The Peter Pan Bag by Lee Kingman
"The Peter Pan Bag" by Lee Kingman presents a compelling narrative set against the backdrop of the 1960s hippie movement in America. The novel follows Wendy Allardyce, a seventeen-year-old girl from a loving but overprotective family, who seeks to break free from her sheltered life. Her journey takes her to New York City, where she finds herself isolated after her friend’s absence and encounters a group of young adults living in a chaotic apartment. The story contrasts whimsical elements reminiscent of J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan" with a stark and realistic portrayal of the challenges faced by youth during this tumultuous era.
Wendy becomes involved with characters who echo the "Lost Boys," including Rolf, a troubled Vietnam veteran, and Peter, who is engrossed in academic pursuits while navigating the complexities of their lifestyle. The narrative delves into themes of disillusionment, self-discovery, and the harsh realities of drug culture and mental health crises. Ultimately, Wendy learns that true happiness requires discipline and responsibility, prompting her to return home and complete her education. Kingman's work captures the essence of a critical period in American history, emphasizing the importance of confronting life’s challenges with maturity and agency.
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Subject Terms
The Peter Pan Bag by Lee Kingman
First published: 1970
Type of work: Social realism
Themes: Coming-of-age, drugs and addiction, family, and friendship
Time of work: 1968
Recommended Ages: 15-18
Locale: Rhode Island, New York City, and Boston
Principal Characters:
Wendy Allardyce , a sensitive teenager who yearns for freedom from her overprotective familyPeter Banbury , a kindly graduate student who introduces Wendy to the hippie world of BostonOriana Green , a mystical young woman who acts as den mother to a group of hippiesDonald Milner , a passive, artistic teenager who manages to survive only because women feel an urge to mother himNell (Eleanor) Norman , Donald’s masochistic girlfriend, who panhandles to support himRolf (Ralph) Snelson , a good-natured but psychotic Vietnam War veteran who is a heavy drug user
The Story
The story of The Peter Pan Bag roughly parallels James M. Barrie’s famous play, Peter Pan (1904). Yet, while Barrie’s play is whimsical and romantic, Lee Kingman’s novel is grimly realistic; there is a deliberate contrast between make-believe and reality. Wendy Allardyce, like Wendy in Peter Pan, lives with a big, loving, and rather eccentric family. She attends a private school and leads an enviable middle-class life. At the age of seventeen, however, she feels restless, confined, and overprotected: She wants to go out and experience reality. Against her parents’ wishes, she runs away to New York City to spend the summer with a girlfriend. When she arrives, she is horrified to learn that her friend has gone to Europe. The friend’s brother Peter, who corresponds to Peter Pan in the Barrie play, installs Wendy in a Boston “crash pad” and leaves her to her own devices.
Oriana, the young woman who leases the apartment on an allowance from her wealthy father, allows anyone to sleep there and share in potluck meals. Like many of her friends, she is interested in mysticism, drugs, and rock music. The apartment is usually filthy because of the irresponsible habits of its occupants. Wendy’s upbringing compels her to take charge of housekeeping. She comes to think of the young men she meets as the “Lost Boys” of Barrie’s play. One of them is Rolf, a Vietnam veteran who takes an unwelcome interest in her and follows her around like a lost dog. The males to whom she is attracted are Peter, who is always disappearing on mysterious errands, and a frail, poetic young man named Donald, whose girlfriend Nell slavishly provides for him through panhandling and petty thievery. Like Tinkerbell in the Barrie play, Nell becomes jealous of Wendy and tries to kill her. Barrie’s villainous pirate Captain Hook is represented in Kingman’s novel by the drug menace itself, to which her heroine refers as “Captain Hooked.”
Wendy becomes disenchanted with the hippie life-style after Donald is sent to an insane asylum and Nell commits suicide. Wendy is infuriated to learn that Peter Banbury, who did not tell her he was working toward an advanced degree in sociology and psychology, has been conducting a documented study of her reactions to the hippie world. Peter was initially interested in her as a sort of specimen but reveals he has taken a strong interest in her as a person. He explains in academic terminology what she herself has been discovering through experience: that the hippie life-style offers nothing but self-destruction, that the only way to find happiness and meaning in life is by accepting discipline and adult responsibility. With Peter’s encouragement, Wendy returns home to finish school.
Context
The Peter Pan Bag paints a picture of one of the most dramatic periods in American history, the so-called hippie movement of the 1960’s. During this time, poets such as Kenneth Rexroth and Allen Ginsberg, self-styled prophets such as Timothy Leary, singers such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and musical groups such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones reflected the restlessness and dissatisfaction felt by their audiences. In response to the atrocities of the Vietnam War and the threat of nuclear holocaust, many young people rebelled in social protest or “dropped out,” seeing no point in planning for the future. Young people tended to blame their parents’ generation for creating the hostile world in which they now found themselves; popular slogans of the period were “Don’t trust anyone over thirty” and “Make love, not war.”
Along with this feeling of despair in the shadow of the atom and hydrogen bombs was a sense of urgency about exploring the world and a need to achieve instant self-awareness. This led to experimentation with drugs and mysticism, a combination that resulted in many tragedies, with suicide, psychosis, and imprisonment being the most common. Unscrupulous individuals sometimes attached themselves to the idealistic dropouts in order to seduce them, sell them drugs, and lead them into crime. The most notorious example of this was the fiendish Manson family murders of 1969, which are fully chronicled in a true-crime book entitled Helter Skelter (1974), by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry.
The movement did achieve some positive results, however, by forcing older Americans to become aware of their greed, complacency, and racism; they also were exposed to such issues as the destruction of the environment, the results of the neglect of parental responsibility, and other sins of commission or omission. The movement also had a lasting liberalizing effect on literature, music, motion pictures, education, politics, clothing styles, and many other aspects of American and European life.
In The Peter Pan Bag, Lee Kingman has captured the essence of the hippie movement in a unique work of creative imagination. Its closest counterpart, written for an earlier generation, is J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951); it is also reminiscent of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist (1838) and Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper (1881). Kingman’s message to her readers is a serious one: There is no magical solution to life’s problems: They can be solved only by responsible men and women who are willing to work to solve them.