Peter Pan Research Paper

Words: 1083
Pages: 5

What do you think of when you hear the name Peter Pan? You probably think of a young boy dressed in a peculiar green outfit landing on your windowsill after flying across the starry night sky just to listen to your stories of him. You might also think of endless adventure on an escape to Neverland, fleeing from responsibility and never growing up, fighting pirates, and the magic of pixie dust and believing in everything your imagination could possibly think of. What about where Peter Pan originated from, how he was conceived, and what he really symbolizes? Based off of facts from the life of J.M Barrie, we can question if Peter Pan is just a childish character based off real people, an angel taking dead children to Heaven, or a deathly creature killing pre-teens for enjoyment and repayment to the pixies for immortality. Just as J.M. Barrie stated, “all children, except …show more content…
You may be asking whom J.M. Barrie is. Although many individuals have grown up with the movies and stories of Peter Pan, most people don’t know that he is originally a character from author J.M. Barrie’s collection of works. What people should really be asking is: who is Peter Pan? Peter Pan is a young boy, about twelve years old, who lives in Neverland and refuses to grow up. Based on psychological research documented in Chapman’s article, Peter Pan is said to remain a child because he “is a boy without a sense of his own history, very little capacity for memory, little interiority, and no sense of identity” (5). To continue this thought, Chapman also reminds the readers that “living in Neverland does not provide one with many accurate ways to keep time” (4). This is great reasoning on how Peter remains so young. Without memory and without knowledge of one’s