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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Discussion Questions

Background

Literary Context: J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan

The story popularly known as Peter Pan was created by J. M. Barrie (1860-1937). Barrie, a Scottish writer, was inspired to write the stories that later became Peter Pan after becoming a friend to (and later, a guardian of) five young boys whose parents have died. Barrie named several characters in his stories after the boys. In 1904, Barrie wrote a play called Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. In 1911, he turned the story into a novel called Peter and Wendy. This novel, along with the play and several related short stories, is the basis for the long-beloved Peter Pan mythos.

In the original story, Peter Pan is an impish boy capable of flight. He visits the home of the Darling family in Victorian London, hiding outside the window while Mrs. Darling tells bedtime stories to her children, Wendy, John, and Michael. One night, Peter makes the children’s acquaintance. After teaching them to fly with the aid of fairy dust from a fairy named Tinker Bell, he brings them to a magical island called Neverland. The island is populated by Lost Boys, children whom Peter rescued after they fell out of their prams. Like Peter, the boys do not age. The island also supports a number of adult pirates who are led by Peter’s sworn enemy, the fearsome Captain James Hook, who has a hook instead of a right hand. Peter cut off Hook’s hand and fed it to the crocodile, and it has been hunting him ever since. Neverland is also home to a group of Indigenous American people, and Barrie’s portrayal of these characters represents an undiluted racist element of the story that was unfortunately a common convention of British children’s adventure stories at the time. Wendy, Peter, John, Michael, and the Lost Boys have many adventures on the island as Wendy plays the role of the boys’ mother.

In the end, Peter kills Captain Hook by feeding him to a crocodile. He then brings Wendy, her brothers, and all the Lost Boys back to England. The Darlings adopt all the Lost Boys, leaving Peter alone. He is unwilling to be adopted because he wants to remain a boy forever. He returns to Neverland, and Wendy visits him the following year. Although she has romantic feelings for him, he does not reciprocate them because they are grown-up feelings, and he is a perpetual child.

Genre Context: Peter Pan Retellings and Adaptations

Peter Pan has been retold and adapted many times over the years. Some of those works are very straightforward adaptations of the story, and the most notable of these include the 1953 animated Peter Pan, the 2003 live action Peter Pan, and the 2023 Peter Pan and Wendy. Other adaptations function as either prequels or sequels to the story, exploring the characters’ backgrounds or futures. Some examples of this approach include the novel Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, the film Pan (2015), the film Hook (1991), and, of course, Christina Henry’s Lost Boy. While these works tend to make some changes to the original mythos, they utilize key points of the narrative that are familiar to most people who know the original story. However, Lost Boy is somewhat unusual in the deliberate and dramatic changes it makes to the original tone of the story. This version is no longer a magical tale for children, but a dark horror story in which the characters demonstrate fundamentally different motivations from their original counterparts.

Other stories are inspired by the original work, but depart significantly from Barrie’s tale by taking on a completely new perspective. A prime example would be Peter Darling by Austin Chant, in which Peter Pan is a transgender man who grows up and develops a romantic relationship with Captain Hook. Likewise, Lost Boi by Sassafras Lowry takes a freeform approach to the characters and story, setting the events in the real world but incorporating BDSM themes and elements of drug addiction. In yet another example, Wendy (2020) utilizes familiar elements of Peter Pan to tell a story that is more deeply focused on themes of grief, hope, and the impact of poverty.

Ultimately, the depth and range of such adaptations prove that few stories have the reach and flexibility that Peter Pan has enjoyed since its inception. Because the story is so familiar to so many people, it is relatively easy for writers and filmmakers to play with those familiar elements and present them in new ways. Reimagined stories often seek to subvert the audience’s expectations, and Lost Boy is no different, for it defies the standard conventions of the original tale by flipping the roles of protagonist and antagonist to portray the world of Neverland as a treacherous land of danger, horror, and violence thinly disguised as child’s play.