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A review by millennial_dandy
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.25
'Peter Pan' is the perfect specimen for a 'what went wrong?' autopsy.
Because, really, from stem to stern very little went right in this story.
Yes, this is a children's classic, and so there is a lowered quality expectation (though there arguably shouldn't be), but nevertheless, even with a relatively low bar, 'Peter Pan' cannot fly over it -- fairy dust or no.
The first thing that can be said of 'Peter Pan' is that it reads like a fractured series of scenes only tied together by the fact that the characters remain the same. When discussing the story with another reader, they said it feels a bit like a bedtime story being developed in real time by parents whose kids aren't as sleepy as they should be and so keep asking 'and then what?'
The framing device of the 'real world' is probably the most fleshed-out, though that doesn't mean it's pleasant to exist there. The parents are barely sketches of the idea of a mom and dad and the three kids: Wendy, John, and Michael are barely sketches of children, but it's within this vague semblance of a vaguely established middle-class family that there's actual cohesion of plot on both sides.
Neverland itself, while iconic conceptually, is also dished out in very vague terms, and even the narration seems uninterested in any world-building because it rushes through the broad strokes of the landscape of the place and lingers instead on describing each of the Lost Boys and pirates by name and with some description, but all of it keeps the reader at arm's length as though the narrator is going through the entire story with a weary, annoyed 'if I must' attitude.
And that attitude leaks into every single scene so that every sentence reads like it was an imposition to have to write. This creates possibly the most bizarre atmosphere of anything I've ever read. I cannot stress enough how much it feels as though it were written against the author's will.
It brings to mind a presentation given by a student who huffily speeds through their required five minutes before petulantly turning to the teacher and saying "that's it. Can I sit down now?"
It's so weird.
And because it reads like it was written by someone forced to put it together at gun-point, the pacing is all over the place. We spend a million years with the kids flying to Neverland, we get a laundry list of adventures that they apparently had there so that we can slow down to a crawl and witness a mind-numbing scene of the kids having make-believe food and Wendy putting them to bed and staying up to darn their socks.
The 'climax' of the kids getting kidnapped by Captain Hook and the pirates and then rescued again by Peter Pan gets resolved in the blink of an eye. Tinker Bell getting poisoned by Captain Hook and then rescued by Peter who gets kids the world over to heal her by praying 'I <i>do</i> believe in fairies' happens in less than a full paragraph, and the bulk of the falling action (which takes way longer) involves an inane back and forth between Wendy and the Lost Boys about coming back to the real world to live with her, her brothers, and their parents.
There's a long section at the end after it's all over about the mundane and drab lives all of the kids grow up to live, and about how Peter Pan comes in and out of Wendy's life from when she's a child to when she's an older woman just to steal away first her daughter and then granddaughter so that the girl of each generation can be his 'mother' in Neverland for a while before he brings her back.
This leads to the thing that genuinely took me aback about this story: it's so meanspirited at every opportunity. No one is likeable; not Peter Pan, not the Lost Boys, not Tinker Bell, not any of the pirates, not the kids' father, not even really 'Nana' their nursemaid dog. And the mother and Wendy are only ever allowed to feel a sort of quiet exasperation at the weaponized helplessness of the men and boys around them who are incapable of tying their own ties or taking their medicine at bedtime or feeding themselves without a woman to do it all for them even as they try to buck being 'told what to do.'
I also did not know going into this that the 'plot' is wrapped around an analysis of mothers that would have made Freud clap his hands in delight. The concept of a mother in 'Peter Pan' is: 'woman/girl who men rely on and need and want, but resent and dehumanize and are generally beastly to because their (unnecessary) reliance on said woman/girl makes them feel impotent.'
And none of this even <i>touches</i> on the way the indigenous characters are portrayed (Tiger Lily, a little girl, being described as 'lusty' pretty well gives you the idea). It only manages to be less awful than the Disney cartoon because none of them speak and there are no visual depictions, though I daresay the cartoon was not far off in what would have been in the minds of the white audience this was intended for. (If it was intended for anyone at all, considering that even Barrie didn't seem to want to write it)
All in all, this is a great example of: you had one good idea (Neverland) and you did less than nothing with it and in fact ran in the opposite direction and took a good idea and presented it in the ugliest and yet somehow also most boring way possible. Every moment within the text that could be considered an interesting thread is only so because as the reader I did way more work than Barrie did.
If this had been written and framed as a cautionary tale about the danger of relying too heavily on escapism to avoid the angst that comes with growing up, it would have been better. If this had been written as a whimsical tale of children who had magical adventures in a parallel fantasy world it would have been better. But Barrie did neither of those things, and so, in conclusion, all I can say is: thanks for giving us Neverland so that everyone who came after you had it as a sandbox within which to create better stories.
Because, really, from stem to stern very little went right in this story.
Yes, this is a children's classic, and so there is a lowered quality expectation (though there arguably shouldn't be), but nevertheless, even with a relatively low bar, 'Peter Pan' cannot fly over it -- fairy dust or no.
The first thing that can be said of 'Peter Pan' is that it reads like a fractured series of scenes only tied together by the fact that the characters remain the same. When discussing the story with another reader, they said it feels a bit like a bedtime story being developed in real time by parents whose kids aren't as sleepy as they should be and so keep asking 'and then what?'
The framing device of the 'real world' is probably the most fleshed-out, though that doesn't mean it's pleasant to exist there. The parents are barely sketches of the idea of a mom and dad and the three kids: Wendy, John, and Michael are barely sketches of children, but it's within this vague semblance of a vaguely established middle-class family that there's actual cohesion of plot on both sides.
Neverland itself, while iconic conceptually, is also dished out in very vague terms, and even the narration seems uninterested in any world-building because it rushes through the broad strokes of the landscape of the place and lingers instead on describing each of the Lost Boys and pirates by name and with some description, but all of it keeps the reader at arm's length as though the narrator is going through the entire story with a weary, annoyed 'if I must' attitude.
And that attitude leaks into every single scene so that every sentence reads like it was an imposition to have to write. This creates possibly the most bizarre atmosphere of anything I've ever read. I cannot stress enough how much it feels as though it were written against the author's will.
It brings to mind a presentation given by a student who huffily speeds through their required five minutes before petulantly turning to the teacher and saying "that's it. Can I sit down now?"
It's so weird.
And because it reads like it was written by someone forced to put it together at gun-point, the pacing is all over the place. We spend a million years with the kids flying to Neverland, we get a laundry list of adventures that they apparently had there so that we can slow down to a crawl and witness a mind-numbing scene of the kids having make-believe food and Wendy putting them to bed and staying up to darn their socks.
The 'climax' of the kids getting kidnapped by Captain Hook and the pirates and then rescued again by Peter Pan gets resolved in the blink of an eye. Tinker Bell getting poisoned by Captain Hook and then rescued by Peter who gets kids the world over to heal her by praying 'I <i>do</i> believe in fairies' happens in less than a full paragraph, and the bulk of the falling action (which takes way longer) involves an inane back and forth between Wendy and the Lost Boys about coming back to the real world to live with her, her brothers, and their parents.
There's a long section at the end after it's all over about the mundane and drab lives all of the kids grow up to live, and about how Peter Pan comes in and out of Wendy's life from when she's a child to when she's an older woman just to steal away first her daughter and then granddaughter so that the girl of each generation can be his 'mother' in Neverland for a while before he brings her back.
This leads to the thing that genuinely took me aback about this story: it's so meanspirited at every opportunity. No one is likeable; not Peter Pan, not the Lost Boys, not Tinker Bell, not any of the pirates, not the kids' father, not even really 'Nana' their nursemaid dog. And the mother and Wendy are only ever allowed to feel a sort of quiet exasperation at the weaponized helplessness of the men and boys around them who are incapable of tying their own ties or taking their medicine at bedtime or feeding themselves without a woman to do it all for them even as they try to buck being 'told what to do.'
I also did not know going into this that the 'plot' is wrapped around an analysis of mothers that would have made Freud clap his hands in delight. The concept of a mother in 'Peter Pan' is: 'woman/girl who men rely on and need and want, but resent and dehumanize and are generally beastly to because their (unnecessary) reliance on said woman/girl makes them feel impotent.'
And none of this even <i>touches</i> on the way the indigenous characters are portrayed (Tiger Lily, a little girl, being described as 'lusty' pretty well gives you the idea). It only manages to be less awful than the Disney cartoon because none of them speak and there are no visual depictions, though I daresay the cartoon was not far off in what would have been in the minds of the white audience this was intended for. (If it was intended for anyone at all, considering that even Barrie didn't seem to want to write it)
All in all, this is a great example of: you had one good idea (Neverland) and you did less than nothing with it and in fact ran in the opposite direction and took a good idea and presented it in the ugliest and yet somehow also most boring way possible. Every moment within the text that could be considered an interesting thread is only so because as the reader I did way more work than Barrie did.
If this had been written and framed as a cautionary tale about the danger of relying too heavily on escapism to avoid the angst that comes with growing up, it would have been better. If this had been written as a whimsical tale of children who had magical adventures in a parallel fantasy world it would have been better. But Barrie did neither of those things, and so, in conclusion, all I can say is: thanks for giving us Neverland so that everyone who came after you had it as a sandbox within which to create better stories.