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            In response to question 1, on page 842, I decided to evaluate the story of “Peter Pan” and its continuation, “Wendy Grows Up”. These stories take the playful images of childhood and blow them up to over-the-top proportions, making what are usually fanciful illusions children dream up into epic adventures that can be explored and analyzed.

            “Peter Pan”, both as a story and a person, glorifies childhood as a never-ending adventure, constantly moving from one enjoyable activity to the next. For him, adults lack the joy and happiness in their hearts, the attributes he values above all others, and serve as not simply foils, but as ‘bad guys’ for him to do battle with to protect his world of childlike wonder. For Peter, adults are what threaten childhood, and to become one would be a form of betrayal and a loss of innocence. This is why it was of the utmost importance to him that Wendy never grew up and why he took her promise not to.

            In “Wendy Grows Up”, as the title implies, Wendy grows from a girl into a woman. Initially, she fears becoming an adult, not wanting to break her promise to Peter and knowing that he won’t ever want to return to her if she loses the spirit he finds so appealing. As she grows and slowly comes to terms with it, however, she finds that with becoming an adult comes a certain form of enlightenment, and understanding of the silliness of all the adventures and fantasies that she lived through in her youth. Now that she has stepped away from the wide-eyed wonderment, she can see that there is much more to the world. While she is still sad to lose the feelings of being able to fly and lose herself to the winds, she now understands that those days are a part of growing up into the woman she has become now, which is why she let her daughter go with Peter on that night. Even though she knows that her daughter will go off to engage in wild adventures with Peter just as she had, she also knows that her daughter will come back and look forward to an uncertain future. Her daughter will also long to never grow older and hold onto Peter’s promise to return, even though it may not come true. Despite this, she understands that these are important things for children. Even if she could stop her daughter from feeling some of that pain and confusion, she would also be depriving her from experiences that add to the whole as she grows older.

            An adult and child would read these stories differently, as they both want to read them from their own perspective and take on life. In a way, they both will read what they want into the story, either by seeing their own position as more justified or by viewing the other with longing or nostalgia.

            Children will likely side with Peter in his views of childhood and the horrors of growing up, because most know that there is a certain golden period you live in for your first years of life and that life has several harsh lessons to teach as you grow. To children, life is about fun, exploration, and playing. They long for the magic of the ability to fly, the physics or practicality are unimportant. To an adult, they may view the story either way. Many adults would wish to have that innocence back, the lack of concern for the trivial things in life. But in that innocence is also a naiveté, in that the freedom we feel truly isn’t a freedom at all, and more a disregard for duties and our obligations. As we get older and understand more, we start to see that the line between “carefree” and “careless” isn’t as defined as we once thought.