Explore Peter Hollindale's claim that Peter Pan 'retains its magical Essay

Explore Peter Hollindale's claim that Peter Pan 'retains its magical elasticity and its ongoing modernity' (Reader 2, p. 1 - Essay Example This fantasy world is well suited to the need which parents and children have for storytelling and imagination. Another reason for the success of the play when it first came out was the depiction of characters who could fly: a technical feat that added to the entertainment value of the play, and inspired stagecraft like the use of a lightbulb to depict Tinkerbell. Because of the limitations of the stage quite a lot was left to the audience’s imagination. By all accounts J.M. Barrie himself was unsure about the play when it was being written and rehearsed, and he frequently changed the text, including names of characters, and details of the plot. (Carpenter and Prichard, p. 405) Some of the characters were drawn from real people, or indeed animals, in the author’s own life, for example his older brother who died in a skating accident and his pet dog who was the inspiration for Nana. The persona of Peter Pan, however, made Barrie immediately famous and captured the imagin ation of the literary world. Just as Barrie had reworked elements from his own life history the play, so he later reworked elements of the play into a novel, and others created films, cartoons, and even ballets and musicals out of this initial play. Peter Hollindale remarks that the play â€Å"retains its magical elasticity and its on-going modernity (Reader 2, p. 159) and describes how the character of Peter Pan himself contains endless sources of fascination. There are elements of innocence and childishness, like the fairy dust that makes people fly, and a lot of childish boasting but also some deeper psychological undercurrents that suggest more serious messages for an adult audience: â€Å"this is a play about the boundaries between childhood and adulthood.† (Reader 2, p. 161) There is something tragic about a boy fighting against his destiny to grow up and become an adult, a point not lost on Michael Jackson who named his home â€Å"Neverland† after the Peter Pan ’s fantasy world. In the play Peter Pan steadfastly resists any hint of growing older, the human children all gradually give in to their fate, even to the point where Wendy no longer has any need for Peter and his childish world. The story operates on two levels: the childish insistence on unrealistic and impossible things, and the adult realisation that there is no way to stop the passage of time and the loss of innocence. As Hollindale says: â€Å"The play provides a shared arena for children and grown-ups, playfully living forward and living back.† (Reader 2, p. 161.) The children get a taste of what lies ahead for them, while adults can indulge in some nostalgia for their childhood. There is a dark side to the play, and this can be seen in some of the far-fetched explanations that Peter Pan gives regarding the world he inhabits: â€Å"Wendy Where do you live now? Peter With the lost boys. Wendy Who are they? Peter They are the children who fall out of their prams when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to Never Land. I’m captain.† (Peter Pan: 1:1, lines 441-443) This is an indication, perhaps, that death is the ultimate way of resisting adulthood, and that Peter Pan in some respects represents the author’s way of working through the loss of his dead older brother,

Environmental Chemical Compound Research Writing Assignment Paper - 1

Environmental Chemical Compound Writing Assignment - Research Paper Example It is a non-corrosive, colourless gas2. At low concentrations it is odourless, but at very high concentrations it has an odour similar to that of ether3. It has a melting point of -157.7⠁ °C and a boiling point of -29.8⠁ °C4. It is soluble in water and many other organic solvents such as benzene and cyclohenxanone5. It has a molecular weight of 120.913 and does not burn in air6. It is normally compressed and stored as liquefied gas7. It has a vapour pressure of 4850 mmHg8. Because of the non-corrosive nature and very low boiling point of dichlorodifluoromethane, it was mainly used as a refrigerant in numerous home and industrial settings; it could not damage the mechanical components of the refrigerators. It was also used as an aerosol propellant in many pharmaceutical products such as Salbutamol and cosmetic sprays. Another use was in fire extinguishing systems, where it was used as a foaming agent. The chemical was also as an intermediate chemical in the production of other chemicals such as fluoropolymers9. Dichlorodifluoromethane was released into the environment during its production, transportation, storage and eventual use. Because of its high vapour pressure, any dichlorodifluoromethane that was released onto the ground quickly found its way into the atmosphere through volatilisation. Once in the atmosphere, the chemical accumulated in the troposphere. In this part of the atmosphere, the chemical was found to be very stable because it did not photodissociate at the wavelengths of light higher than 200 nm found in the troposphere. It accumulated in the troposphere and then spread around the world, and then diffused into the stratosphere after around thirty years. Once in the stratosphere, the chemical underwent photodissociation, influenced by the strong, short wavelength UV light10: These reactions contributed to the ozone destructions. The fact that a chlorine atom gets