For Andrew.

[CiaranHaggerty]

Dear Andrew.

I am a third year filming student writing an essay on the young protagonist in art. I am a massive Peter Pan and Barrie Fan and have been on your website many times.

The many different layers than build up Pan have interested me all my life. The want and temptation to uncover every piece of Peter is always with me. Yet he's tragic mystery alone is sometimes enough.

I have come to you because in my view you are the living Barrie source. Of course i have  seen the lost boys Tv series and the read your book, i would however like to ask you something else about barrie and the boy he called Peter.

I would very much like to hear your insight on the young protagonist in Peter Pan or in this case maybe it is Wendy. I would always be intereted to hear how you think Barrie effectivly creates the world from a child's view point and also the world of children's desires.

I would be very greatful to hear your thoughts. No matter how big or small.

Please reply on this forum or to my email address: ciaran_haggerty@hotmail.com

many thanks.
Ciaran. 

[andrew]

I would hate to be the one to pluck out the heart of Peter’s mystery, but happily I would be quite unable to do so even if I wanted to, since Peter is a paradox!  "Who is Peter?" asks Barrie in his silent screenplay of Peter Pan (1920) - "Perhaps he is just a boy who died young." This is an echo of something Barrie wrote 12 years earlier, in the production notes for the Paris production of "Peter Pan" in 1908: "Of Peter himself you must make what you will. Perhaps he is a boy who died young, and this is how the author conceived his subsequent adventures. Perhaps he is a boy who was never born at all, a boy whom some people longed for but who never came. It could be that those people hear him at the window more clearly than children do."
So, is Peter based on Barrie’s elder brother David, who died aged 13 when Barrie was 6? Or is he Timothy, the dream child Barrie longed for in “The Little White Bird”?  Or both? Or neither? 
Or is he Barrie himself, in some sense “rejected” as that 6 year old by his mother? “Oh Wendy, you are wrong about mothers! I thought like you about the window, so I stayed away for moons and moons, but when I flew back the window was barred. My mother had forgotten all about me, and there was another little boy sleeping in my bed.” Perhaps this is why Barrie originally called Peter Pan “the Boy Who Hated Mothers” ...
One final paradox, from the published play of "Peter Pan":
Peter: I never want to grow up! I just want always to be a boy and have fun!
To which Barrie has added in the stage directions: “So perhaps he thinks, but it is only his greatest pretend.”

[Hannah High]

Ah...this never gets old!