Fantasy as Antifantasy: 3 Neverland -- Lost Faith

3 Neverland -- Lost Faith

There is one particularly disturbing depiction in Peter and Wendy. That’s the part that narrates about Neverland. The narrator of the story introduces the reader to Neverland in this way.

If you shut your eyes and are lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon. This is the nearest you ever get to it on the mainland, just one heavenly moment; if there could be two moments you might see the surf and hear the mermaids singing.


note:
The text of Peter and Wendy is based on the author’s commentary, Annotated Peter and Wendy, Kindai Bungei-sha (2006), which is based on a reprint of the first edition, Peter Pan; Random House (1987).


Neverland, the island where Peter Pan lives, is by no means discoverable around “Second to the right, and straight on till morning” as Peter says. As the author says, what Peter says is not necessarily true. At the very least, the Neverland depicted here is not an isolated island in the South Seas, like ones described by Robert Louis Stevenson in Treasure Island (1883) or Daniel Defoe in Robinson Crusoe (1719). Although these were in the world of fiction, they were partial microcosms conceived in concrete topographical perspectives, their locations set in extension of realism. However, Neverland is a kind of mindscape that appears by itself in anyone’s heart if one closes one’s eyes. It is a hidden realm of the mind that will come out on its own if you can focus your thoughts correctly. I dare say that it may be close to what is called the collective unconscious, which is commonly discovered in the subjects of consciousness through introspection. A region called Neverland makes a key word that provides important clues in Peter and Wendy, in exploring the hidden nature of the mysterious protagonist named Peter. This world, like Peter himself, is like an alter ego of oneself, that everyone knows in the deep of their minds at some layer, without needing to be taught by anyone in particular. For example, the Darling children, who were taken by Peter to Neverland, do not see Neverland as a foreign world.

Strange to say, they all recognised it at once, and until fear fell upon them they hailed it, not as something long dreamt of and seen at last, but as a familiar friend to whom they were returning home for the holidays.


Rather, Neverland is the home of their souls. So, unlike this real world, (this nightmare world where you wake up and realize you’re being captured), it’s a world of peace, where everything exists as it should be. The narrator also says of Neverland:

Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed.


There are no bothering details at all. Moderately cohesive, the world of Neverland is one where you don’t feel uncomfortable or threat of any misgivings. It is, so to speak, a perfectly processed memory that has undergone a complete phase shift and compressed without any hindrances, through idealizing process. For those of us who live in modern world, who find various contradictory mechanisms in both human society and the Natural laws, and cannot help but question the Providence of God who is supposed to have created and govern this world, it is the truly convincing world. Between each individual and the world, and the relationships that mediate them, one is able to find a confirmed meaning, and there is no contaminant such as meaningless unlooked-for accidents. And the existence of Peter and the existence of Neverland in this way as they are, have equal implication in this story. The author hints at the inseparable relationship between Peter and Neverland throughout the story. Neverland is “Utopia” in the original sense of the word, which is equivalent to “ou = not + topos = place” or “nowhere”, and is literally the same as that Utopia, Thomas More depicted, an impossible place of ideals. Peter is rightly the god who invites us to the Utopia, and his surname “Pan” indicates that he is the shepherd god Faunus, the rustic god of the forest with a flute in his hand, who has been resurrected by the modern educated people who has had enough of the Christian dogma. So, it can be said that Neverland is a world of fable of the same quality, such as Phantastes (1858) and Lilith (1895), which George McDonald maneuvered his peculiar imagination to create, presenting a new metaphysical view of the universe that should replace conventional beliefs. What this isolated island implies is the possibility of a new faith in a different form.
It is a world formula that has the power to link one’s raison d’etre with the fundamental mechanism of the universe, far more authentic than the flimsy and makeshift doctrines that the mid-twentieth century called democracy, capitalism, or socialism, which focus on no more than worldly ease. However, in the case of Barrie, there is something precarious. After the above quote, the narrator continues:

When you play at it by day with the chairs and tablecloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very nearly real. That is why there are night-lights.


This world of ideals becomes very realistic. And that’s a very dangerous thing. It is because ideals that have been acquired and materialized always have something dark and eerie peeking behind them. Until their Neverland became a reality, it had been a safe game, as the author says, “Of course the Neverland had been make-believe in those days, but it was real now,” (p. 46). And as soon as it begins to take shape as reality, the dream world becomes a formidable thing full of fear, as the author narrates, “Thus sharply did the terrified three learn the difference between an island of make-believe and the same island come true.” (p. 49). The dreamworld, which is a condensation of the desires in the heart, seems to be as familiar and comfortable as one's another self, but when this double materializes and appears in front of one as a new other, it reveals a hideous identity that one has never imagined before.