Peter Pan

Nana scares Peter away, but traps his shadow. Mrs. Darling folds the shadow up and puts it in a drawer. A week later, Mr. and Mrs. Darling go to a party, leaving the children at home. Mr. Darling ties Nana up in the yard. While Mrs. Darling tucks the children into bed, she hears Nana barking, and Wendy explains her bark means she smells danger. Despite this warning, Mr. and Mrs. Darling leave for the evening. The stars tell Peter it is time.

Inside the nursery, a fairy flies. When Peter Pan arrives, he asks her if she knows where his shadow is. “The loveliest tinkle as of golden bells answered him. It is the fairy language. You ordinary children can never hear it, but if you were to hear it you would know that you had heard it once before” (25). Peter finds his shadow and tries to reattach it. However, he can’t attach it, so he cries. Wendy wakes up and asks why he is crying. He explains he can’t get his shadow back on, and Wendy suggests that she could sew it back on.

After she does so, Peter gives himself the credit. “It is humiliating to have to confess that this conceit of Peter was one of his most fascinating qualities. To put it with brutal frankness, there never was a cockier boy” (27). Wendy offers to give Peter a kiss, but he doesn’t know what a kiss is. When he offers her a kiss in turn, he gives her an acorn instead. “It was lucky that she did put it on that chain, for it was afterwards to save her life” (28).

Peter tells Wendy more about himself—he ran away when he was born because he doesn’t want to be a man. He also reveals that fairies do exist, and he introduces Wendy to Tinker Bell. Tinker Bell isn’t fond of Wendy and calls her names. Peter explains that he lives in Neverland with the lost boys. “They are the children who fall out of their perambulators when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to Neverland to defray expenses” (30). Peter prepares to leave, explaining he needs to tell the lost boys the end of a story he heard. Wendy asks him not to go and tells him that she knows “lots of stories” (31). “Those were her precise words, so there can be no denying that it was she who first tempted him” (31).

Wendy wakes Michael and John up and introduces them to Peter. They learn to fly, and Peter leads them out the window and away into the night. Nana warns Mr. and Mrs. Darling, and they rush into the nursery but they are too late: “The birds were flown” (37).

The four of them—Peter and the three Darlings—fly, and eventually begin to go over the ocean. Wendy wonders how long it has been since they were practicing in the nursery. When they get hungry, Peter steals food from the birds and “Wendy noticed with gentle concern that Peter did not seem to know that this was rather an odd way of getting your bread and butter, nor even that there are other ways” (38). If they were to fall asleep, they would plummet through the air, the thought of which makes Peter laugh.

Peter leaves them from time to time to go on an adventure. When he returns, he can’t recall what he’d seen or done. “And if he forgets them so quickly, how can we expect that he will go on remembering us?” (40), Wendy asks her brothers. Finally, they arrive at the island: “they had been going pretty straight all the time, not perhaps so much owing to the guidance of Peter or Tink as because the island was out looking for them. It is only thus that anyone may sight those magic shores” (42). The narrator notes that each of them recognized the island immediately. They soon notice elements from their own imaginary Neverlands, such as John’s flamingos.

As they approach the island, Peter announces that there is a pirate is nearby. He tells them that if they like, he will go and kill the pirate. He says, “You don’t think I would kill him while he was sleeping! I would wake him first, and then kill him. That’s the way I always do” (45). The children ask Peter who the captain of the pirates is. He tells them it is Captain Hook, and they shudder, “for they knew Hook’s reputation” (45). The pirates see them approaching and ready the cannons. The cannon balls whiz past them. “Thus sharply did the terrified three learn the difference between an island of make-believe and the same island come true” (47).

When the cannon balls go by, the children are separated. Wendy finds herself holding Tinker Bell in a hat. The narrator notes that Tink prepares to lead Wendy to her destruction. “Tink was not all bad: or, rather, she was all bad just now, but, on the other hand, sometimes she was all good” (48). Wendy follows Tink.