Almost all children in this world begin to dream of fairy tales. She imagines a princess like Ariel or Disney's Sleeping Beauty: who sings, radiates beauty and lives happily ever after. But when the little girl grows up, she realizes that Disney fairy tales are just sweetened versions of true stories: the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. He discovers that Ariel never overcomes Prince Eric and instead becomes meerschaum; discovers that Prince Philip rapes Sleeping Beauty instead of saving her. In other words, it exposes the harshness of reality. Although readers tend to think of Peter Pan as a simple children's fairy tale, Barrie actually comments on the nature of childhood in his work. If Peter Pan represents the quintessential eternal child, his characterization shows children's naivety regarding justice: they lack the ability to approach the subject logically. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Although the novel focuses on the adventures of many children, Peter Pan is the only ideal and eternal child among them. The simplest proof of this fact is that Peter never physically ages; every other child, including the lost boys of Neverland, eventually becomes an adult. When Wendy is a mother and Peter goes to visit her, he appears unchanged and still has “his first teeth”. (Barriers 155). Although years have passed and Wendy has married, Peter is still a boy. Even the former lost boys, whom Peter forbids from growing up, have matured; Nibs and Curly work in the office, Slightly marries a woman, and Tootles becomes a judge (153). Also, the only human who flies in the entire book is Peter. Adults can no longer do this because “It's only the gay, the innocent, and the heartless who can fly” (154). Once a child loses the ability to be “gay, innocent and heartless,” he grows up. However, Peter never loses this ability and continues to teach new generations of children, like Jane and Margaret, to fly for the rest of eternity. Furthermore, Barrie constantly distinguishes Peter from the Lost Boys, the only other children who initially appear to be immortal. For example, Peter cannot distinguish imagined scenarios from reality, while the other lost boys can (64). Therefore, it is logical to assume that they are more mature and adult than him. Furthermore, Peter dresses in skeleton leaves while the other boys dress in bearskins (15, 49). Peter's clothes symbolize death, as these leaves have only the fibrous structure and resemble skeletons. While the other boys are allowed to grow up, Peter is perhaps trapped as a child because he is dead and can no longer grow up. In this case, the reader should consider the fact that Peter Pan is probably based on Barrie's older brother David, who died at a young age in an accident. Although the book's main characters are mostly children, Peter is the only one who remains one until the end. By examining the novel under the Freudian lens, the reader discovers that Neverland becomes a metaphor for a child's identity, further reinforcing the idea of ​​Peter as the ideal child. Barrie describes the multiple Neverlands as maps of children's minds. More specifically, “he locates Neverland [as] a poetic version of the Freudian id” (Egan 44). A child's id is the innate and primitive part of his psyche. When Peter Pan emerges victorious from Barrie's adventures in Peter's domain, it becomes clear that Peter is the child living in his own id. He represents the eternal child who perpetually returns to the most immature part of his psyche: in this case, Neverland. Throughout the book, Peter has flawed views on fairness; believes injustice only in certain situations. Remarkably, he treats Hook with the utmost courtesy because he sees the pirate as a worthy enemy. At the beginning of the story, Peter indignantly tells John that he would never kill Hook in his sleep (Barrie 45). Later, when fighting Hook on higher ground, Peter realizes that continuing “wouldn't have been a fair fight. He gave [Hook] a hand to help him up” (84). So, despite Hook betraying Peter's trust in this previous scene, the boy once again shows the captain's fairness. On the pirate ship, when Hook drops his weapon, “with a magnificent gesture Peter invites his adversary to pick up his sword” (135). Whenever Hook almost loses, Peter makes sure they are on a level playing field before continuing the fight. Departing from this nobility, Peter is incredibly unfair to those he considers inferior to him. On the same pirate ship, Peter hides in a “pit-black” cabin and mercilessly kills Hook's lowly crew while at a disadvantage (130). Peter doesn't feel the need to level the playing field in this situation by giving up the advantage of surprise or allowing the Pirates to see it; it simply kills them while they are unaware. The boy even mistreats his own crew; he reigns as their absolute ruler and treats “[the lost boys] like dogs…He received a dozen [whips] for looking perplexed when told to take surveys” (140). After defeating Hook, Peter takes on the role of the cruel pirate and treats the lost boys like slaves, even whipping them. When readers see Peter again through the Freudian lens, they will see that Peter always wins in Neverland, his world of primitive logic. His eventual victory over Hook “and the emblematic crocodile are linked in many ways. First, of course, Hook ultimately dies in its jaws” (Egan 52). Peter triumphs over both Hook and the ticking crocodile, which symbolizes time. The boy beats time because he never has to grow up, while Hook "dies in the jaws [of time]". Later, the adult Wendy discovers that Peter considers the victory irrelevant and has already forgotten it and moved on to other exciting conquests. For Peter, a vital and logical part of fairness is its own triumph above all else. After coming to see Peter Pan as the ideal child, the reader can use Peter's reactions to unfair experiences in relation to child psychology to understand how children cope with the situation. reality of equity. For example, injustice always shocks Peter, who never fully understands that the world is unfair. After helping Hook lift the rock, Hook attacks Peter. The injustice of the action, not the pain, is what stuns Peter; in fact “Every child is affected this way the first time they are treated unfairly” (Barrie 84). Peter treats Hook fairly but Hook betrays him in response. In turn, Peter is naively hurt by injustice as he expects the gesture to be reciprocated but, even in his world of Neverland, the world is an unfair place. It is not surprising that this type of experience is common throughout the real world since all children “sooner or later complain, 'It's not fair.' To which the adults respond: 'Life is not fair'…[with] the knowledge that a vital lesson is being taught” (Diski 52). Every child intrinsically believes in his or her naive idea of ​​fairness and feels betrayed when life proves otherwise. But adults already know the “vital lesson” of the world's injustice and teach it to children, thus allowing them to mature as well. Taking this idea further, Peter remains a child forever because he always forgets this.