This is MJ, I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
This time I'm talking about Peter Pan Chapter 9.
Apparently a never bird never forgets, and we're going to talk about that.
So Peter is facing death. He's already said that he's willing to accept death.
And just see it as another adventure to go on.
And all of a sudden we have this thing floating on the water.
He thinks it's a piece of paper from the kite, but as it gets closer and as time goes on,
as the water is nipping at his feet before it swallows him, which I love that turn of phrase,
Barry is not only a very imaginative writer in the scenarios that he's creating,
and in the whimsical things that we're getting, but also his turns of phrase at places are very lyrical,
and very beautiful, and very evocative.
The idea of the sea nibbling, that's what it was, not nipping, nibbling at his feet before it swallows him.
I mean, yeah, he will be swallowed by the ocean. He will drown, he will die,
and it will be as if he was consumed by the waters of the ocean.
And therefore starting it off with saying that the water was nibbling at him
before it proceeded to be able to completely swallow him is perfect,
because it very accurately describes the consumption, the destruction of his life,
his soul, his flesh by the waters, and it gives them a certain amount of life.
At least, you know, it creates the image of the ocean being this living thing that eats things,
and in order to eat, you have to kill, and even plant matter.
You're detaching it from its source of life, and then you're consuming it yourself,
and it's just a great evocative image, and yeah, I think it's wonderful.
I've heard that kids, boys especially, will obsess over dinosaurs,
because there's something primal, and they like the idea of,
well, they specifically like learning the names of dinosaurs,
because they feel like having a name to the thing and knowing things about it gives them power over it,
and it's something that could eat them, and kill them, and consume them,
because it's so large and so terrible, and having that, you know,
gives them some sort of sense of control over those things.
I don't know how accurate that is, but it kind of makes me think of how big and powerful the ocean is,
and how terrible it can be, and how deadly it can be to humans,
and this idea of it consuming Peter directly kind of, well, made me think about that,
which is why I brought it up, so excuse that tangent, and let me talk about the Nethelbird.
Apparently, Peter at some point in his life did a favor to the Nethelbird.
I don't believe it's described in this chapter, and I believe it's described anywhere in the book actually,
so he had prior good actions that brought him favor, and it feels a little bit like a narrative cheat.
It feels a little anticlimactic to me, but it also feels clever, and I don't know where you fall on that.
Did you think it was more of an anticlimactic cheat to get out of things, or did you think it was more clever?
I don't know, but there's this fun exchange between the Nethelbird and Peter
where they're speaking loudly and slowly to each other in their own language,
because they don't understand each other's languages, and I talked about this in my short,
so I don't really want to belabor it, but it's a funny thing that they can't understand each other,
so instead they speak like, instead they act like Americans, so quick tangent, a quick anecdote.
I know somebody who was traveling to a different country, and she was there with a fellow countryman,
and they were in the market, and she starts doing that.
She's asking somebody for a red delicious apple, which is the name of an apple, like Granny Smith and things like that,
so she's asking them in this foreign country, and instead of trying to get a dictionary or whatever and look for an apple,
she just says, I'd like a red delicious apple, and she says it increasingly loudly, and she says it slowly,
and that's pretty funny. It's a good gag. It's a good gag to show somebody to be kind of a fool,
and am I calling Peter and the Nethelbird fools? I guess I am. I guess I am.
They're definitely uncouth. One of them is an animal, and the other one's a bird.
No, I'm just kidding. One of them is an animal, and one of them is a young boy who doesn't want to grow up
and who wants to have adventure and play and really not think about being polite or kind or whatever,
and I'm not saying you should be polite and kind in a life or death situation necessarily.
I'm just saying it's funny that we're in this calm after Peter's already embraced his death, basically,
and then you get to see how their characters are and who they are, and they're both kind of immature silly people.
They're trying to handle their language barrier differences by speaking loudly and slowly,
and I think it's really funny. But again, Peter just being rescued by the bird is kind of interesting.
I can't remember which guy it is, but one of the pirates left his hat on a stave, which is a stave, a stave, a stave.
Oh, it's a type of staff that was put on Marooner's Rock as a flag or whatever to put people there,
and then so the Neverbird has Peter get into her nest. That's the point.
And he... what does he use the stick in there for? He takes the stave out. Oh, I guess it's just a hat.
He pulls the hat off, and apparently it's big enough that the Neverbird can use it for her eggs,
and then Peter rides in her nest. But I guess because she's a bird and birds are small and light,
she and her eggs could float in the hat, but Peter couldn't have floated in the hat.
He needed the bigger nest to float in, which he sounds like a big bird, but anyway, whatever.
I don't know. Kind of there's like some... the more you think about it without having like images to know what exactly it looks like,
and maybe there were illustrations in the book, you could see better the scale of everything.
It's kind of hard to imagine, but also, you know, this is a world where there are fairies and people fly and things like that,
and it is a fantasy world, that's why the fact that Barry said, but it's interesting to know that there's this kind of honor
and there's this reciprocity, and we see Peter's previous good actions being rewarded by causing his life to be saved
when he's in this deadly situation, and that's kind of fun. This wasn't like a huge chapter.
It was a very short one, actually, and there's not a ton going on, but there's enough to think about and talk about briefly,
and it also made me think of some funny stuff, so I thought I'd go ahead and share that with you.
So thank you for listening. Stay tuned for more. I'm going to continue this journey through Peter Pan, going chapter by chapter.
I'm excited. I'm really enjoying this, and I'm excited to get to the end, and then finally talk about the book as a whole
on my Fortress Fiction episode, where I talk about this book's worthiness and its merits and demerits overall,
and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. So anyway, please check that out. Like, share, subscribe.
Help me grow. Fortress Fiction, help me grow this chapter by chapter endeavor, because I'd love to talk about more books,
and if you have books that you think I should check out and that you'd like to have given this sort of treatment
where they're gone through chapter by chapter and talked about briefly each time, or for each chapter,
then I would advise you to leave a word about that in the comments, preferably on MJMunios.com or anywhere where you're finding this.
Either will do. So until next time, folks, take care, be well, and keep reading.
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