The Medical Man," and "The Provincial Mayor?" Why does Wells make them so safely anonymous, and what are they talking about that might have seemed exciting--and disturbing--in 1895?  

Q4: Even though the Time Traveler is catapulted thousands of years into the future, he often uses quite primitive metaphors and imagery to describe his emotions and surroundings: "I felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind--a strange animal in an unknown world"...”I might seem some old-world savage animal”…"The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me,” etc. Why does the Time Traveller see everything in this ‘law of the jungle’ light?

For Tuesday: Finish Peter Pan! Last questions below...

Sargent, Garden Study of the Vickers Children (1884) 

Answer two of the following:

Q1: In author and fairy-tale expert Jack Zipes' Introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Peter Pan and Wendy, he writes that the work is "an anti-fairy tale that seeks to explicate mystery, whereas fairy tales simply display magic and mystery. It is a self-help book written by a doctoring author for those adults who have lost touch with their imagination and need to regain it through a re-introduction to children's imaginative play" (xxiii). Do you agree with this? Is it meant for the "Wendys" of the world who have grown up and forgotten Peter Pan and their long-lost days of flying? Though kids can like this book, can only adults love it?

Q2: Why does Barrie try to humanize Cook and make him (almost) less of a villain in the late chapters of the book? Why is he so obsessed with "good form," and why does this make his life--and his death--somewhat tragic, at least in Barrie's eyes?

Q3: What do you make of the Narrator's strange attitude/tone toward the children and their parents in the final chapters, especially "The Return Home"? How seriously are we supposed to take comments such as, "If she was too fond of her rubbishy children she couldn't help it" (137). Are these in-jokes with the other parents in the audience? Or is this book actually written by Peter Pan himself??

Q4: The Chapter, :When Wendy Grew Up" is a curiously late addition to the Peter Pan myth. It was actually an epilogue which he added to the play in 1908 (the play came out in 1904), and it reflected his later thoughts about the characters and the work itself. He finally withdrew the epilogue as being too dark, but decided to apapt it for his 1910 novel, Peter Pan and Wendy. Why do you think he ends the book here, rather than with the happy reunion of the Darling family? And what do you make of the morbid, and somewhat cynical remarks such as, "Mrs. Darling was now dead and forgotten" (147)? 

For Thursday: Barrie, Peter Pan, Chapters 7-13

Try to read through Chapter 13, "Do You Believe in Fairies?" for Thursday's class. And don't forget to think about your Art & Literature paper if you need to do it. The Sargent painting above, of The Pallieron Children, looks a lot like Peter and Wendy, don't you think?? The boy, especially, has that calculating, impressed-with-himself look of Peter Pan. 

Answer two of the following:

Q1: What do you find interesting in how Wendy, her brothers, and the Lost Boys play at being mothers and children? How might this be Barrie's own parody of the conventions of the Victorian family? Is it meant to satirize the children's unquestioning belief in these values, or the very values themselves? 

Q2: Throughout the book, Barrie calls children "heartless," which might mean something different to him than to us. He says also that "Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive" (Chapter 11, 97). Why does he think children are heartless, and is he praising or criticizing this quality in children? 

Q3: Why do you think all the women in the book--Wendy, Tiger Lily, Tinkerbell, the Mermaids--all fall in love with Peter Pan? What quality seems to attract them? Or is it merely that he's the only 'man' in the story, so they love him by default? (consider that he's the father to Wendy's mother, even though he's a child just like the other Lost Boys). 

Q4: What other dated or objectionable passages do you find in the novel? Do you think these are simply the biases/beliefs of the period, or is there something more sinister or inexcusable in these passages? Another way to think about this: what part would you want to skip or leave out for your own children? 

For Tuesday (after break): Barrie, Peter Pan, Chapters 1-6

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose by John Singer Sargent 

No questions over Break, but do start reading Peter Pan and get to at least around Chapter 6 for next-next Tuesday's class. We'll do an easy in-class writing over some aspect of the book. Here are some small ideas to look out for:

* How does Barrie continue to long tradition of satirizing British society and its domestic rituals in this book? 

* Like Alice, how does he also take a few digs at the traditional manner of educating the young in this book? 

* How does Peter and Tinker Bell in particular differ from the many popular culture accounts of their character? Why might this be surprising to us?

* What passages or characters have not dated as well as others? Would any parts be seen as racist or unacceptable today? 

* Why is there more than a little touch of Alice in Wonderland in this book? How do we know that that Barrie definitely had Carroll's book in the back of his mind?

* Though a relativley light-hearted book, how could this book suggest a nightmare from an adult's perspective? In other words, how easily could this story become a horror novel (or movie)?

* Why might the Darling parents not conform to many of our 21st century notions of good parenting today? Do you think Barrie means to censure them, or is he good-naturedly mocking them? Remember, too, that the Darlings are based on the actual parents of the children he befriended (a group of boys), so they would have recognized their portrait in the novel.

* Wendy, alone, was Barrie's creation, though she is based on the daughter of another friend who called him "my friendly," (but couldn't pronounce her F's, which sounded more like W's). There was no "Wendy" in English literature before this. Why do you think he introduced an older daughter into this world of boys and boyish pranks?