Please read the play first.
Read Chapters 1-3 and the final chapter, 17 of the 1911 novelization created by J.M.Barrie.
You can also download the book at Project Gutenberg.
If you choose you can listen to the novelization (first part only)
You may also be interested in looking at the optional “Peter Pan in Kensington Garden”, the story in which Peter first appeared. The edition linked here includes illustrations from Arthur Rackham, who we encountered earlier this semester, and offers a very different perspective of the character.
As you read these texts, choose a quote that you have a strong response to and post it below. (All)
One thought on “Peter Pan – The Texts”
In the book Peter and Wendy, written by J.M. Berrie, on page seven the book mentions,
“Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children’s minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage their mind and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day,”
I found this quote to be quite interesting since the animated film does not provide a clip of this moment between the mother and children. This may out of the ordinary, but this particular moment in a sense reminds me of them living in a world that is enhanced by technology which in this case allows for Mrs. Wendy to easily gain access to her children’s mind because she is their gaurdian. Reading on, in the book, she explains how theres a map of a child that she is capable of seeing and is quite interesting, just like a doctor having a map of other body parts of any human. Seeing the outline of this story being told from Mrs. Wendy’s perspective and not Wendy’s is interesting to read. We are able to get a clear guidline of why certain events that were once not explained in the movie, occur in the book.