The Boy Who Didn't Want to Grow Up

[stourhead]

I have read conflicting thoughts on this.  Do you think Barrie himself didn't want to grow up, or as a writer was it simply a fictional theme that appealed to him?

[andrew]

I sense an element of "if you can't join them, beat them" = Barrie was the boy who couldn't grow up (in the physical sense), so he made a virtue out of it by creating the boy who wouldn't grow up.

[AlexanderDavid]

I agree, but I think it was also sour grapes, to some degree.  Peter Pan doesn't just not want to grow up, he can't either.  "Only his greatest pretend."  It's a many-sided issue.  He's not just some ideal, he's also a tragedy at the same time.

[TheWendybird]

I think everyone sometimes doubts who they are. I think Peter WOULDN'T grow up...but at the same time there can always be the inevitable wondering "what would happen if..?"

For instance..most of you know..i won't....I was always conflicted over the years as to the idea of if i would ever want to get pregnant for instance. Though I think children are a blessing OBVIOUSLY.....and it's right for some in the end I figured out...ultimately..if I ever had children I'd want to adopt them....thats if ...not someday...as I'm still unsure as to whether I even want to take on that responsibility. I kinda wonder if Peter is a similar thing..."what would it be like if?" or to quote the end of Hook when adult Peter says to live...to live would be an awefully big adventure (i'm so so sorry for quoting this as I know many hate this movie ...i hate the concept but i enjoyed parts of it and it makes me laugh even if it's not a great imagining of the story by any stretch).

I think when it comes down to it..you can't pretend that you don't ever wonder what things would have been like had you taken another path in life. What if we all chose to do what our parents wanted us to do instead of what we were interested in for instance?

I think maybe Peter WOULDN'T grow up..and didn't want to..but at the same time...he can't put his head in the sand and pretend he isn't intrigued and curious.

I won't grow up...but at the same time..I am still curious what life would ultimately be like if i totally let go of childhood and just lived as a "normal" grown up. I could be wrong but it's just a view I thought I'd throw out there.

[stourhead]

But do you think Barrie believed he was or desperately wanted to be Peter Pan - as some biographers argue, or was Peter Pan just one of his creations, no more meaningful to him psychologically than any other character he created.

[TheWendybird]

Barrie seemed almost to feel as if he was Peter and Hook...in different ways. He did say Peter was more of the boys being rubbed together to create a spark....but the other thing if this aspect of lost boys movie is true..he seemed to believe in peter as a seperate entity from himself and the boys....very interesting.

[andrew]

But do you think Barrie believed he was or desperately wanted to be Peter Pan - as some biographers argue, or was Peter Pan just one of his creations, no more meaningful to him psychologically than any other character he created.

I think these choices are too polarized. I don't think he believed he was Peter Pan, although he certainly had "the power to be a boy again at will" if he so chose when in the company of children he liked (I think quite a few of us can do that!); if he "desperately" wanted to be anything, I'd say it was to be a father. But clearly Peter meant far more to him "psychologically than any other character he created" - he was his "dream child", "the only boy who could beat him" ...

[Moondust]

I feel that Barrie's concern was not as simple as "not wanting to grow up". What I get the sense of, when I read his plays, is a distinct tension between a constricting and solid reality, and a fanciful escapism to a world of ignorance to all reality. It is not so much maturity as the mundane, and the social pressures of contemporary life, which is so unfavourable. Peter Pan represents an aversion to change, an avoidance of pressures to conform to hideously monotonous standards, and an escape from judgement. I feel as though JMB is a man who sees so little to truly connect with and be thrilled by in reality, that creating the idea of a blissful ignorance (to resort to cliche, I apologise) in which flight, freedom, the whole lot are available and one would not be frowned at for embracing them.

[AlexanderDavid]

But at the same time it seems to me that Barrie recognized that that kind of life has no SUBSTANCE.  A better ideal is some combination of the two.  Taking the unlimited potential of childhood and channeling it into progression as one grows up.  Therein, I think, lies greatness.

[Moondust]

Absolutely. Barrie explored the potential of that kind of existence, but ultimately realised that it is transient and cannot be sustained realisitically; that's why Wendy  returns to the nursery and grows up, why Crichton and the family return from the island and re-instate the social order as if their fantastic adventure never happened, and why Mary Rose, the one character whose return from the, let's say "Neverland experience" is neither voluntary nor comprehensible, comes to represent what happens when reality does entirely elude a person; she has missed so much that life can never resume properly. Admittedly, she was not a child when she was taken by the island, she was a young adult married with a child; but she is incredibly childlike, still wanting to play, and still naieve. Barrie takes a character who truly didn't grow up, and instead of allowing her to blend in to the society she loses in connection with this (the island sensing her childlike nature and engulfing her, which I believe is almost certainly in connection to the god Pan) he instead makes her ending tragic, whereby she is first doomed to not fit back in with the society she lost, and then becomes a ghost.

Apologies if I made any plot errors there; it's been a while since I looked at his plays in detail, but this basic argument was something I submitted as an essay in summer term for my post-1900 paper, and fuelled a fantastic tutorial discussion

[tink08]

J. M. Barrie had psychogenic dwarfism and could not grow up --physically and emotionally stunted

[andrew]

Says who?  Barrie had "a deep Caledonian growl" as an adult, shaved daily, and was not unduly small - 5 feet 3 1/2 inches according to his passport. Why does this categorize him as a psychogenic dwarf?

[tcarroll]

No matter what physical size Mr. Barrie was, he had the heart of a giant.

[Robert Greenham]

Hear hear!

[TheWendybird]

Amen