The Modernist Reflection On The Serialized Texts Of 'Peter Pan'

A large number of people view the fiction Peter Pan as classics of fairy tale. In fact, we can also find the name of Peter Pan at many other texts of J. M. Barrie. When we get all these texts together, we can see the serialized texts around the subject of the child who never grows up, which are based on the fiction Peter Pan. I just make explorations into these serialized texts.First, Serialized Texts of 'Peter Pan' are not fairy tales in general, but modernist texts. They have their own characteristics. 1. There isn't some formulaic structure that was always in fairy tales. 2. The identity of the narrator is suspended, and children are excluded from the receiptor at the same time. 3. The characters in the texts are no longer defined by the contrast between the black and the white. 4. These texts penetrate into the characters' inner world. 5. These texts indicate the connotation by structural symbol. 6. The narrative language is more philosophical. All these factors can boil down to the background of the transitional period of western culture, while this situation influenced the author inevitably.The structure of the 'antagonism' symbol is one of the most notable characteristics of modernist text. It sets the basic moral frame of the confrontation between children and adults by three confrontations, which are the confrontation between the world of bird and the world of human being, between Neverland and London, and between Peter Pan and James Hook.Then I interpret these texts at two aspects.The first one is the problem of time. We can find that children and adults havedifferent outlook on life when they face death by their different interpretations of time. Since 1800s, people's views of time have been changed from the field of physics to that of psychology. In general, adults cognize time by 'introspection'. But children mollify the conception of time by 'oblivion'. In this way, they escape from the manipulation of the time. And they are also beyond the death, which is always regarded as the end of the time.Second, we can see the existence of many adults in Mr. Darling and Captain Hook. Individuals lose their meaning of existence because of alienation. People are more and more anxious and lonely when they fall into the swirl of substance. On the contrary, Peter Pan lives an uninhibited life in his 'game', which is similar to the theory of game by Immanuel Kant and V. Schiller. Finally, 'game' becomes another way to rescue adults from their degenerated mettle, while it's the most ordinary living pattern for children.