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Second star to the right
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AND THEN STRAIGHT ON ‘TIL MORNING.
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Peter Pan
in today’s society
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A STORY ABOUT THIMBLES AND KISSES.
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TABLE OF CONTENT 1/20 WOULD YOU LIKE AN ADVENTURE NOW OR WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE TEA FIRST 21/34 ALL CHILDREN, EXCEPT ONE, GROW UP 35/50 TO DIE WOULD BE AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE 51/56 ONE GIRL IS OF MORE USE THAN 20 BOYS
63/68 OH THE CLEVERNESS OF ME 69/74 PETER... I SHOULD LIKE TO GIVE YOU A KISS 75/80 GIRLS ARE MUCH TOO CLEVER TO FALL OUT OF THEIR PRAMS 81/86 NEVER SAY GOODBYE 87/93 THE WORLD IS MADE OF FAITH, TRUST AND PIXIE DUST 94/98 TO LIVE WOULD BE AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE
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63/68 MR DARLING HAD A PASSION FOR BEING EXACTLY LIKE THE NEIGHBOURS
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“Would you like to have an adventure now or would you like to have tea first?�
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17/20 INTRODUCTION
Peter Pan / 18 /
noun 1/
the hero of Sir James M. Barrie’s play about a boy who never grew up.
2/
( italics ) the play itself (1904).
“Would you like an adventure now or would you like to have tea first?”
As a child I was always enchanted by the story of Peter Pan and I don’t think I ever lost this magic feeling when it comes to this magical story. I believe that Peter Pan is in today’s society more than ever before. The story is so popular because it still has so many roots in our culture, the way we do things, the way we think, the way we simply are. Many things have changed
in the last 100 years, the story of Peter Pan however still relates to each and every one of us. Everyone has a character to whom they feel connected, in whom they recognize themselves. There are so many layers to this tale that there is no way you can describe them all. However I will try in this book to unravel some of the layers hidden under the story. Via quotes from the original tale written by J.M. Barrie I will describe some of the psychological, sociological and philosophical deeper meanings of this story. So should we go on this adventure now or would you like to have tea first? Which in case the adventure is reading this book, is perfectly doable at the same time.
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Peter Pan, a story told many times before. Played many times before. Filmed many times before and written about many times before. Why is this story, written over a hundred years ago, still so important? Why do we tell it, watch it and go see the play? Is it the special island? Is it the adventure? Is it the magic? Is it the pirates? Is it the fairies? Is it Peter Pan himself?
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“All children, except one, grow up.”
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2/ ALL CHILDREN, EXCEPT ONE, GROW UP
29/30 LIFE LONG LEARNING 31/33 STAY YOUNG, STAY FOOLISH
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26/28 FOREVER YOUNG
Forever Young / 26 /
1/ Forever adjective Lasting or permanent
1/ Young adjective 1/
Having lived or existed for only a short time
2/
(the Younger) Used to denote the younger of two people of the same name
Growing up. It used to be important. It used to be the main story of childhood. Childhood is meant to teach you the ways of life of grown ups, to become, eventually, a grown up yourself. From early on you are surrounded by adults: your parents, your grandparents, your teacher, and so on. They are the people that make you who you are to become. They are the examples of what is expected in life. They are the earliest role models. This saying the apple does not fall far from the tree is probably the best application of this. It is true that children learn most from the people, the adults, who surround them. All your beliefs, your acts, and the way you think come from what you
There is however also a large part of society who refuses to grow up. A lot of people nowadays don’t want to grow old, they want to stay forever young. Eternal youth seems to be so attractive these days that people will do everything to maintain their
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see and imitate from others. Growing up needs to happen fast. Nowadays children have to act as adults from a very early age. They learn manners, have to go to school, etc. These things have become way more important than childhood habits like playing, making errors, being impolite, being selfish. Children are expected to behave like adults way before they are actually grown ups. This makes them feel lonely, unappreciated and misunderstood. A lot of conditions that are nowadays attributed to kids that behave in a way not wished by their next of kin. These conditions, which were invented in this century, did not even exist over a hundred years ago because children back then, used to be able to be kids.
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youth. They will go to the gym, stay in school, date or marry younger people, they will hang out with young people, wear youthful clothing, the list goes on forever. Everyone needs to be working out these days, whether it is running, going to the gym or doing the newest trends on sports. It is always about the same thing, you have to stay in shape, you need to have the body you had when you were at the peak of your youth. Magazines and fashion billboards tell us to get the newest fashion to be sure to stay up to date with the stars who enjoy eternal youth. Photoshop and the fashion industry tell us we need make-up, special hair treatments and other beauty products to look like a twentyfive-year-old while we’re actually in our forties. Women who are searching for toyboys and grown
“I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.” up males dating students, we think it’s normal nowadays, we even have names for it. There are also parents who are trying to be best friends with their children in an attempt to stay young and up to date. I could go on with this for a while but I guess you get the point? While growing old used to be a privilege denied to many, nowadays growing old seems to be out of fashion. We rather live a youthful life full of joy then to live to become of age. Just like Peter Pan, he refuses to grow up, refuses to deal with responsibilities that come with adulthood. He’d rather be looking for adventures and danger, risking sometimes his life, than to become a dull grown up who has to do grown up stuff. He doesn’t want to have a job, he doesn’t want to have to think about money and bills, he doesn’t want to take care of a wife and children. This all seems too much trouble to him. He’d rather stay in Neverland, and even forget his loved ones, than to have to take care of a household. He’d rather risk his life fighting Hook and the other pirates than to live a life of boredom.
verb 1/
Gain or acquire knowledge of or skill in (something) by study, experience, or being taught
2/
archaic or • informal Teach (someone)
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Learn
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We see so many people acting under their age, trying to prove that they are still young in mind. But that is not the only trend we see. Another trend is people staying longer and longer in college. Where people used to marry at the age of 20-25, that rate has now changed to 2530. We stay at school, get our grades, make sure we can make a decent living and then we decide to start living together, marry and eventually even had kids. But while people didn’t use to go to school for that long, they also started to commit to serious relationships before the current generation does. Students nowadays refuse to commit to one person, afraid that they will miss out on adventures. That maybe they will miss out on the right person maybe, or on the experience. Because nowadays everything is about experience, you have to live it, do it before you can talk about it. The full college experience, living with your friends, hooking up with everyone you want to, not having to respond to grown ups, it is all part of the experience. So ending up with your college sweetheart is out of fashion, having had only one significant person in your life sounds ridiculous and people are afraid to commit. Just like Peter Pan refuses to commit to a relationship, he even refuses to know what it is and what it could be, afraid that
Life Long Learning it comes with too much responsibility. He cares too much about his adventures to give up on them, he wants to live his life fearlessly and get the full experience. Life long learning, a program set up by the European Union aims to encourage people to stay in the learning program for the rest of their life. It supports people who want to come to college even though they are of age. It encourages elderly to get back into a teaching program. But life long learning is also about the fact that nowadays society is changing very fast. New techniques are invented every day, every minute, every second. So whoever wants to stay in the game, be a part of the ever moving economy has to stay in school, has to learn every day, has to be eager to be a student for the rest of his life. This program, that sounds very attractive and is of a great importance for today’s economy and society is however also very competitive and asks a lot of people, staying up to date all the time can be very tiring. Peter for example refuses to write and read for example, he simply thinks it is not important. He says he knows everything about life without being able to read or write, it is his experience, he says.
adjective 1/
Feeling or showing the need for food
2/
Having a strong desire or craving
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Hungry
These famous words were not actually said by J.M. Barrie but by a wonderful visionary, called Steve Jobs, a hundred years after Peter Pan was written. It was a speech for young graduates at Stanford University. The speech was about staying young, staying hungry and staying foolish, to be and act like children. It is about finding your true passion, about pursuing it and living the dream. It is about being young at mind and being open to all kinds of possibilities because those come to you as long as you have an open mind.
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And this is what is hidden in the story of Peter Pan I think. While all of us know that it is necessary to grow up, to take responsibilities and to not live a careless life, we also know that it is important to stay young at mind. We are so eager to grow up, to become adults, to act like our elders, that we sometimes forget how important it is to stay young. Every now and then we need to have a
“Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
careless day, we need a casual play every now and then, we read books and watch movies to escape reality for a while. All this we do because as much as it is important to grow up it is also important to stay young. Peter Pan teaches us that there is a world where you don’t necessarily need to grow up, act tough and think of others all the time. There is this little world where every now and then, when we need to, we can retreat, have some time to ourselves and enjoy the small things like reading a book or playing hide and seek. Where we can have secret adventures and still believe in fairies.
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“To die would be an awfully big adventure.”
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3/ TO DIE WOULD BE AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE
3/2/ LIFE AS A POSSIBILITY 3/3/ FEAR FOR THE UNKNOWN 3/4/ LOVE FOR THE UNKNOWN
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3/1/ DEATH
Death
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noun
1 / the act of dying; the end of life; the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism. 2 / an instance of this: a death in the family; letters published after his death. 3 / the state of being dead: to lie still in death. 4 / extinction; destruction: It will mean the death of our hopes. 5 / manner of dying: a hero’s death.
Peter Pan’s or rather J.M. Barrie’s own words: to die would be an awfully big adventure. Imagine that in a children’s book. Talking about death and dying as some kind of adventure is rather crazy. Especially in the time of the Victorian age where children were the image of innocence. They are not supposed to hear or talk about death. And even now, in the 21st century, we don’t really talk about death with our children. It is a subject we like to avoid as long as possible. Until their pet or grandparent dies, children often don’t know what dying is. And even then, they don’t really realize what death is. Apparently children can only start to understand the concept of death at the age of 6 or 7. That is the age where they start to realize that
“To die would be nothing but the next great adventure.”
This seeing death as going into a new adventure kind of resembles the idea of heaven in the middle ages. Death was seen as the final destination. Life is nothing but misery and you live your life knowing that if you behave well you go to heaven. Heaven in the end is paradise, where you’ll live forever, all love and peace. It might as well be seen as some kind of Neverland, as Neverland, according to J.M. Barrie can be different for everyone. Nowadays people tend to believe less and less in heaven and hell. In having to behave properly to end up in a good place. People used to be scared as hell to end up in hell. Now we have our own faith, our own set of beliefs and we don’t tend to get scared by institutions like the church anymore. We believe in ourselves.
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death is forever and irreversible. However in his story, J.M. Barrie treats death as nothing else but the great next adventure. Maybe this has to do with the fact that Peter Pan refuses to accept responsibility and he goes into adventure knowing the risk that he might die. The fact that he might die might even turn him on to on the adventure in the first place. He doesn’t see the danger of it or the irreversibility. He just wants to live the adventure, and if death follows, that would be but the great next adventure to live.
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Possibility noun
1 / the state or fact of being possible: the possibility of error. 2 / something possible
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Since we have changed our belief systems and don’t always believe in the hereafter, there has also been a trend of seeing life as a possibility rather than a necessity. People know they have the choice not to live their life. They have the choice to decide that for them life is not worth it and just step out of it. This idea of being able to decide for yourself that you don’t want to live anymore has been there for ages. Since the beginning of time people who feel depressed have decided to commit suicide. However, it was not accepted at all, people were called egocentric and out of their minds. Their remains could not be buried within the walls of the cemetery and their relatives would be treated differently.
Life as a possibility Nowadays suicide has become way more socially accepted. Although there is still a lot of resentment, people also think that sometimes living is just not worth it for some people. For instance people with a chronic (psychological) condition that makes it impossible to live a normal life. There is some understanding of outsiders but also there is a lot of incomprehension to the way people, who commit suicide, treat their relatives. They leave behind loved ones who don’t understand what happened. This treating of life as a possibility is also what we see in Peter Pan, he generally doesn’t care much about what other people think of him, he doesn’t take into account that he can hurt other people and if he gets into trouble and get’s killed he can’t be bothered by the fact that he leaves loved ones behind who will be devastated by the loss of their leader. Like some suicidal people, Peter Pan, really is kind of egocentric.
Fear noun
2 / a specific instance of or propensity for such a feeling 3 /concern or anxiety; solicitude 4 /reverential awe, especially toward God: the fear of God. 5 /something that causes feelings of dread or apprehension; something a person is afraid of
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1 / a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.
People are, however, mostly still afraid of dying. Being forgotten, saying goodbye and leaving your loved ones behind is probably the hardest thing to do. It is terrifying and at the same time you don’t know where you’re going either. This is what makes death stand right in the middle of our lives while it is actually the end. Death is also what separates us human beings from animals. We are the only living creatures that are aware of the fact that our lives are temporary and that makes us want to make the most of it. This thing, the fact that we can actually think about death,
Fear for the unknown about what it does to us and our loved ones. It makes us scared. We are afraid of the unknown, what comes afterwards. Do we really die, do we go somewhere else, it is nicer there? People do the craziest things to avoid death. They try to find eternal youth like the alchemists, they try to invent medicines, they do all kinds of researches to try and find a way to escape the unknown. Peter is also scared of the unknown, but for him the unknown is not represented by death, but by the adult world. As much as he resents the adult world, he doesn’t really know what it is like and what it is like to be a grown up.
Unknown noun
1 / a thing, influence, area, factor, or person that is unknown 2/
Mathematics . a symbol representing an unknown quantity: in algebra, analysis, etc., frequently represented by a letter from the last part of the alphabet, as x, y, or z.
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“One girl is more use than twenty boys.�
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4/ ONE GIRL IS MORE USE THAN TWENTY BOYS
4/2/ SEXUALITY 4/3/ EXPECTATIONS
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4/1/ FEMINISM
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“Mr. Darling had a passion for being exactly like the neighbours.�
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5/ MR DARLING HAD A PASSION FOR BEING EXACTLY LIKE THE NEIGHBOURS
5/2/ FREUD
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5/1/ CONFORMISM
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“Oh, the cleverness of me...”
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6/ OH THE CLEVERNESS OF ME
6/2/ ADONIS 6/3/ DIY
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6/1/ SELFISHNESS
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“Peter, I should like to give you a kiss...”
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7/ PETER... I SHOULD LIKE TO GIVE YOU A KISS
7/2/ DOUBLE LAYERS 7/3/ GIVING AND TAKING
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7/1/ MATERIALISM
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“Girls are much too clever to fall out of their prams.”
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8/ GIRLS ARE MUCH TOO CLEVER TO FALL OUT OF THEIR PRAMS
8/2/ MID LIFE CRISIS 8/3/ FEELING ALONE 8/4/ FUCK SOCIETY
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8/1/ THE LOST BOYS
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“Never say goodbye...”
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9/ NEVER SAY GOODBYE
9/2/ GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
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9/1/ SAYING GOODBYES
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“The world is made of faith, trust and pixie dust.�
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10/ THE WORLD IS MADE OF FAITH, TRUST AND PIXIE DUST
10/2/ THERE MUST BE MORE THAN THIS 10/3/ IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING
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10/1/ FAITH
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“To live would be an awfully big adventure.”
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11/ TO LIVE WOULD BE AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE
11/2/ LIVE LIFE TO THE FULLEST
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11/1/ LIFE IS HARD
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