Peter Pan

Peter Pan is the boy who never grows up, a character created by the Scottish author J.M. Barrie, who first introduced him in a 1902 novel before writing the 1904 stage play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up and the later 1911 novel Peter and Wendy. Peter lives in the fantastical realm of Neverland with a group of orphaned boys called the Lost Boys, and the story typically follows his visit to London to recruit the Darling children, Wendy, John and Michael, teaching them to fly with the aid of fairy dust from his companion, the jealous and fiercely loyal fairy Tinker Bell. In Neverland the children join Peter in ongoing adventures and conflicts with the pirate captain Hook, Peter's vengeful nemesis who lost a hand to a crocodile that continues to stalk him, ticking from a swallowed clock. Peter's refusal to grow up, and his eventual choice to remain a child in Neverland while Wendy and her brothers return home and age normally, made him an enduring symbol in English-language culture for eternal childhood, both as an ideal of freedom and as a caution against permanently avoiding adulthood.