Theme in Treasure Island Essay

Fifteen Men on the Dead Mans Chest

I think, every one of us can say: when I was a kid, I wanted to find hidden treasures of pirates. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson is a novel about pirates, their secret treasures and an uninhabited island. The author of the book wants to amuse us by showing the never-ending struggle between good and evil in an extraordinary light in the world of pirates. The presentation on this book includes three major aspects: theme, style and value.

One aspect of the book is its theme. The main idea is to show a powerful victory of good forces over the evil ones. To accomplish this aim the author shows us the importance of coincidence in our lives (to prove this idea I would like to mention this quotation: I got bodily into the apple barrel, and found there was scarce an apple left. I had either fallen asleep when a heavy man sat down. I was just about to jump up when the man began to speak. It was Silvers voice, and, before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for all the world. From these dozen words I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended upon me alone.). One more important idea proved in this book is about adventures and fancies, and their importance (for example I brooded by the hour together over the map. I explored every acre of this surface. Sometimes the isle was thick with savages; sometimes full of dangerous animals; but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange and tragic as our actual adventures.). And as the most important problem developed in this novel I would name contrasting gold, money and treasures with human lives (this is very good shown in these lines: That was Flints treasure that we had come so far to seek, and that had cost already the lives of seventeen men from the Hispaniola. How many it had cost in the amassing, what blood and sorrow, what good ships scuttled on the deep, what shot of cannon, what shame and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell.).

The second aspect of Treasure Island is its style. All the book is written as a flashback, the main character remember his extraordinary adventures. The story is narrated by the approximately 13 years old boy. Nevertheless do not let the age of storyteller mislead you about the language of this book it is not as simple as a teenagers language could be. There are a lot of old and not actively used words like isle, oath, chine, fist, glim, timber, haze, etc. I liked that, speaking about island, there were maps given where I could look in and clearly understand where one or other place is. I find story fast moving. Readers interest is aroused from the very first sentences (there is a buccaneer poem as an introduction and one more thing - a line from which a reader gets interested in the book: I and all my pirates share the grave where these and their creations lie!). The whole style of this novel I would term emotive, imaginative and rather descriptive.

The final aspect of Treasure Island is its value. To my mind, this book is mainly interesting for youth that is why I did not learn much from it. I read it just as fascinating novel about secrets and if you do not take it very seriously you can enjoy the good plot of this book.

Treasure Island is an interesting novel which speaks about good and bad, about the moral values of humanity. Mainly, I liked this book, because it was an adventure story with elements of detective and fantasy stories. I would definitely recommend this book to all the young people, especially boys, who enjoy reading adventure novels about buccaneers and faraway lands, where they can use their imagination and try to guess what will happen next.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, published in Moscow by Astrell Press in 2005, original.