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Personification
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
Peter Pan has two main settings. The first is the Darling home in the borough of Bloomsbury in London, England. The Darling parents keep an orderly household in order to give structure to their children's lives; the narrator says that "Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a passion for being exactly like his neighbours." The narrator also refers to their home as "No. 14" and calls it a "desolate home" from which the characters take "heartless flight." Generally speaking, the house seems like a warm enough place, with two stable parents and a humorous gentle dog-nurse Nana, but it pales in comparison to the grand adventures that await the Darling children in Neverland.
The second setting, of course, is Neverland. In the fourth chapter, Peter Pan teaches the Darling children how to fly and whisks them away to a strange land that contains many magical elements such as fairies, pirates, a band of Lost Boys, and a crocodile who swallowed a clock that continues to tick inside of him. Good and evil engage in a continuous and highly visible battle, and creatures have very extreme experiences of life. The contrast between these two settings—London and Neverland—emphasizes the difference between the strictly ordered Darling household and the fantastical world of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.
Related Themes:
