Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Friday, November 5, 2010 by: Pawan Kumar Goyal
Fun. Not earthshattering, not spectacular, but a decent-enough adventure novel for the younger set.
The plot is standard adventure story boiler-plate, but considering the age of the text, I’ll give it a little leeway for a lack of originality. Jim Hawkins is a young lad bound for adventure, chosen by circumstance to join a gang of buccaneers on their search for buried treasure. While consumed with the headstrongedness of youth, he’s also savvy enough to survive many scrapes that would kill lesser boys. Or men.
For a young adult novel, Treasure Island has a surprisingly malleable take on morality, embodied through Silver's handling of events.
Silver, however, twists and turns all people to his advantage, but somehow still ends up on top. He's not all evil, just opportunistic, which is some instances is even worse. At least with evil, you know where you stand. It is this flexibility of moral coding, as well as the theory that a gentleman's word is his bond and honour, that adds a weird ethical ambiguity little seen to such an extent in young adult literature.
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