E. M Forster's "The Story of a Panic"

[Moondust]

Has anybody else read this short story? I came across it while preparing for exams, quite by chance, and it deeply affected me. Forster utilises scarily similar ideas and themes to Barrie in their mutual exploration of "Pan", the pagan God, as a symbol of regression to a childlike, and not entirely favourable, state of being.

Some startling similarities include a reference to panpipes, Eustace the boy-protagonist being the only one to be able to see "Pan" because he is in a group of adults who can no longer feel him in the same way and insist "The great God Pan is dead", a reference to the boy-protagonist (now reduced to a lost, childlike state) whooping and doing impressions of first a dog, then a Red Indian...
That night, the narrator recalls how, awakening with an indescribable fear, he sees from his window a white mass, which takes many forms (including a bird) dancing down the path. After ranting, trance-like, about complex ideas of nature, history and beauty, Eustace concludes "And then there are men, but I can't make them out so well."

Then, there is a reference to another boy hanging under the sill outside of someone's window listening, and later both boys escape by jumping out of the window (then, I believe one dies after betraying the other to the adults, while Eustace gallops off whooping towards the distant coastline, totally free)

These are only vague details, and the story as a whole shares themes, but not a great deal of content as such, with Peter Pan. I just became fascinated by the shared ideas between Forster and Barrie of Pan, the pagan god, affecting people in such a way as to reduce them to childlike states, fully embracing and understanding the natural world, but completely disassociated from social reality.

It's an interesting story, and I recommend reading it. It's especially interesting, considering it was written roughly a year or so before Peter Pan first appears.

Of course, Pan as an entity is a recurring theme in the late Victorian/Edwardian eras, but this story in particular struck a chord with me as a sort of (even) dark(er) exploration of the child-of-nature figure.

Just thought I'd share that 

[TheWendybird]

Hey there! I'm actually an ecclectic pagan and very very child like....before I knew about this I had picked Pan as one of my deities. I actually had a dream where at first he appeared to me as a wooden bee before manifesting into his actual form....weeks...seriously...weeks...after having that dream i found out he's a god of bee keeping. Creepy or what? LOL now I'm finding out Pan has a connection to being child like. Very interesting indeed. I am always looking for more info on my father god (I also follow Selene and Iris).