Christian Janßen 
Different Views on Peter Pan [PDF ebook] 
A Comparison of Peter in ‘Peter and Wendy’ and ‘Hook’

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics for the subject English – Literature, Works, grade: 1, 3, University of Paderborn (Angelistik), course: Conceps of Childhood, language: English, abstract: This essay wants to compare and contrast one of the first versions of Peter Pan, ‘Peter and Wendy’ from 1911, with the movie ‘Hook’ from 1991. The hypothesis of the paper is that both interpretations have different central messages depending on the cultural and social background in which the book was written and the movie was made. To expose these central messages the paper focuses on the characterization of Peter Pan who is the main character in both stories. The object of this research and the aim of comparison and contrast of the two adaptations are to discover how the differences of these messages look like and how they are in detail related to society.
The essay is structured as follows: After the introduction the second chapter explains why especially these two adaptations of Peter Pan are chosen. The third chapter discusses the gender background of Peter Pan to open a cultural perspective and get a better understanding of the main character. After that follows the characterization of Peter in the fourth chapter. This, as the main part of the assignment, is divided into several subchapters which describe different facets of Peter’s character. The most remarkable characteristic of Peter is his person being an embodiment of childhood. This factor will be analyzed in even more sub-chapters. Furthermore, the fourth chapter gives a conclusion and points out the main results. Finally, in the sixth chapter an outlook will be taken and two examples of the huge social impact of Peter Pan, on the one hand The Peter Pan Syndrome and on the other hand the relation between the author of Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie, and the Great Ormond Street Hospital will be described in detail.

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