Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson is not a book with a particular message, rather a simple and pure adventurous tale of a young man seeking treasure and himself. In Themes in Treasure Island by Gary Carey, he explains that folktales are of young men or women who leave their lives behind to seek fortune, such as “the myth of Jason embarking to bring home the dragon-guarded Golden Fleece, Odysseus on his hazardous journey back to Ithaca from Troy, and the medieval romance of Perceval seeking the Grail.” Carey believes all these stories, myths, and tales have one central theme -- it is an adventurous quest. Within this quest comes the rituals, the guardians, and the struggles that test even the bravest in the search of himself. There are many tests that the protagonist must face to succeed in his goal to obtain the lost treasure. The final tests and guardians that Jim Hawkins, the protagonist, encounters determines his true goal of the quest he accepted. I agree that within each quest tale there is a portrayal of an adventure and inner soul-searching of some sort, yet what Carey fails to mention is that the quest serves as a plot symbol. Behind each quest is a story of the protagonist's struggle to find himself, but the symbol represents the human struggle as well. A person may struggle trying find himself in the world today, not knowing who is he or what his life’s purpose is yet. Many readers are able to relate to Treasure Island because not only is the protagonist trying to find himself, but some readers also long for the quest of their life (Cliff Notes).
Carey explains that Treasure Island has a variety of common elements to other quest tales: the rituals, the guardians, and the struggles. The typical ritual of a quest ...
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...t wealth, valuables, and his own ethical adulthood, which is a treasure in itself. Treasure Island is a tale that indulges readers at an unconscious level because the readers can relate to Jim’s quest to find himself. (Cliff Notes)
From this critical analysis, I have experienced a new insight on Treasure Island. My idea of a quest before reading Gary Carey’s analysis was a rough adventure the protagonist forgoes only to obtain a treasure. Now, Carey has provided a further definition to the term quest. It is a tale of hardship, courage, and one’s place in the world. The quest story is often an analogy of the protagonist’s salvation and life’s purpose. I agree that Jim finds himself through the other characters as well as through perilous adventures.
Works Cited
Carey, Gary. CliffsNotes on Treasure Island. 20 Dec 2013
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These feelings drive O’Brien to seek out a journey in order to find out what is truly valuable to his self being. His adventure of self-knowledge mirrors the narrative archetype of the Hero’s Quest. One might argue that as a result of O’Brien’s uncooperative nature towards his circumstances, he is able to pursue the main motive of the Hero’s Journey, in which he departs from his ordinary world and is able to obtain the life treasure of self-acknowledgement.
However, with the sighting of land, new worries and troubles are in the air. The pirates are not content with their leadership—a doctor, a wealthy man, and a weak captain. With land and mutiny in view, most of the crew heads to shore and lines are drawn for the standoff that is to come; Jim sided with the “leadership” and a few other faithful crew members, and the other side was the rest of the crew led by Long John Silver (an infamous pirate and the antagonist of the novel). With drawn lines and already many deaths, the first days were eventful and full of excitement. On Treasure Island, tensions were high as were the death rate and the number of those wounded.
When someone hears the word quest, their mind automatically goes to a mythical land of dragons and knights in shining armor. However, Thomas Foster’s book How to Read Literature Like a Professor states that this shouldn’t always be the case. In Chapter One: Every Trip Is a Quest, Foster claims that a quest in literature can take place in any time period and can be as mundane as grocery shopping. In order to classify an event as quest, it needs to follow certain criteria. There needs to be “a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials en route, and a real reason to go there” (Foster, 3). Furthermore, considering the definition of a quest by Thomas Foster, it is clear that the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, fits
The case study of “What should we do with Jim?” has been read and a set amount of questions has been asked about the reading, which will be answered by the following:
These timeless tales relate a message that readers throughout the ages can understand and relate to. While each of these tales is not exactly alike, they do share a common core of events. Some event and or character flaw necessitates a journey of some kind, whether it is an actual physical journey or a metaphorical one. The hardships and obstacles encountered on said journey lead to spiritual growth and build character. Rarely does a person find himself unchanged once the journey is over.
The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain has been called many things, over the years, by critics and scholars. Along with the plethora of criticism about its’ depiction of slavery and its’ use of the word “nigger”, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered by many to be the father of all American Literature. This high praise is puzzling, considering all its’ faults coupled with its’ unsatisfying ending. However upon a deeper examination of the text itself a parallel emerges among The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the classic Greek epics. In both novels an epic journey is employed by the author to provide a moral education to the main character, as well as shaping the plot and adding meaning to the story as a whole. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the physical journey is what makes the book a classic, it not only provides a moral schooling for Huck, and it is a safe sanctuary for Huck and Jim against the ills of 18th century America.
In the short story A&P written by John Updike the main character Sammy goes through a series of events. The events in this short story much relate to chapter one in Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature like a Professor. Chapter one in Foster’s book is all about quest motif. Sammy is someone you can call a quester because he faces a quest motif. A quest motif is a journey that has a specific theme. Sammy’s journey or ‘quest’ throughout the story has the theme of irony.
Stevenson, R. (2009) ‘My first Book: ‘Treasure Island’’, in Montgomery H and Watson N (eds), Children’s Literature Classic Text and Contemporary Trends, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan in association with Open University
The Hero’s Journey is a pattern of narrative that appears in novels, storytelling, myth, and religious ritual. It was first identified by the American scholar Joseph Campbell in his book A Hero with Thousand Faces. Campbell also discussed this pattern in his interview to Bill Moyers which was later published as a book The Power of Myths. This pattern describes the typical adventure of the archetype known as The Hero, the person who goes out and achieves great deeds. Campbell detailed many stages in the Hero’s Journey, but he also summarized the pattern in three fundamental phases: Separation, Ordeal, and Return that all heroes, in spite of their sex, age, culture, or religion, have to overcome in order to reach the goal. Alice in Wonderland, written by Lewis Carroll, provides a good example of the Hero's Journey. This story describes the adventures of Alice, a young English girl, in Wonderland. Although she lacks some of the stages identified by Campbell, she still possesses many of them that are necessary for a Hero to be considered a Hero.
The constant struggle between good and evil is a story that is as old as time. Several authors have produced popular works that address this conflict in different ways. Some authors discuss this topic through ideas of greatly fought battles while others use fairy tale witches and princesses. None the less, this idea is perpetually repeated throughout literature. Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure novel Treasure Island exemplifies the religious ideals of the good and evil struggle that plagued Stevenson’s childhood, portrayed by the various pirate characters found within the novel.
Often there can be seen many parallels between a writer’s life and experiences and his or her works. A biographical approach to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island is not easy, as at first sight the characters don’t have much in common with the author and up to the time the story was written, Stevenson hadn’t visited the West Indies or other exotic places. But there still are possibilities to link Stevenson’s biography with his work.
Fathers are men who help to shape and mold children, youth, and young adults into the adults they become. Some fathers are biological, but many are men that are introduced through daily interactions and occurrences. The father figure may have a positive or negative impact on the child. This is true with the character Jim Hawkins from Treasure Island. Many characters guide his growth throughout the book with good and bad traits. He looks for a father because his own father is not a factor in his life. He dies when Jim is a young child and does not seem to have a significant effect on Jim’s life. Ben Gunn, Dr. Livesey, and John Silver provide Jim with examples and characteristics he incorporates into the person he becomes. Jim, like many others, find father figures to identify with and pattern their own lives after whether it is a blood relative or a person they choose from their surroundings.
Crossing the Threshold - After Jim leaves home, he boards a ship. He has agreed to work as a cabin boy with Long John Silver who also disguises himself as a cook, but was actually a pirate captain. When he first meets Mr. Silver, he “plucked up courage at once, crossed the threshold, and walked right up to where the man stood, propped on his crutch, talking to a customer.”(68) He crosses the threshold when he decided to leave home, and embark on his own journey to treasure island. He promises to himself that he would go “to sea myself; to sea in a schooner, with a piping boat swain, and pigtailed singing seamen; to sea, bound for an unknown island, and to seek for buried treasures!”(66) This was a promise/proposal Jim had made to himself, that he would become more accustomed to the sea, and to find the buried treasures hidden of treasure island.
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2003. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.
Mark Twain, the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, tells a compelling story of the mischievous and imaginative child called Tom Sawyer. The protagonist leads his friends through these creative journeys. Because of Tom’s sly personality, he ends up in trouble quite often. However, the clever young boy is able to use his charm and shrewd tricks to avoid his problems. This book displays real life struggles a boy can face during his adolescent age. The author captures the audience with a perspective on the realizations children are able to face within a community. As the story progresses, Tom grows into a mature young man while making mature choices. His childish pranks and games start to diminish throughout the book. Tom starts to learn