The original tale of the legendary boy who never grew up. Like many classics, so many interpretations of Barrie’s novel have been made that I wanted to go back to the source. I’m glad I did. Barrie makes the reader feel the levity that is part and parcel to Pan’s foundation. He is witty and weird and it became instantly apparent why this became an instant cultural fixture.
Above all, this is a much needed reminder to all of us adults to save some part of us that never, truly grows old.
Notable Excerpts
Children have the strangest adventures without being troubled by them.
If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon. This is the nearest you ever get to it on the mainland, just one heavenly moment; if there could be two moments you might see the surf and hear the mermaids singing.
Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but he will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness; no one except Peter.
‘To die will be an awfully big adventure.’
‘Proud and insolent youth,’ said Hook, ‘prepare to meet thy doom.’ ‘Dark and sinister man,’ Peter answered, ‘have at thee.’
‘Pan, who and what art thou?’ he cried huskily. ‘I’m youth, I’m joy,’ Peter answered at a venture, ‘I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.’
‘I don’t want to go to school and learn solemn things,’ he told her passionately. ‘I don’t want to be a man.’
‘Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the way.’
‘Why do they forget the way?’
‘Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless. It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly.’