Cast List
Who are the main characters in Peter Pan, and what actually happens to each of them? I read J. M. Barrie’s novel, the Project Gutenberg text, and counted how often each name is used. Be warned: the ends of these stories are the point, so this spoils the whole book.
I will go through the cast in the order the text counts them, from the most mentioned to the least. These counts are mine, and they cover chapters one to seventeen.
Peter and Wendy
Peter Pan is the top of the table, at about four hundred and two mentions. He is a boy who ran away the day he was born, because he did not want to be a man. He still has all his first teeth. He is brave, cocky, and he forgets everything, from names to a year that has passed. He cannot read or write, and he cannot tell make-believe from real. For him, they are the same thing, and he rules the island by that.
Wendy comes next, at about three hundred and sixty. Her full name is Wendy Moira Angela Darling. She sews on his shadow, mothers the lost boys, tells the story that sends her home, and at the end of the book she is a grown woman who cannot fly. In my view, she is the real main character. She is the one who changes.
Hook
Captain James Hook is third by name count, at about one hundred and seventy-four. He wears an iron hook where Peter cut off his right hand, and he fears one crocodile because it swallowed a clock. The text paints him as polite, cultured and cruel at the same time. He cares about good form above all, and the narrator says he went to a famous school.
His end is the cleverest in the book. Peter fights him fairly, and Hook cannot stand it. When Peter kicks him instead of stabbing, he calls it bad form and goes over the side, content. His hatred of Peter, the narrator says, comes down to one thing, which is Peter’s cockiness.
The Darlings and Nana
John is mentioned about one hundred and thirty-three times, and Michael about one hundred and ten. John is practical and takes command only once. Michael is the youngest. When he finally sees his father asleep in the kennel, he says Mr. Darling is not so big as the pirate he killed. He becomes an engine-driver. Both stop flying once they stop believing.
Nana, the Newfoundland dog nurse, is named sixty-four times. She is the one who senses danger, and she is chained up for it. Mr. Darling is named thirty-six times, and Mrs. Darling sixty-seven. He is vain and afraid of his neighbours, then punishes himself by living in a kennel. She is the quiet centre of the book. She keeps the window open, and one kiss sits in the corner of her mouth.
Tinker Bell
Tinker Bell appears about eighty-two times, counting both her full name and Tink. She speaks in bells, and Peter translates, usually badly. She is jealous of Wendy, and the narrator excuses her, because fairies are so small that they have room for only one feeling at a time.
She drinks poison for him, and recovers when children clap. Her final appearance is a sad one. Years later, Peter asks Wendy who Tinker Bell is, and says he expects she is no more. Fairies don’t live long, says the narrator.
The Lost Boys
There are six lost boys, counting the twins as two. Slightly is named fifty-three times, Nibs thirty-eight, Curly twenty-two. Tootles is named forty-five times. He is the unlucky one, the humblest and the one who shot Wendy. And he is the one she appeals to when the boys threaten to keep her prisoner. He answers with dignity, and for that one moment his sun is at noon.
Slightly thinks he remembers his old life, and it gives his nose an offensive tilt. Curly confesses automatically. The twins can never be described, because they would be described wrongly. In the end all of them are adopted, go to school, and grow up. Tootles becomes a judge, Slightly a lord, and the twins, Nibs and Curly end up in offices with bags and umbrellas.
Pirates and Tiger Lily
Smee is named fifty-five times. He is the Irish bo’sun who wipes his spectacles after killing, and he is so thoroughly unaware that the children find him lovable. He is also one of only two pirates to survive the battle on the ship. The other is Starkey, named twenty-nine times, whom the tribe makes nurse to their papooses. Cecco, named twelve times, does not survive.
Tiger Lily is named thirteen times. She is a chief’s daughter, captured by the pirates and left on Marooners’ Rock. Peter saves her, and that makes her tribe his ally. The text calls them redskins and uses a stereotyped voice for her speech, which are choices of its time, not mine.
The Small Roles
A few more names matter more than their counts. Liza, the Darlings’ only other servant, is named ten times. She is the one who does not believe Nana, and scolds her for barking. That one scene lets the children get away.
The neighbours never speak, yet they hang over the plot. Mr. Darling uneasily wonders whether they talk about the dog nurse, and later his kennel draws crowds who cheer him on, and he is touched by it. The text even says that social success made him sweeter. Even the narrator is a character. He breaks in to say what he will not say about Mrs. Darling, and then says it anyway, kindly.
Then there are the stars. They are not cast in the usual sense, but they take sides. They blow open the window and call out the warnings to Peter, and the text says they are fond of fun. The little ones wonder, and the old ones have become glassy-eyed. They are the audience, and they are on Peter’s side. Not a bad thing to remember when the story gets dark, and it does.
How to Read the Cast
If you want one line to remember each, here is mine, from the text. Peter forgets. Wendy remembers, then stops. Hook wants good form. Tinker Bell feels one thing at a time. Tootles gets his moment. Smee does not know he is liked. Mrs. Darling waits. Mr. Darling repents, in public.
Jane and the Crocodile
Last, the ones who barely appear. The crocodile is named twenty-five times, and mostly by sound. It follows Hook for his arm and loses its clock. Peter then ticks like it, and the real one follows him too. Jane is named twenty-eight times, all in the last chapter. She is Wendy’s daughter, she asks the right questions, and she is the one who leaves with Peter.
Here is my reading, and it is an opinion. The cast is split in two. Peter, Hook and the fairies do not change. Everyone else grows up, forgets how to fly, or goes home. That is why Wendy is the one I’d call the main character, even though she is second on the count. If this helped, subscribe, and tell me in the comments who you would have picked.
