How is Bradbury's "The Veldt" an allusion to Barrie's "Peter Pan"?

A
literarywithin "" to the story Peter Pan would allude to one or
more of several things.

• Peter Pan was a playful rascal who never
  wanted to grow up.
• Peter Pan had a following of similar little boys who
  never wanted to grow up.
• They lived in a land past the second star on the
  right where they had non-stop adventures and outwitted a wily villain:


• Tinker Bell was Peter's friend and guide, with her magic pixie dust.


• Wendy and her brothers were invited to Never Land.
• She made the
  Lost Boys think of home and mother.
• Invited to stay in Never Land, Wendy
  and her brothers opted to return home.
• Peter Pan abandoned his parents for
  immortal childhood.
• Wendy and her brothers temporarily abandoned their
  parents for a short-lived adventure.
• The overall tone of this much beloved
  tale is lighthearted, fun and loving.
• Peter Pan is not perceived as being
  unbalanced and spewing hatred and danger.

"The Veldt"
shares some things in common, but they are antithetical opposites.

• The overall tone of is menacing, dark, threatening and dangerous.


• Wendy and Peter have gone past creating charming and over-indulged play scenes and
  become absorbed in creating angry, retributive scenes (for revenge and retribution).


• Their parents aren't abandoned for immortal youth, but for vicious
  retaliation.
• Their parents aren't abandoned: they are murdered.


• Wendy and Peter don't desire playful immortal youth; they desire control and power
  manifest through childhood's tools or toys.
• Peter and Wendy don't test
  their courage and resourcefulness against a wily villain; they antagonize, threaten, imprison
  and eliminate their well-meaning, though misguided parents.

As
the overall picture of each is set out in detail, one sees how there is similarity, but one more
readily sees how "The Veldt" is the antithetical dark
side of the Peter Pan tale. Where Peter Pan is innocently young and
adventuresome, Wendy and Peter Hadley are cruelly bent upon realizing their own dangerous
objectives.

So, to defend the idea that "The Veldt" is an allusion
to Peter Pan one must expand the definition of "allusion" to
include a negative or antithetical representation of a well know work etc. The current standard
definition of "allusion" applies to
those parts that call to mind a direct correspondence to or correlation
with the work etc alluded to.

title="Allusion. Literary Terms. lilia Melani. Brooklyn College">An
allusion: a brief reference to a person, event, place, or phrase. The writer assumes
[readers] recognize the reference.

To illustrate, if I
refer to "colored eggs in a basket," the allusion embodied therein calls forth a
direct recollection of the Easter Bunny. A negative, antithetical
image of an anti-Bunny who robs colored eggs form baskets is
not evoked. The only way a negative or
antithetical understanding might be evoked by an allusion would be if the negative
aspect were explicitly invoked in the language. For instance, I might say
"betrayed colored eggs in a basket"; this might call forth the
antithetical image of a villainous Easter Bunny.

While
it might be argued that Peter Pan inspired "The Veldt," it cannot
correctly be said that "The Veldt" alludes to the tale because there is
no direct correlation between the two--there
is an antithetical correlation, a light side to dark side, positive to
negative correlation. One might correctly say that "The Veldt"
references Peter Pan, since reference may be
of any sort: a positive reference, a negative one, an inverse reference, an antithetical one, or
a contrasting one.