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| 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)?
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