Compare and Contrast the Representation of Death in J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, Seamus Heaney’s ‘Mid-Term Break’, Belloc’s ‘Matilda’ and McCrea’s ‘In Flanders Field.’
Peter Pan, ‘Mid Term Break’, ‘Matilda’ and ‘In Flanders Field’, albeit diverse in subject matter and style, are in many ways connected by the pervading theme of mortality on which the foundation of each text rests. Notions of mortality and immortality are juxtaposed throughout Barrie’s fantasy Peter Pan where the reader is introduced to a paradoxical story of a boy who is dead but refuses to grow up. Seamus Heaney’s ‘Mid Term Break’ and LT. Col. John McCrae’s ‘In Flanders Field’ take the subject of death from personal experience where death is treated as tragedy. Belloc’s Matilda looks at death in an amusing and exaggerated manner in his cautionary tale that typified didactic writing in the Victorian era. Although the depiction of death varies in all four texts, with the exception of Peter Pan, all the writers illuminate a sense of justice and injustice, or unfairness in pre-mature death in their works, whereas, Barrie’s Peter Pan echoes existential paradoxes that are grounded in unfairness. These ideas will be explored alongside there accessibility as children’s literature by a close reading of motives, style, tone and literary techniques employed by the writers in their respective representations. All references to poems are extracted from the 100 Best Poems for Children (McGough, 2001) and Peter Pan from Peter Pan and Other Plays (Oxford World’s Classics, 2008).
A closer reading of all four texts reveal significant differences in the treatment of death. In Heaney’s deceptively titled ‘Mid-Term Break’ he recalls the death of his baby brother (p.45). In the experience unfolds, Heaney operates on suspense. The poems opening line finds Heaney in the school ‘sick bay’ (p.45, line 1). He is not sick but waiting to be taken home. On arriving home ‘his father is crying in the porch’ (p.45, line 4). The group gathered for the wake console by saying ‘sorry’ for his ‘trouble.’ He hears ‘whispers’ that ‘inform strangers’ that he was the ‘eldest’ (p.45, lines, 10, 11). Step by step the drama climaxes until the dead child is revealed. All these sparse, Joycean statements add up to a coming-of-age experience of facing death for the first time. McCrae on the other hand, inspired by the death of a young patient when he served as a military physician, composed ‘In Flanders Field’ (Poetry Foundation, 2010). Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one’s Eyes;
Her aunt, who, from her Earliest Youth,
Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,
Attempts to Believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed her.
(p.15, lines 1-5).
The rhyming couplets along with uppercase important words makes the poem very accessible to children and enhances the amusing treatment of death as the poem unfolds. however, there exists a strong moralistic tone as the narrative voice adopts a pompous tone about aunt’s exemplary ‘regard’ for ‘truth.’ As the poem unfolds, Matilda’s conduct is incorrigible: She continues to lie. She is punished by not allowed to go to the theatre. In a fit of boredom, she nearly burns the house down and subsequently does. The whole poem catalogues Matilda’s misdemeanours to the point where the coup de grace is the burning alive of a child. In a poem where overt didacticism in clearly perceivable, death is treated as a consequence of disobedience, but unlike the previous poems, not to be taken seriously.
Although, death is fantastical in Peter Pan and not to be considered in earnest, like the first two biographical poems, it is difficult to exclude Barrie’s biographical details from the narrative of Peter Pan and how this relates with regard to profound observations about his character and death (Carpenter, p.67). In 1867 Barrie lost his older brother in an ice-skating tragedy. A coping mechanism for Barrie’s mother was to imagine the boy as an eternal youth-an idea not too distant from the Victorian zeitgeist of preserving the innocent child. Therefore, death in Barrie’s work is inside and outside the text. Peter says, ‘No one is going to catch me, lady, and make me a man. I want always to be a little boy and have fun.’ Pan is constructed as an everlasting child where death is linked to growing up; an idea alien and to be avoided by resisting the decision to do so . ‘Once you’ve grown up you can’t come back. Little boys should not be sent to bed. They always wake up a day older’ Peter says. However, death is constantly represented in the subtext there is the ‘ticking clock’ which reminds us all that we have a limited time. Additionally, Pan is clad in ‘skeleton leaves’ and there is ‘Skull Valley’, both of which symbolise mortality. Additionally, Peter, who ‘evens out’ the lost boys in Neverland, an implication that he carries out a fantasy genocide of boys who start to grow. When Tinker Bell swallows poison and survives because ‘fairies clap.’ Later editions of the play invoke the audience to assist her survival by asking them to clap ‘if they believe in fairies.’ Therefore, in Neverland death remains a prevalent force, but it can be avoided as long as they remain in the mythical land. Therefore ‘To die would be an awfully great adventure’ Peter announces when the Never Bird saves him from drowning as he knows death can be circumvented adventurously (Line, 180). Yet, Peter insists in not being ‘touched’, yet another sub-textual inference to triggering growth and subsequent death. Therefore, death is closely linked to natural growth and its eventual consequences, or it can be what it is imagined to be. Nonetheless, in the fantasy world of Neverland, it evades Peter.
Like ‘In Flanders Field’ and ‘Matilda’, the language of Peter Pan makes the story accessible to children, albeit they will not comprehend that darker undertones heavily weighed to an adult audience, but the narrative voice relates to a binary audience where language is simple and complex simultaneously. Likewise, ‘In Flanders Field’ where the initial three couplets follow an AABBAB iambic rhyme (p.68) which lends itself to child appeal as does ‘Matilda.’ with its similar rhyming couplets.
Primarily, what draws all these works that are assigned to children are the sense of justice and injustice in the treatment of death. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines injustice as a ‘lack of fairness’ (OED 2010). In ‘Matilda’, the story highlights the flawed character of Matilda’s aunt. She is not strict, but ‘Strict.’ Matilde, ‘alone’, suffers from ‘boredom’ whilst her aunt is at the theatre to see ‘The second Mrs Tanqueray’, a play about upper-class members of British society. Matilda is punished by not being allowed to accompany aunt. To a modern reader, the tale is bazaar. All children lie and need direction would be considered fair child upbringing, but death as a consequence of lying raises questions about injustice and the misdemeanour fitting the crime. However, in the shifting construction of childhood, the Victorian audience were familiar with such a didactic approach to obedience. ‘Mid Term Break’ and ‘In Flanders Field’ approach injustice from a more solemn voice. Injustice is counted in magnitude as young men lay below the ‘poppies.’ The phrase ‘We are the dead’ gives a voice to the dead soldiers who are addressing the living which continues:
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Field.
The insertion of the two comas in this first line causes the line to be swiftly read and highlight s how form informs the theme of how short and rapidly they lived and died. The enjambment after ‘lie’ foregrounds the phrase ‘In Flanders Field’ and isolates Flanders it as a remote resting place, far from home. Heaney also uses powerful emotions to underpin the injustice of pre-mature death. At the climax of the poem when he enters the room where the baby is laid, he writes:
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple’
He lay in a four-foot box in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear’
A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
Heaney’s tone of restraint discussed earlier gives way to heavy grieving. The repeated alliteration of the letter ‘f ‘sound along with the sparse clarity of the sentence follows the same poetic pattern of McCrae in ‘We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow’ and underpins the shortness of life causing the youthful Heaney to express his anger.
On the other hand, justice in Peter Pan is as ambulant as death in the story. The difficulty with Barrie’s nature of justice is that it undoes the cultural myth. ‘All boys grow up except one.’ Here lies the problem, where does Pan go when everyone around him grows old and dies (Rose, 2008, p.150). Barrie presents a huge existential issue in the story. Pan says to Wendy, ‘Forget them, Wendy Forget them all. Come with me and you will never have to worry about grown-up things again.’ Here existence in Peter’s mind is something separated from higher meaning. The truth is that natural death is natural and whilst Peter continues to suck on the fountain of youth, Wendy will die, and the cycle continues as Peter takes the next generation to Neverland where the tabula rasa of regeneration continues eternally. Barrie compromises the problem by having Wendy come every year to ‘spring clean’ his house, but even then, Peter has become aware of Wendy’s aging. Lodged in Peter Pan is an existential injustice in a lone eternity among constant mortality. And in this way entice in the story differs from the three other works in that deathlessness is injustice.
Conclusion (A work in progress).