{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5042",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 5042,
    "subject": "Changeling Hook",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2008-06-05T04:10:01+00:00",
    "last": "2008-06-05T04:10:01+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<48476719.3060907@gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dave Tallman",
        "address": "davetallman at msn.com"
      },
      "date": "2008-06-05T04:10:01+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Changeling Hook",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "If Peter Palmieri is Peter Pan, where's Captain Hook? Not far away -- \nthe narrator, Peter Palmer, has plenty of Hook imagery about him:\n\n1) \"great, stone-beaked, hook-billed snapping turtle\" which caught young \nchicks.\n2) \"the iron jaw of the mailbox closed on them. Have you ever noted how \neager it is to close when you have pulled out your hand?\" This is like \nHook's crocodile.\n3) \"I was supposed to be helping a captain teach...\". Captain Teach was \nBlackbeard.\n4) \"my father could bend a big nail..\". A hook is a bent nail.\n5) \"a fat boy who was tongue-tied and laughed at everything.\" Disney's \nMr. Smee.\n6) \"buck teeth and freckles\" one of Disney's lost boys, invited to \nbecome a pirate.\n7) \"bossed and mothered us from the towering dignity of thirteen,\" In \nthe musical the pirates wanted Wendy to be their mother, too.\n8) Pete hitchhiked, forming his hand into a hook shape.\n9) Captain Hook is known for his red cloth coat. Pete was a \"red\" \nturncoat who worked in textiles.\n10) He tied a rock to a frog, as Hook made victims walk the plank.\n11) He stabbed the frog with a broad blade, as Hook stabbed with his sword.\n12) \"We meant to play pirates or something.\"\n13) \"I was too tired to fence with them.\"\n\nSo narrator Pete is Captain Hook. He ends up on Neverland island, along \nwith Peter Pan and the Lost Boys; but alone in a cave, not fighting \nPeter. What's the symbolic meaning?\n\nPapa Palmieri thought Peter would leave them when he could no longer be \nMama's son. But the at the end it says, \"Papa was wrong. Peter still has \nthe same last name as always and I guess now he always will, but the \nboys don't call him by it much.\" So Peter remained a Palmieri.  How did \nthis work? He could become the \"son\" of Maria. She would bear stigma in \nthe eyes of the town for having a child out of wedlock, even though she \nwas innocent. It looks like Peter is the Christ figure in this story, \nson of the virgin Maria.\n\nThere's an official sequel to the original Barrie novel called \"Peter \nPan in Scarlet,\" in which Peter is tempted to become like Hook after \ndonning his scarlet coat. He defeats Hook by casting off the coat, \nnearly dying in the process. I think Wolfe read this and used it as a \nsymbol of redemption.\n\nThat's why Peter starts off playing Vikings and pirates with the others. \nIn Christian theology, Jesus took on the flesh and defeated sin on the \ncross. In this view, Peter Palmer is a repentant sinner. He comes back \nto the Church (Mama Church, Papa Pope, Apostle Paul, Maria, and Jesus). \nThe record of his sin is wiped clean and Jesus takes his place. The old \nman (the old self) is dead and left in the cave tomb. That may be why \nwhen Larry Niven asked for an explanation of this story Wolfe simply \nsaid \"The old man is dead.\""
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}