The Window
Here is a question about Peter Pan that I bet you cannot answer. How many times does a window open, bar or break in this book? I counted. The word window shows up forty times, and almost every big turn in the story happens at one. This is a full summary of J. M. Barrie’s novel, so it spoils everything, the ending included.
So I will walk you through the plot one window at a time. Chapter by chapter, with the book’s own counts on screen. Everything here comes from the text I read.
Which Edition
I read the Project Gutenberg text, ebook number sixteen. Its title page reads Peter Pan, with Peter and Wendy in brackets, by J. M. Barrie. The file says the text matches the nineteen eleven original publication, and Gutenberg released it in two thousand and eight.
That is the novel, not the stage play. By my count it has seventeen chapters and about fifty thousand words. In it, the name Peter appears about four hundred times, and Wendy about three hundred and sixty. Hook is next, at about one hundred and seventy-four. Keep those numbers in mind, because the title page already hints that this is as much Wendy’s book as his.
Window One
The first line says all children, except one, grow up. Wendy learns it at two years old, when her mother cries, why can’t you remain like this for ever. Two, says the narrator, is the beginning of the end.
The Darlings live at number fourteen. Mr. Darling does the sums, Mrs. Darling draws faceless babies in the account book, and the nurse is a Newfoundland dog named Nana. Then Mrs. Darling tidies her children’s minds one night and finds the name Peter in every one of them.
Wendy says he visits the nursery. Her mother finds leaves on the floor that match no English tree. The very next night Mrs. Darling falls asleep by the fire, the nursery window blows open, and a boy drops in with a light darting around him. Nana lunges. He escapes through the window, but his shadow does not. Chapter two begins with Nana holding it in her mouth.
The Sewing and the Flight
A week later, on a Friday, Mr. Darling has a fit over a tie, then makes a mess of the medicine. He pours his dose into Nana’s bowl and chains her in the yard. The stars blow the window open, and Peter comes back with Tinker Bell for his shadow.
When it will not stick with soap, he cries. Wendy wakes, sews the shadow on, and he takes all the credit. He tells her he ran away the day he was born, because he heard his parents plan what he would be when he was a man. He does not want to be one. He wants stories for the lost boys, and Wendy knows many. She is tempted, and so are John and Michael.
Fairy dust is the secret of flying, with lovely thoughts. Nana breaks her chain, the parents run home, and they are too late. The birds, says Barrie, are flown. The children leave through that window, and the Darlings find it empty.
The Island Come True
The flight is long, and Peter keeps forgetting them. Peter tells her to keep saying I’m Wendy whenever he forgets. At last the island appears, and the children recognise it. Then the pirate gun, Long Tom, fires, and the real island begins.
Captain James Hook has an iron hook for a right hand, because Peter threw his arm to a crocodile. That crocodile swallowed a clock, so Hook hears it coming. Hook finds the chimney of the boys’ home under the ground and plans a rich cake he says will kill them.
Meanwhile jealous Tinker Bell tells the boys that Peter wants them to shoot the Wendy bird. Tootles does. Wendy falls with an arrow in her breast, and the acorn button Peter gave her stops it. The boys build a little house around her, and she agrees to be their mother.
The Lagoon
Wendy mothers six boys, and she sets them exam questions about their real parents, all in the past tense. She is forgetting too.
At the lagoon, pirates leave Tiger Lily on Marooners’ Rock to drown. Peter copies Hook’s voice and has her freed, but he gives himself away in the guessing game. In the fight, Hook bites him, and Peter, who cannot bear unfairness, stares in shock. Wendy flies off on a kite tail. Peter, alone on the rock, says that to die will be an awfully big adventure. The Never bird gives him her nest, and he puts her eggs safe in a pirate’s hat.
The Story That Went Wrong
Tiger Lily’s tribe becomes the boys’ ally. Then comes the Night of Nights. Peter hates mothers, Wendy loves them, and he asks her whether being their father is only make-believe. She asks what he feels for her. His answer is a devoted son.
At bedtime she tells her own story, about children who fly away while the mother keeps the window open. Peter groans. He says that when he went home the window was barred, and another boy was in his bed. Wendy decides to go home, and the boys panic. Peter says goodbye with a handshake. Then the pirates attack.
The Cabin
Hook has Smee beat the tom-tom to fake a victory, and the boys climb out into captivity. Hook slips down Slightly’s tree and poisons Peter’s medicine. Tinker Bell drinks it to save him, and she can only recover if children say they believe in fairies. They clap, and she lives.
Peter swears hook or me this time, and boards the brig ticking like the crocodile. Hook has the children lined up for the plank. Peter kills pirates in the cabin, and the boys count them. Then Peter fights Hook with sword in hand. Hook cares most about good form, and when Peter kicks him instead of stabbing him, Hook calls it bad form and jumps to the crocodile, content. The narrator says the clock was stopped on purpose, so Hook would not know.
The Barred Window
The boys sail home. In London, Mr. Darling lives in the kennel as punishment, and crowds cheer him. Mrs. Darling still leaves the window open.
Peter and Tinker Bell arrive first, and Peter bars it. He wants Wendy back. Then he sees Mrs. Darling at the piano, crying, and cannot stand it. He unbars it, and goes. The children come in, and she opens her arms. Peter watches through the glass, shut out from the one joy he cannot have.
Wendy Grows Up
Mrs. Darling adopts the lost boys, and the narrator tells us where they end up. Tootles becomes a judge. Peter refuses to be adopted, because it means school, an office and a beard. The deal is that Wendy goes for a week each spring to do his cleaning.
Peter comes for her after the first year. The next spring he does not come at all, and the spring after, he never knew he missed one. When he does come, he does not remember Hook, and he does not remember Tinker Bell. Wendy grows up. Years later her daughter Jane hears the crow, and Peter returns. Wendy cannot fly. He cries. Jane says boy, why are you crying, and flies out of that window with him. The book ends with Wendy watching until they are as small as stars.
Counting the Windows
So here is my tally. Window appears forty times. Eleven are in chapter sixteen alone, the chapter where it is barred and unbarred. The words forget, forgot and forgotten show up thirty-five times, ten of them in the last chapter.
Here is my reading, and it is an opinion. The window is the book’s real argument. It opens for children who are heartless enough to leave, and it stays open for the mother who waits. Only Peter ends up outside it. If this helped, subscribe, and tell me in the comments which window moment got you.
