Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Treasure Island. Pirates. Booty. Cutlasses. Danger. Double-crossing. That’s about all there is to say about Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale of adventure on the high seas. But, of course, being me, I can say much, much more. Last night I was at a restaurant waiting for Chinese food to arrive at my table. I started jotting down words called to mind by this book: fast, roller coaster (and rolling sea), terrifying (even when I already knew the ending), gruesome, dark. Treasure Island is a children’s book through and through, but it is a terribly dark vision, a sort of bleak, godless Narnia.

[Learn about Stevenson at http://www.online-literature.com/stevenson/ or at http://www.robert-louis-stevenson.org/.]

Young Jack Hawkins works and lives at his parents’ inn. He becomes involved with pirates when a mysterious guest comes to stay--to hide there. Eventually, Jack becomes the owner of a treasure map--a map of Treasure Island. Only a few other people know about the map and the island, but each of them wants that map pretty bad. Jack works through the unfailingly honorable Doctor and Squire (although the squire is a bit gullible) and comes to set sail on the Hispaniola with his friends and the motley crew (surely this is the original motley crew). I’m not going to give away too much of the plot here. Go get the book. It’s a quick read, so read it--and read it aloud to anyone between 8 and 13 years old.

The pace of the book is masterful--in a sense, tidal. Huge waves of action come inexorably at you and then ebb away not to disappear but to gather strength for another assault of the beach. Prior to the sea journey, the pirates appear just one, briefly, then another, then two or three, like an ongoing tide themselves until the book and the Hispaniola’s honest crew are totally swamped with pirates. This breath-catching pace was aided and abetted by Stevenson’s able use of foreshadowing. A character expressed and then dismissed a doubt. Another character was just a bit off the norm. A name was dropped, a feature was mentioned. The sense of danger and doom coming in wave after wave began on about page 1 and ended on about page 296 (of 298). No let up.

Stevenson also draws characters and creates images that are striking and original. Ben Gunn, ghostly and odd. The ship marooned up a river and laying on its side. Guns sticking into the portals of the tiny fort. Dead bodies lying on a blood-drenched deck. The star of the menagerie, though, is certainly the pirate captain Long John Silver. I don’t know the provenance of pirate characters, but surely all pirates since have borne a debt to Long John Silver. Shaggy-haired, peg-legged, parrot squawking on shoulder, and above all so two-faced that he almost has no face at all--he’s elusive in all of his outrageousness. Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow is the best portrayal of Long John Silver that I can imagine. He has that same unctuousness, slipperiness. However, Jack Sparrow does seem to develop loyalties. He has a side to be on. Not Long John Silver. He is ever and only on his own side.

I was intrigued by pirate images. Peter Pan’s Captain Hook seems to draw greatly from Stevenson’s character, except missing a hand instead of a leg. Depp’s Captain Sparrow seems to be a direct descendant. When anyone thinks of “pirate” they must surely envision some amalgamation of these three. Kidnapped is next on my reading list. What pirate will that book reveal? It struck me that the Hook/Silver pirate is sort of a personified dragon (or vice versa). The dragon symbolizes mindless greed, mindless amassing of whatever is the chosen item--but it is often treasure. There is no life of the heart. It is not a “feeling” life.

Only the mid-book switch of narrators is awkward in this book--it even makes for clunky chapter titles. All of a sudden two chapters are first-person narrated by the Doctor instead of by Jack Hawkins, who narrates the rest of the book. I wish Stevenson had found another answer to getting out the doctor’s experiences while Jack is absent. Otherwise, this book is rapidly excellent.

At least there are no token women in this book--no blonde-of-the-month for a perfunctory romance. Except for one scene, this book is all male. The non-token woman is Jack’s mother, who shows great bravery and determination early in the book. She is a warrior in defense of her inn and her boy. Romance can so muck up a good adventure story. Look what it does to Depp’s Jack Sparrow!

A high recommend for this book for children and adults both. Read it before your next Pirates of the Caribbean excursion and you won’t be sorry.

NOTE OF SCHIZOPHRENIA: How did the same man who wrote Treasure Island, Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde, and Kidnapped also write the insipid A Child’s Garden of Verses?

SIDE BAR: I am especially intrigued by Treasure Island now that I have begun writing one of my own. For example, at one point the idea of an apple barrel freely available to the ship’s crew is oddly introduced in a passage about the liberality of the owners. Turns out, the author needs someplace for Jack to hide to overhear the pirates’ plans. It is part of the god-like-ness of writing a fiction. A problem? Voila! An apple barrel. Writing a novel is a cosmic chess game, an infinite playing of “house,” like being let loose in a toy store. As a child I lived in a world of worlds, of fantasy places and people. Posing and peopling a novel is just like that except that it has to communicate and have at least a modicum of coherence. Treasure Island is great for seeing how the author works. Its bones show, but not in a way that distracts. It’s just plainly written and straightforward.