An awfully big adventure

[rymenhild]

It took me eight years to notice the following echo:

Dumbledore, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Sorcerer's Philosopher's Stone: "To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."

Peter Pan, in Peter and Wendy: "To die will be an awfully big adventure."

That moment of near-quotation has to be intentional. What purpose does it serve for Rowling to take the perception of death from Barrie and use it as, arguably, one of the linchpins of the Harry Potter series? Discuss!

ETA: Google confirms that I am not the first to see the similarity. I'm relieved, actually, as it's too obvious for people not to have seen it all this time.

Comments

[shati.livejournal.com]

My first reaction is: Dumbledore is Peter Pan all growed up!

Clearly I have been reading too many crossovers lately.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

If we didn't have young Dumbledore canon now, that would make a great fic. I mean, Peter flies back from Neverland and gets adopted into a wizarding family, because, obviously, he can fly, and things go on from there.

[genarti]

That really, really would.

Wow. *shiny eyes*

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think it's entirely possible that it's Dumbledore rather than Rowling who is alluding to Peter Pan here. That kind of arch, rather self-conscious charm would be typical of him - at least as he appears in HP1 (I haven't read any further as yet, though it's on my list of things to do).

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

Agreed (I've read all the way through)--and sometimes it's an arch, rather self-conscious sense of drama and of enabling Events. "...If you are prepared" doesn't come into play till past the point you've reached, but it falls into a similar box.

Of course, now I am connecting the film An Awfully Big Adventure to this (based upon Bainbridge's novel, which I haven't read), since it and GoF were directed by Mike Newell and since-- well, spoilers. Anyway, in it Alan Rickman plays a character who plays Captain Hook. There is some decisively Pan-influenced, post-GoF HP fic out there, though I no longer remember titles or writers' names.