Hence the need for a childrens tale to explain to the little ones why their infant brothers or sisters weren't coming home from the hospital: it was something most families grappled with, and "they've gone off with Peter Pan to have adventures beyond the rainbow" is easier on a toddler than confronting them with the enormity of death.
I appreciated the Campbell quote in the article ... "I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive ... so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive." Campbell embraced Star Wars for this reason.
Life is a rare and brief thing - and to an extent, It (if not the universe) needs an audience to appreciate It. Woes and the rat-race and buying meaning from vending-machines are a cheezy substitute for 'Drinking life to the lees' as Omar so sagely puts it. More wing-suits please.
> Hence the need for a childrens tale to explain to the little ones why their infant brothers or sisters weren't coming home from the hospital
This makes no sense; if the problem was worse before, why would you suddenly need a new story for it? If the need was real, the relevant stories would have originated long before the 20th century.
The approaches that worked for the past 100,000 years also worked in 1904 and still work now.
(Also, the book is explicit that the children of Neverland found their way there by falling out of their perambulators (strollers); they did not fail to come home from a hospital.)
meanwhile the book’s words about what happened to those children are a fiction hinting at the truth of the loss of a child and are more symbolic than literal documentary words
I think Peterson is speaking to another tier of freedom that comes with responsibility and concern for one's future and security: it tends to (non-exploitatively) benefit others around you, your community, etc.
I'd like to understand why my comment is being downvoted by you and others?
Did you think the comment wasn't relevant to this overall post?
It feels like it is simply because I mentioned Jordan Peterson and anything that mentions him must be downvoted because he has been declared bad. Okay then.
Given I mentioned Jordan Peterson again, you should probably downvote this comment as well as a thoughtcrime.
Its an Isekai.
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Isekai is this modern trend in anime (and US movies sometimes!! Like Ready Player One), where characters are sent to another world. Sometimes due to death explicitly ("Reincarnated in a New World" plotline: like "I'm a Spider So What"), sometimes just "temporarily" transported (Sword Art Online / Ready Player One, they are "just" playing a video game).
From an "Isekai" perspective: people want two things.
1. A world very different from our own. Completely different "physics" or rules. So magic systems, history, culture, etc. etc. that's nothing like our world. Neverland easily qualifies.
2. A character who explores the new world from our perspective. The main character is always someone "like the audience", who can be ignorant about the new world. (The various characters the protagonist meets are therefore given an opportunity to explain the world to the newcomer, allowing the audience to learn about the world in a natural manner). In Peter Pan, Wendy is the Isekai protagonist.
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Alice in Wonderland, Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Wizard of Oz, A Lion, A Witch, and the Wardrobe. The concept happens again and again as a pattern, because its a good framing device. I'm not sure if Peter Pan can be seen as an allegory of death necessarily, any more than "I'm a Spider, so What?" (2021 Anime) could be.
The children are... children... because the main character often should match the profile of the target audience. Not always, but its a good rule of thumb to keep. Children stories will therefore have child-protagonists more often than not (Polar Express, Lion Witch Wardrobe, Harry Potter). There are exceptions (Peanuts has child protagonists but is largely written for an adult audience), but its just the rule of thumb authors seem to use.
The main character thinks a bunch and speaks little, so anime and manga will miss out. The manga still gets its somewhat good adapted, but the anime is sadly just so bad that it shouldn't be mentioned.
For a good starter isekai anime, "Tensei Shitara Slime datta ken" | "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime!" is a much better anime and gets more points right.
