An Analysis Of Peter And Wendy By J

Peter and Wendy by J. M. Barrie is a classic novel that confronts the extreme ends of the bridge between childhood and adulthood. Despite the characters being either distinctly young or old in age, Peter and Wendy addresses the loss experienced in the transition between childhood and adulthood. There is a distinct loss of identity in the novel, as the lines between the reader as an observer and the reader as a participant are blurred. Wendy herself begins to lose her grasp on her own identity, slipping from the Darling child who knew nothing of Neverland but glimpses in dreams to a mother of the Lost Boys. Even Mr. Darling is not fully established in his identity as an adult, occasionally slipping back into childish habits. A sense of one’s identity is lost in Peter and Wendy, modeling the loss experienced during the blurred transition from childhood to adulthood.
Peter and Wendy is written in a narrative form that makes it difficult to classify into a singular identity, similar to its contents. As time progresses, Peter and Wendy can easily transition from a novel read by children to a novel read by adults, who once read the book as children, to other children. The distinction should be made clear here: the former places the reader in a space between narrator and observer, while the latter distinctly separates the roles of narrator and participant. When reading Peter and Wendy to a child, the adult clearly takes the narrator’s role, but the narrator seems to side with a child’s way of thinking more often. The blur between adult and child begins here: though the voice and figure that is reading is adult, the narrator can occasionally take a childish tone, distorting the line between adulthood and childhood. The interesting use of a second-person omniscient narrator who is clearly mature, but thinks childishly, helps the novel serve as a vessel that emulates the hazy in between from childhood to adulthood, especially if the novel is being read aloud to another. The