A nearly 50-year-old man who cannot grow up and lives in "Neverland" is nearly as sad as the adults who feel they must regress to childhood with "whoooing" ghosts, witches, and goblins in their front yards for the month of October. This is not childhood revisited, it is adulthood resisted, and the only people it serves are the merchandisers and merchants who gleefully look forward to the Halloween season as the beginning of an orgy of holiday spending. As author Elliot continues, "In time, infantile societies become degraded, unable to meet the realities that face them" (Elliot 86). Unfortunately, it is quite easy to see our own society degrading as it crawls further into childhood and less onward into adulthood. We have already seen the degradation of neighborhoods, families, and social life in much of our society, and our self-centered lifestyles geared to earning more money to buy more "Stuff"...
[ View Full Essay]