by Robert Louis Stevenson
p. 1883
It feels strange to admit that I’ve never actually read Treasure Island when the story is itself
such a mainstay in pop culture. For sure, it is a tenacious tale that has been
reinterpreted over and over again every couple of years for almost a century and a half, and no doubt it
will continue to endure the ages because it is such a classic adventure tale
with vibrant characters.
It’s always the infamous rogue pirate Long John Silver who
gets the most press when people think of Treasure
Island, and that’s not a bad impulse, per
se, but though Silver is a dynamic and complex character, finally reading him
as he’s written made me realize he’s actually rather pathetic. Silver may have
been able to round up a herd of mutineers to steal the treasure, but his grasp
on their loyalty is tenuous at the best of times and in the end, he is defeated by a smaller party
of men, half of whom weren’t even accustomed to sea life, and one of whom is a
14-year-old boy. The film portrayals have gotten one thing right though: Long
John Silver is a man of ever-shifting motives and he goes through the whole range of
them, but he does have a special fondness for Jim Hawkins and I felt it
strongly throughout the book, though I wish we would have had more context as
to why.
As for Jim Hawkins, I was a little disappointed that he was
so... competent. You have to keep reminding yourself that your narrator is a
teenage boy (even upon the retelling of the story, some years later), because
he doesn’t present as one. He makes a lot of mistakes, but he’s astoundingly efficient
for a boy who has never set foot on a boat before. Hawkins is the catalyst for
the treasure hunt, he discovers the mutiny plot, he single-handedly regains control of the ship, endures a bit of suffering and isolation and eventually kills a man who
attempts to attack him, and none of this seems to have a lasting effect on his
psyche. I would imagine in real life, a boy would show a little more reticence
in Jim’s place but young Hawkins is quite bold when confronting the pirates,
and he never really sees any consequences for his rash behavior. Everything pretty
much works out for the kid. Still, Treasure Island was intended as a boys' adventure novel; that Jim shows incredible mettle and comes out on top is not all that surprising considering the genre.
I’m actually surprised that Smollett, the captain of the Hispaniola, which takes the party to and
from their voyage, isn’t a more renown pop culture icon because he was totally
awesome. The captain had some of the best lines in the book and it was during
the parts where he exerted his leadership that I most felt myself attuned to the
action. I wish Robert Louis Stevenson had written a book entirely about Captain
Smollett and his prior adventures because I would totally read that.
I am a kid who grew up on "Muppet Treasure Island" and Disney's futuristic reinvention, "Treasure Planet," and I like both of those adaptations, even if they soft-pedal things a bit. Last year I caught a new mini-series adaptation with a pretty great cast, including Eddie Izzard as Long John Silver and Elijah Wood (of all people) as Ben Gunn. For whatever reason, it was on SyFy, so I watched it expecting some fantastical twist on the tale but it ended up having no science fiction elements and I'm still perplexed as to how SyFy ended up with it. That version was a fairly faithful update but what I'm really interested in is the new Starz series starting next month, "Black Sails," which is a prequel to Treasure Island featuring a young John Silver. In an age where the antihero is king, it should be quite compelling to see a story entirely from the pirates' point of view.
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