This is MJ, I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
So I want to talk about chapter 7 of Peter Pan, continuing my chapter by chapter discussion of it, and my...
not my theme for this, but the title of this episode at least is going to be,
the narrator is your crazy uncle. And I'll get to that at the end here I think.
So, it's interesting, one of the things I'm talking about in this episode, or this chapter rather,
is that adventure kind of is a point of view.
Kind of a tangent related to that, well that's the tangents after.
Peter's so used to having adventures, fighting with pirates and Indians and hunting animals.
Maybe even bears from time to time, that the life that Peter, or sorry, that Michael and John and Wendy know,
is kind of like an adventure for him, because it's unknown and it's strange and it's not what he's used to at all.
So, it's almost, I mean, the idea that adventure is relative and point of view comes into the matter is here.
You know, it's funny, people will travel hundreds of miles or thousands of miles, they'll fly hours on a plane,
to go somewhere they've never been before, to do things they've never done before,
when they could probably just drive somewhere close by and do that same sort of thing.
And I find that kind of a funny thing to be pointed out here in the book.
Just kind of interesting, not like anything major to say about it, but it's funny because Peter pretends he's the school kid,
and I don't know, just like other lame stuff that's just not very cool,
and he's like, oh, this is a great adventure for me because I'm not used to it, and that's kind of funny,
and it proves the point, or it's what caused me to draw the point.
Another thing is Peter will go out and he'll have unadventures on his own, or he'll go out and have adventures.
When I say unadventures, I just mean boring stuff, like, oh, I just took a walk, but maybe he's, you know, bloody,
and you're like, no, I don't think he just took a walk, something else happened.
But it is explained that he'll like say he killed somebody and then there won't be a body,
or he'll say he didn't kill somebody and then there is a body out there, and things like that.
So it's just, I know I've kind of talked about this a decent amount,
but it's interesting how this idea of this lack of reality for Peter keeps coming up,
and I don't really know what it means, I don't know what we're supposed to take away from it,
I don't know what the child audience was supposed to take away from this,
but it is interesting that it keeps happening, it keeps being a thing that he just, you know,
really can't tell the difference between reality and imagination, and I don't know what that means.
Anyway, there was a reference in probably chapter four or so when Captain Hook was flying,
not flying, Captain Hook was running around on the island with his men, and he found,
what was the guy's name, Windows or something like that?
Anyway, oh man, anyway, he killed some guy, which is not funny, but you know,
it was framed funny in the book, so that's why I get to laugh about it.
Anyway, he found the hollow tree entrance to Pan's base,
and specifically he like sat on the mushroom, I think, and it got hot under him,
and he realized that there was a large mushroom that he was using as a stool,
and he realized that it was stuffed into the chimney there,
and it was catching the heat from the fire that was down in the chimney,
and he said, oh, these dumb kids, they went ahead and, you know,
build these seven hollow tree pathways or tunnels into this underground home for themselves,
and you know, they're so dumb, they don't need more than one,
they could all use the same entrance, which I'll get to in a moment,
but more than that, they have no mother, so I'll pick a, Mr. Smee, let's go back to the ship,
and let's pick a cake and put nice green icing on it or frosting on it,
and make it poisonous to these kids.
We'll leave it here for them because they have no mother.
They're warning them not to eat strange food that somebody left out.
They will eat this and they'll all die, and that will be the end of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys,
which is crazy because that actually happened.
He didn't just mention it and then Barry forgot to do anything with it,
he forgot to follow up with it.
It happens here that we hear about the fact that the cake did get baked, it did get left there,
and Wendy, as their mother, did stop them from eating this strange cake
multiple times until it became so hard that they used it as a missile,
which means, you know, like a projectile, and they threw it, I don't know, somewhere,
and Hook ended up tripping over it, which is pretty hilarious.
That's a lot of fun for me.
So, anyway, it's kind of ridiculous.
Oh yeah, and then Hook's wrong, apparently.
You do need a separate entrance for each person because it's made for each kid,
but I don't think it actually needs to be that way.
That's just how Peter wants it, so that's what happens, so it's kind of interesting.
And then Wendy's wolf appears.
It comes back to her.
This is something I mentioned in the short that I did talking about this.
It's something I mentioned previously, I believe,
because the Indians belong to John and Michael, the little one.
I don't know what he particularly imagines in the Neverland,
but part of the Neverland that Wendy imagines, I believe,
is the mermaid lagoon as well as the wolf that she has there.
And I don't know what the deal is with the wolf.
I don't know if it comes back.
If it does later, I'll gladly talk about that.
I hope it does.
I have ideas for what can be done with the wolf, but it also,
the wolf is mentioned in juxtaposition to this long series of adventures,
and days and nights pass so quickly that the darling children are forgetting their parents,
and Wendy's making tests for the boys to do
so that they would remember their mother and father and what it's like to be home.
But time passes differently there, and it passes very quickly.
There are so many suns and moons that suns and moons pass very quickly,
and you kind of lose grip of time, which is super interesting.
And it mentions that there are many, many adventures,
and almost implying that there are dozens of adventures to be told of
that aren't contained in this book.
He made some jokes, like it would take a text document book to fill all the adventures.
So there's volumes and volumes more of Peter Pan-worthy stories that are told,
or that are there, out in the ether to be imagined and to be told.
And I was thinking it'd be cool to kind of do that as a project.
Like somebody could do interquels or sequels to this original book,
which is in the public domain, and it'd be totally fine,
because you can totally do it.
There's really room to do it as long as you leave everybody alive
to go into chapters eight and beyond from this.
You could do lots of stuff, and I'm thinking you've got to put Wendy on that wolf
and have her riding it around, because that'd be super cool.
Or even having it savor from pirates or Indians or whoever.
You could do a lot of cool stuff with that.
I think it'd be a lot of fun.
And then as the chapter closes up, the narrator goes on and on and on.
He mentions like six or so different adventures, and he says,
will we tell this one, will we tell that one?
Oh, I flipped a coin.
Maybe I should flip again and do best two out of three, and all this stuff.
And then he finally decides on one, the mermaid lagoon story he's going to tell,
which is going to be what chapter eight contains, if it's not about it entirely.
And I was thinking, who's vamping here?
Is that the narrator vamping for humor?
Is that Barry not knowing what to write and just making stuff up on the fly?
Or what, is that purposeful?
Was it a crutch and then he leaned into it and made it his thing?
Or what? I don't know.
But that's why I said, it's like your crazy uncle's telling you this story.
I was going to say your drunk uncle, but I don't know how well that would play.
So I don't know. It's kind of interesting.
Or it's very interesting how fertile the Neverland is for stories
and how this story itself, the narration of it, provides an availability,
an option, a opening for somebody to make these untold tales of Peter Pan
or untold tales of Neverland or something like that.
And I think it would be a brilliant idea.
I'll leave it to somebody else for now.
But I think that would be pretty cool.
Anyway, that's all I have to say for now on this matter.
I've got other work to do, so I'm going to get to it.
I encourage you to check out my website to find full show notes.
I'm going to have all these episodes linked together in a single post
so you can listen to them all, including the Fortress Fiction episode I will do
after reading through the whole book and gathering my thoughts on it
and figuring out what exactly I think of this book and where it belongs
in the Fortress Fiction or whether it belongs or not in the Fortress Fiction.
And yes, I like that a lot.
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to get more people listening to this, more people paying attention to these stories
and my treatment of them so that we can have a thriving community talking about literature,
children's literature specifically, because that's an area of my focus right now
is I want to be writing children's literature,
so I figure I should master middle grade fiction by consuming as much of it as I can,
analyzing and thinking about it and figuring out how it works
and figuring out how to make my own compelling stories that will become classics
like Peter Pan and other great books.
So until next time, folks, take care, be well, and keep reading.
I hope you enjoyed that.
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