Archetypes In Peter Pan

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Peter Pan: Analysis
Children’s literature has its own rules, and takes special skills for an adult author to write. The best books for children are those recognized and discussed by adults, and James Barrie’s is one of them. A fascinating story about adventures of kids in Neverland appears to be more than a fairy-tale: it is a philosophical message to grown-ups, an attempt to appeal to every person’s inner child. Peter Pan, a boy who is never going to grow up is a character that remains adored for generations. When analyzing the book’s characters, it is worth saying that they are quite symbolic and appeal to important concerns that people have about childhood and adulthood. The very idea of eternal childhood looks controversial; it is thrilling …show more content…

Interestingly, the book touches adult comprehension as well as it is relevant to children. This actually might be explained by the fact that the author tried to interpret really symbolic, even more – archetypal – dimensions of the human soul. Actually, the presence of really fundamental images makes it possible to analyze the story, as well as all its’ screen or theater versions, from the perspective of the theory of archetypes, introduced by a Swiss psychotherapist and researcher Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). Jung, who particularly analyzed clue images in different cultures, concluded that every person has specifically structured lacunas within human individual nature that are responsible for basic practices, needs and personal self-realization in the world. Thus, Jung assumed that those are appropriate to every man independently of the culture or religion, and could be perceived from different images, hidden in the collective subconscious layer (Jung, 2014). For example, the shadow is one of the book’s symbols that can have the archetypal interpretation. One of the versions is that shadow is a darker personality, one’s rejected part that is hard to accept. There are some wild aspects in Peter that can be related to his shadow: such as violence and risk, for instance. In the same way, it can be related to his past and to his lost memory about his past pain. When

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