Peter Pan, his lost boys and girls, and Neverland

MANILA, Philippines - I once read a tweet that said, “Do not judge a book by its movie.” I laughed at this and thought of the many instances that a movie was loosely based on its twin book.

Jurassic Park and The Lost World by Michael Crichton are perfect examples of this. I was dismayed when Mr. Hammond survived at the end of the movie, when, in fact, he should have been feasted on by dinosaurs. Those twists are important because they give readers the feeling that a bestselling novel was given justice when translated to film.

Another movie that committed this commercial adjustment was Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games. Also, Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons kept my jaw hanging, waiting for that helicopter scene where Robert Langdon finds himself saved by a tarp.

Such small details are very important but these movies are the way they are now because of Hollywood.

However, I find a “danger” in these changes. For instance, I learned that John Smith and Pocahontas weren’t lovers after all and all those romantic scenes were put in for “dramatic effect.” I would have lived my life completely believing that Pocahontas was John Smith’s lover when in fact, she was only his savior. (Insert “OMG!” exclamation here!)

But I know a movie based on a book that perhaps gives the opposite effect. It’s about a little boy who will never grow up. About his Lost Boys who left him in the end. It’s about the haunting reality that lies in everyone’s future.

It’s about Peter Pan, the hundred-year-old masterpiece that acquired so many changes that caused its original form to be hidden. However, let us focus first on the beautiful side that the movie helped us see.

I am a secondary education student, majoring in English and literature, and it is the nature of this subject that introduced me to the many approaches to literature. It is what urges me to look at different works of literature through many perspectives. I have many favorite books but J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan touched a part of me that was long abandoned and untouched — and maybe you, dear reader, have also left yours in some little corner — childhood.

The movie version of Peter Pan is themed with childhood. The book version (aside from the writer’s intention) seems to focus on childhood. Peter Pan will always be the torchbearer of youth. Reading the book touched that part of me that believed mushrooms are family members in my pink dollhouse, the part that believed pinky-sized girls dwell in flower buds, the part that believed butterflies and dragonflies are apprentices of fairies living in the woods, the part that, as I have described earlier, has been long abandoned and untouched.

How old are you, dear reader? Don’t worry, that’s not a serious question but still I want you to ponder on it. Every day, we face the truth — we grow old. And that is what Walt Disney helped us to see. In the Peter Pan movie, Mr. Darling softens at seeing the floating Jolly Roger in the clouds and says, “I think I have seen that ship before…” This part is a heartwarming realization that even though we are now in our adult age and facing many problems, we appreciate our youthful days when we believed in the impossible, in flying. We believed in a Neverland. Indeed, we’ve all seen that ship before.

Such realization pinches our hearts. It will even touch us further if we know the story behind Peter Pan because Peter, the boy who will never grow up, has still much to offer.

Windows have a special part in the story. It is where Peter entered the lives of the Darlings. Moreover, windows let us peer into the life of this boy. Peter left his mother and father while still an infant by flying out of a window. When he came back, he found the windows barred, and concluded that his parents didn’t want him anymore.

On the latter part, Barrie writes, as Mr. and Mrs. Darling welcome back Wendy, John and Michael:

 â€œThere could not have been a lovelier sight; but there was none to see it except the little boy who was staring at the window. He had ecstasies innumerable that other children can never know; but he was looking through the window at the one joy which he must be forever barred.”

Alas! This is a weak side of Peter. The boy who conquered pirates and possessed many adventures doesn’t have a real home to go back to. We can all still remember how he hated growing old for maybe, deep inside his heart, he doesn’t want to be one. Because growing old leaves the innocence of his childhood and means facing the bitter world of his reality.

Pan’s shadow is a representation of the harsh reality. We can’t leave it behind. It reflects where Peter’s picture comes from — the Llewelyn boys whom Barrie adopted. These boys had all the dramas in life that make them “lost boys.” These boys suffered tragic deaths but Barrie kept them alive with Peter Pan.

Another dramatic story is about Barrie’s older brother who died before he turned 14 in an ice-skating accident. From him came the notion of “a boy who will never grow up,” for in their mother’s mind, he will always be young.

Heart-pinching and eye-watering, right? That is what I felt, too. Even though these stories are about death, they give us another view of life. It reunites the adult us and the little us. It allows the grown-up us to see the world through the eyes of the little us.

This book is one of my favorites. After I finished the book, trite as it may sound, I cried. It will forever remind me of my own Wendy, afraid to face the world but in the end, she bravely conquered her fears. As Barrie puts it, “On these magic shores children at play are forever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.”

Peter Pan will never die. He is still in his ship, waiting for lost boys and girls who will join him in Neverland. We all have been there, “and so it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.”