Treasure Island

Image credit: Amazon UK

Continuing on with my canonical children’s bender, this week I sat down and read what is probably one of the most influential and celebrated stories in the adventure genre. Sing ‘yo ho ho and a bottle of rum’ because this week the book of choice was Treasure Island.

Absolutely everyone knows the story of Treasure Island even if, like me, they haven’t actually read it. Because of its untiring longevity, it has spawned hundreds of adaptations, miniseries, animated movies, and characters in popular culture. My first introduction to the tale was Muppet Treasure Island.

The story follows young Jim Hawkins who is thrust into the adventure of a lifetime when his family’s inn becomes home to a pirate being hunted by his old shipmates. After his death, Jim is bequeathed the coveted treasure map of Captain Flint and with the help of a local squire and doctor, he organises a ship to go on a treasure hunt. Little do the heroes know that the crew of seemingly loyal and capable seamen they have hired are actually a bunch of buccaneers led by a member of Flint’s own crew who is hell-bent on taking the treasure for himself and his ‘gentlemen of fortune’.

Adventure on the high seas, murder, mayhem, heroic acts of kindness, and subterfuge, Treasure Island has it all, making it one of the most of exciting and inclusive children’s books ever! While Jim’s own character journey of growing from a boy into a man amidst such an exciting backdrop is absolutely wonderful, the real focal point of the book is the villain: Long John Silver. The epitome of charismatic cutthroats, Silver is one of the best villains in literature, being instantly likeable even in print and then providing readers with a real shock when his true intentions and character are revealed. In Dungeons & Dragons terms, he’s truly what we would call ‘chaotic neutral’, basically meaning he’s looking out for number one and it makes no difference to him if he needs to suck up to the law or kill his own messmates to get what he wants. While a lot of the other characters can read a little bit blandly on the page, Silver is charismatic and likeable from the very first and you keep reading through the pages to get to the next scene he’s in.  He’s truly a driving force in this book and you can definitely see how often his ghost pops up in modern culture, especially with the recent re-ignition of pirate romanticism in Captain Jack Sparrow and Barbossa.

It’s strange to think that the author of Treasure Island, a swashbuckling family classic, is also responsible for The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one of the most significant stories in the gothic horror canon, because the prose is significantly different. While so many authors have a signature style or some sort of recognisable stamp upon their works, Stevenson is one who is a true literary chameleon, being able to articulate epic stories in any genre, like switching flawlessly from one language to another.

Image credit: Raptis Rare Books

As for the story itself, it has absolutely everything one could want! A high-risk quest for riches, secret agendas and mutinous plots, fun and rollicking battle sequences, and a rich sense of adventure to stimulate even the most stubborn reader. There’s even a fantastic adult layer of psychological horror and trauma that’ll get the grown-ups tingling too! So there’s no reason why absolutely everyone should go through life without reading Treasure Island!

Treasure Island was written by Robert Louis Stevenson and published by Cassell & Co. (London) in 1883. Despite being over a century old, the story is still celebrated as one of the most influential tales of all time, with many popular characters and remakes attesting to that.