Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook

Content Warning: This section discusses emotionally abusive relationships, graphic violence, and rape.

There is a real crocodile on the island in Lost Boy, just as there is in Peter Pan. In Henry’s novel, Peter invokes the specter of the crocodile in his initial story about a boy like Charlie who gets eaten. He later feeds Sal to the crocodile at the end of the story. The crocodile signifies Peter’s extreme violence and untrustworthiness. Significantly, he frames the crocodile story as a “ghost story,” and he does indeed see all the boys on the island as no better than ghosts, for all of them are basically already dead by the time they arrive. It is only a matter of time before the island claims them. For those familiar with the story of Peter Pan, the crocodile takes on an even more sinister connotation; in the original narrative, Captain Hook eventually dies when Peter feeds him to the crocodile. The foreshadowing in Peter’s ghost story therefore goes beyond the limits of the novel itself.