An Analysis of Childhood in Dystopia Peter Pan by James Barrie Essay

Childhood as Utter Horror in James Barries Dystopia Peter PanThroughout their youth, children are almost always under the impression that those closest to them have a childs best interest at heart. Furthermore, children are undoubtedly the most trusting of all creatures in the human race their hearts and intentions are still pure until gruesomely tainted with manipulation and seduction by their elders. A childs innocence is something so precious that it creates jealousy in those that crave that innocence. In James Barries dystopia Peter Pan, childhood is portrayed as a time of complete and utter horror because the Darling children are manipulated by those closest to them, because the youth of the Darling children is torn away from them, and because life as the Darling children know it becomes completely deconstructed upon discovering Nerverland. In Barries Peter Pan, the Darling children are manipulated by their parents as well as by Peter Pan. Throughout the novel, Wendy, Michael, and John Darling had put complete trust in their parents. In fact, the children trusted their parents so much that they believed everything their parents said to be genuine. However, Mr. and Mrs. Darling chose to put all of their children into the nursery, which was on the top, secluded floor of their home, with no more than Nana the nanny-dog to look over their children. Furthermore, the night that the Darling children are taken away by Peter Pan, Michael Darling sleepily asks his mother, Can anything harm us, mother, after the night lights are lit? To which Mrs. Darling responds, Nothing precious, they are the eyes a mother leaves behind to guard her children (Barrie 21). In this correspondence with her son, Mrs. Darling gives a false sense of safety to her son, knowing that there was merely a nanny-dog to watch over the children. Coming up with this reasoning behind having night lights in the nursery, and manipulating her children to believe this reasoning makes Mrs....

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