Harvard’s Commencement is today, and the sun is shining on the Class of 2011. Here’s my Harvard Crimson valedictory for a wonderful group of seniors.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/5…
Grown Up and Done For
By Maria Tatar
Published: Thursday, May 26, 2011
“Nothing that happens after we are twelve matters very much,” J.M. Barrie wrote nearly a century ago. As the author of “Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up” and as a man desperate not to lose his marbles (the glass kind with multi-colored swirls), he was an authority on the challenges of turning into an adult. Once we grow up, Barrie lamented, we are “done for,” and he spent a good part of his life mourning the moment when other children made it clear that he was too old for pirate games.
Click on the link above for the entire op-ed.
Both the novel and the play, Peter invites the girl Wendy Darling to Neverland to be the mother of his gang of “lost children”. His brothers John and Michael also accompany her on her magical adventure.
Throughout the story are many great anecdotes, including the fairy Tinker Bell when he nearly died from eating poison, and a direct confrontation with the enemy of Peter, the pirate Captain Hook.
In the end, Wendy decides that her real living space in your home is next to his parents and his brothers this leads back to London, while Peter Pan is in Never land, promising to return playmate visit repeatedly.