Captain Hook had sailed every sea and defeated every enemy that had ever been foolish enough to stand against him.
His reputation for ruthlessness was well earned and carefully maintained and it served him well on the open ocean.
But his inability to forgive Peter Pan had become something that his enemies could have used against him if they had known.
An obsessed man is a predictable man, and a predictable man can be led exactly where his opponent wants him to go.
Peter Pan understood this without fully articulating it — he simply knew that Hook would always come when provoked.
He could bait the captain as easily as setting a trap because Hook's pride made his next move entirely foreseeable.
The quality that made Hook fearsome to his crew made him manageable to the one boy he most wanted to destroy.
Hook was dangerous because he never forgave his enemies.

Hook's psychology represents one of literature's clearest portraits of what happens when pride refuses to release its grip.
He is intelligent, cultured, and brave — Barrie makes clear that Hook is not simply a villain but a tragic figure.
His tragedy is that he possesses every quality necessary for a remarkable life except the one quality that would save him.
The capacity for forgiveness — not for the enemy's sake but for one's own — is the quality Hook entirely lacks.
Without it, every victory becomes temporary because there is always a new insult waiting to reignite the old wound.
Without it, every morning begins with a grievance rather than a possibility, poisoning the day before it has started.
Hook's iron hook is the story's perfect symbol — a hand replaced by a weapon, tenderness replaced by the capacity for harm.
He became what his inability to forgive made him, and that is the most dangerous kind of person in any world at all.
Hook was dangerous because he never forgave his enemies.