Innocence and Perception

Peter Pan, Annie LeibovitzPaul Auster provides a lyrical narrative of the human perception of space in City of Glass. Through David Quinn’s experiences, he illustrates how the human perception continuing alters with time in phases. In doing so, it is as if he has taken the developmental phases of Tuan and put them into narrative form.

Auster notes how the phases of perception reappear to us later in life. For instance he mentions how Quinn occasionally feels as if his deceased child is still at his side: ‘Every once in a while, he would suddenly feel what it had been like to hold the three-year-old boy in his arms…It was a physical sensation, an imprint of the past that had been left in his body, and he had no control over it.’ (11) According to Auster, the perceptional phases leave an emotional imprint on our muscle memory.

With Peter, the development of his perception was interrupted at the age of three because his father locked him in a dark room for nine years. By keeping him away from human contact, Peter’s father hoped that he would emerge with God’s language, a language that was drastically different than the human language. So in those nine years, he remained a three year old, developing his own understanding of reality. It wasn’t until he was discovered that his perceptional development of the ‘normal’ world was restarted. But by then it was too late, his prime development years were gone. After a period of treatments to recondition him to the outside world, Peter is able to communicate with people, but only roughly. He still has his own understanding of reality that he is unable to explain to everyone else. His three year old self is still prevalent, ‘The little boy who can never grow up’ (34). And because he developed an understanding of the world so drastically different than everyone else, he and his father believe he lives closer to God.

Once Peter was conditioned enough to be released, the doctors said to him: ‘You can go now, there’s nothing more we can do for you. Peter Stillman, you are a human being (30).’ This passage reiterates the theme of innocence. This theme is used repeatedly in literature, particularly childhood classics such as J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.

In the opening passage of Peter Pan, Barrie illustrates the patterns found in a child’s mind: ‘Catch [a doctor] trying to draw a map of a child’s mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it…and these are probably roads in the island; for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with…coral reefs, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes…and caves...and princes. It would be an easy map if that were all; but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers…’ He continues discussing the Neverland saying, ‘On these magic shores children at play are for ever breaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.’

As the story progresses, we understand the overarching theme is the issues of growing up into adulthood. Barrie reiterates this over and over again, ‘You see, Wendy when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And so there ought to be one fairy for every boy and girl…but children know such a lot now, they soon don’t believe in fairies.’ Here, Barrie explains how innocence was brought into the world at the beginning, and how our persistence for knowledge and lack of faith cause it to diminish. Innocence to Barrie is like the God language to Auster. It is in our innocence, our childhood that we are closest to God. As we condition ourselves to human knowledge and perception, we move further away from God.

As previously mentioned, Quinn had an emotional imprint of his son eternally with him. Likewise, Barrie explains how we continue to have an imprint of innocence on into adulthood: ‘At first Mrs. Darling did not know, but after thinking back into her childhood she just remembered a Peter Pan who was said to live with the fairies…She had believed in him at the time, but now that she was married and full of sense she quite doubted whether there was any such person.’ Even though Mrs. Darling’s memory of innocence is buried deep within, it is still there.

Similarly, Auster discusses the imprint of innocence in his passage on Dumpty: ‘Humpty Dumpty: the purest embodiment of the human condition. Listen carefully, sir. What is an egg? It is that which has not yet been born. For men are eggs…We exist but we have not yet achieved the form that is our destiny. We are pure potential, an example of the not-yet arrived. For man is a fallen creature—we know that from Genesis. Humpty Dumpty is also a fallen creature. He falls from his wall, and no one can put him back together again…But that is what we must all now strive to do. It is our duty as human beings: to put the egg back together again. For each of us, sir, is Humpty Dumpty. And to help him is to help ourselves. (128)’

According to Barrie and Auster, the innocence is in each of us. It is up to us to allow it to reemerge and run free.