Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Prologue-Chapter 4

Part 1, Chapter 5-Part 2, Chapter 9

Part 2, Chapter 10-Part 3, Chapter 14

Part 3, Chapter 15-Part 4, Chapter 19

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Themes

The Tension Between Childhood and Adulthood

Content Warning: This section features descriptions of graphic violence, murder, child death, and abusive relationships.

Many iterations of Peter Pan focus on the philosophical significance of childhood and adulthood by placing the two states in direct opposition to one another and vilifying the latter. In most versions, childhood is portrayed as a realm of innocence and play that is blissfully free of the complexities of adulthood, including the joyful yet confusing experience of falling in love. In Lost Boy, however, both childhood and adulthood harbor a myriad of horrors. When Jamie leaves childhood behind by physically aging and developing romantic feelings for Sal, he actually hopes to escape the violence and pain that have been hallmarks of his long childhood. Likewise, Peter’s desire to remain a child initially seems playful, but it actually springs from dark and dangerous urges, for his youth is paid for by the blood of his friends. Jamie hopes that by growing up, he can live a peaceful life and step more fully into the parental role that he already occupies on the island.

At the end of the story, Jamie does escape childhood, but he does not reach normal adulthood. He no longer believes that the island is a place of endless play and joy, but he is equally barred from finding an adult life in the Other Place. Like Peter, he is frozen in time, just at a slightly different point of development. The violence of the island remains with him forever, informing his every move, and even the pirates’ excursions to other parts of the world are forbidden to him, as he cannot sail away from the island. Thus, Jamie’s plight embodies the novel’s focus on the tension between childhood and adulthood, and this conflict is deliberately left unresolved, for in this version, none of the visitors to this sinister Neverland ever get the opportunity to move on from their adventures with Peter Pan.

Consequently, the pirates are the only adult characters in the story, and just like Jamie, they are not true adults. Instead, they are caricatures of adults who must behave according to Peter’s wishes. When Peter pushes them too far, they retaliate by murdering many of the boys, expressing their frustration and attempting to establish themselves as more complete individuals. This grim reality is reflected in Jamie’s encounter with Red Tom, for the scene demonstrates that his perceived enemies are people just like him. In the plight of Red Tom, Jamie sees his future and does not like it. In many ways, Jamie represents the most adult character in the story because he recognizes what Peter fails to see: that people are complex individuals deserving of freedom, love, and respect. He recognizes that people have needs and that even children cannot play all the time. This recognition makes Jamie’s fate all the more tragic, for even though he is really an adult on the inside, he can do nothing to express his adulthood, even when the story ends.

Reality Versus Make-Believe

Lost Boy is set in a magical world in which violence and death are very real threats. Yet despite the inherent dangers of the surroundings, the characters do not always distinguish clearly between what is grounded in reality, what is play, and what is caused by magic. The island itself is a magical location that the characters access by crawling through a tunnel under a tree, and it is populated by mythical creatures like mermaids, fairies, and giant spiders. Most of the island’s residents never age, and because these ancient “boys” can barely remember their lives in the Other Place, the fantastical details of the island seem ordinary to them. Because they do not truly recognize that the island itself is clearly fantastical, the boys sometimes struggle to differentiate between play and reality. They enjoy play-fighting with each other, so they also enjoy real fights to the death. Peter has told all of them that they live in a world of endless play, and they largely accept that claim at face value. Deaths seem mostly unreal, and many of the boys never think to mourn their fallen friends.

Jamie is the exception to the rule. He sees everything as it really is, having grown beyond the pretense of endless play long ago. Every injury and every death feels completely real to him. Even though he cannot remember the real world, he faces his adventures on the island as the real and often horrifying dangers that they are. When Peter’s whimsical rules make no sense, like the prohibition against killing the Many-Eyed, Jamie is the only one willing to take a more practical approach. In this way, Jamie and Peter are foils to one another, for just as everything is real for Jamie, everything is play for Peter. Peter barely notices when the boys die, and he does not understand why other characters grieve. Play fights and fights to the death are equally fun and equally high-stakes for Peter.

By contrast, Jamie is fighting to live in a world where everything is real, whether it is magical or ordinary. He wants to live in a world with real consequences where people treat each other as complete individuals. He briefly shares this fantasy with Sal when the two of them discuss adopting and caring for the rest of the boys in the Other Place. They want a life where people’s needs and desires are respected, and they therefore resist being subsumed into Peter’s selfish and often nonsensical desires. However, because Jamie is destined to become Captain Hook, his ambitions are doomed to failure, for he must remain in Peter’s world and fulfill the shallow role of a villain. This conclusion emphasizes the fact that Peter will keep experiencing their encounters as play fights, no matter how violent such encounters become, while Jamie is trapped in the ugly reality of this arrangement. He lives on a magical island as the captain of a pirate crew, but he still feels the weight of every boy who has died. Unlike Peter and the others, Jamie no longer has the ability to play make-believe, for the horrors of what he has experienced have become too intense to ignore.

Gaining Power Over Others

In nearly every version of Peter Pan, Peter stands as the undisputed leader of the Lost Boys. Lost Boy honors this convention even as Henry takes a new approach to the consequences that others must suffer because of Peter’s power. At the beginning of the story, Peter has near-total control over the boys on the island. He decides when and how they will raid the pirates, and Jamie’s reasonable objections go unheard. Although Peter’s games are fun, he clearly does not have the boys’ best interests in mind, for he refuses to consider the new boys’ inexperience, Charlie’s youth, or Del’s illness when he plans the raid. The suffering of others, like Charlie’s bad dreams or Del’s coughing, register only as inconveniences and irritations that thwart his selfish desires. While Peter demonstrates the charisma of a leader, he is also profoundly and disastrously self-centered.

Because of his psychological limitations, Peter’s power eventually starts to slip. Jamie, who has always taken on a parental role for the other boys, starts to become the true leader of the group. He is much better suited to the task than Peter is, largely because he is more mature. He recognizes the boys’ needs and limitations, and he does not want anyone to die. When the boys reveal that Jamie is the main reason they follow Peter in the first place, they demonstrate the extent of the power that he did not know he possessed. Although Jamie is undoubtedly a better and more mature leader than Peter is, he is by no means a pacifist. He is still willing to beat and even kill other boys because of his personal predilection for violence. Jamie wants to think of himself as the rational, grown-up alternative to Peter, but he has also spent hundreds of years on a magical island surrounded by unending violence. That time has had an impact on him. He wants to be a good leader, but he is still something of a tyrant in his own right.

In the end, Peter maintains ultimate power, for even as a pirate, Jamie can only ever be what Peter has made him. Peter initially wanted Jamie to be an eternal playmate, but that is no longer possible. Instead, Peter forces him to become a pirate so that he can at least have an eternal rival. Lost Boy therefore positions Peter as a tyrant so powerful that even the total collapse of his society of lost children only serves to reinforce his power. Although the narrative briefly suggests that Jamie might win over the other children and perhaps even escape Peter’s grasp, Henry inevitably delivers a stern reminder that her novel is essentially a prequel story and must therefore have an ending that stands in accordance with the established lore of the original Peter Pan. Thus, Jamie cannot escape Peter’s power on either a narrative or a metanarrative level.