Peter Pan

Peter gets on the ship and signals to the boys not to sound the alarm. He takes out a couple of pirates, and then hides in the ship’s cabin. Hook begins sending members of the crew into the cabin, but none reemerge. The pirates argue about what might be killing the others. One suggests that Wendy is causing them bad luck. Peter emerges to save Wendy from being tossed into the water. Hook is shocked: “In that frightful moment I think his fierce heart broke” (133).

During his fight with Hook, Peter gains the upper hand, and Hook’s sword falls from his hand. However, Peter does not strike, but lets Hook pick the sword up instead. Hook asks Pan who he is. “‘I’m youth, I’m joy,’ Peter answered…‘I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg’….This, of course, was nonsense; but it was proof to the unhappy Hook that Peter did not know in the least who or what he was, which is the very pinnacle of good form” (135).

The narrator considers Hook’s form. “Misguided man though he was, we may be glad, without sympathising with him, that in the end he was true to the traditions of his race….James Hook, thou not wholly unheroic figure, farewell” (137). Peter and Hook continue to fight. At one point, when Peter should stab, he kicks Hook instead. Hook sees this as bad form, and dies content.

That night, Peter dreams and cries. Wendy holds him tight.

Peter takes on the role of Captain and “treated them as dogs, and they dared not express their wishes to him even in a round robin” (140). The narrator turns his attention to Mr. and Mrs. Darling. The narrator suggests that Mrs. Darling might say he should watch the children instead. “So long as mothers are like this their children will take advantage of them; and they may lay to that” (140).

The children fly together toward the house. Peter gets there first and tells Tinker Bell to bar the window. When she does so, Peter sees Wendy’s mother with tears in her eyes, and he relents, asking Tinker Bell to unbar the window. “Thus Wendy and John and Michael found the window open for them after all, which of course was more than they deserved” (145). Mr. Darling, who was distraught after the children left, had been sleeping in Nana’s kennel. The children take note of this, wondering if they hadn’t remembered their life as much as they thought they had. “A chill fell upon them; and serve them right” (146).

Peter watches them through the window. “He had ecstasies innumerable that other children can never know; but he was looking through the window at the one joy from which he must be forever barred” (147).

The lost boys look to Mrs. Darling for approval, hoping they can stay. “They ought to have looked at Mr. Darling also, but they forgot about him” (148). When they finally look to him for approval, he says they can live in the drawing room. Peter enters, and Wendy asks if there is anything he would like to ask her, expecting him to propose. He doesn’t. Wendy’s mother asks him if he would like to stay, but after she explains that he would have to grow up, he says, “I don’t want to go to school and learn solemn things….I don’t want to be a man. O Wendy’s mother, if I was to wake up and feel there was a beard!” (150).

Wendy asks if she can stay with Peter, saying, “he does so need a mother.” Mrs. Darling responds, “So do you, my love” (151). They agree that Wendy will go to the Neverland every spring to help Peter with spring cleaning. The children get used to living away from the Neverland and “the power to fly gradually left them” (151). When Peter comes for Wendy the first time, she talks about their old adventures. However, he does not remember Captain Hook. “I forget them after I kill them” (152), he tells her. He forgets to come for her the next spring, but when he returns the following spring, he doesn’t recall forgetting the previous year. “All the boys were grown up and done for by this time; so it is scarcely worthwhile saying anything about them” (152-3).

Wendy grows up and has a daughter named Jane. Wendy tells her daughter the stories of the Neverland. One night, Jane asks why people forget to fly and Wendy responds, “Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless. It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly” (154). One night, Peter arrives, and talks to Wendy without noticing that she is older. He asks if she is ready to go back to the Neverland, and she tells him she can’t fly anymore. He doesn’t understand, so she tells him she will turn the light on. “For almost the only time in his life that I know of, Peter was afraid….Then she turned up the light, and Peter saw. He gave a cry of pain; and when the tall beautiful creature stooped to lift him in her arms he drew back sharply” (156).

Peter is upset because Wendy promised she would stay young for him. However, he convinces Jane to go with him to the Neverland. “Of course in the end Wendy let them fly away together” (158). Jane grows up and has a daughter of her own, Margaret. “When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter’s mother in turn; and so it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless” (159).