Treasure Island

 

 

Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "buccaneers and buried gold"

Stevenson begins his adventure tale with the unusual device of a young male narrator, giving the narrative an innocent and straightforward tone. This tone eases our entry into the dark criminal underworld of pirates and murderers. Since most readers are typically unfamiliar with such shady figures, Jim’s wide-eyed awe of them mirrors our own perspective. Jim is meek and fearful of the pirates’ drunken, swaggering, coarse language and tendency toward violence. 

When he calls out for his mother at the end of Chapter III, we are reminded that he is a scared little boy, and indeed a world apart from the sailors. Stevenson’s emphasis on Jim’s childishness in these early chapters highlights the degree to which Jim matures throughout the novel. Later, Jim is no longer cowed by the grizzly seamen and holds his own against them. Here at the beginning, however, the contrast between the narrator’s innocence and the characters’ worldly experience helps set the stage for the rite of passage into adulthood that Jim later undergoes.