Treasure Island

I recently finished Treasure Island, mainly cause it was a book I feel like I should've read already. And indeed, I probably should've read it when I was 12--it makes a good primer for youthful imagination, a gateway to higher reading perhaps, but it's not exactly mind-blowing literature. A competently-told adventure story I suppose, and mercifully concise, but possessing none of the epic grandeur of a masterpiece.

I will say this though; the ending was much more melancholy than what I was expecting--for I do recall watching various cinematic adaptations of the tale growing up, all of which portrayed Treasure Island as a coming-of-age tale, emphasizing the relationship between the bright-eyed Jonathan Hawkins and the pirate-with-a-heart-of-gold Long John Silver, all set against the exotic backdrop of a swashbuckling adventure on the high seas.

But in the book itself, I beheld no coming-of-age self-awareness, no bildungsroman narrative of a boy becoming a man, no sudden moral awakening; the island itself is not lush and tropic and paradisaical or Eden-esque; the pirates are not romantic, adventurous scallywags--no, the pirates are filthy, cowardly, and despicable; the island is a hotbed of typhoid and extreme solitude; and the narrative leaves none morally awakened or mature, but rather leaves most everyone dead and the survivors damaged.

Hawkins himself has no romantic memories of the island or the pirates, but only nightmares of Long John Silver, and remembers the island itself only as "accursed."

What's more, none of the characters seem to exercise any real agency; everyone just gets sucked into the treasure hunt seemingly whether they want to or not. As soon as the characters, whether pirate or British, learn of a treasure, they all just head after it, mindlessly, without a moment of introspection. There is no noble purpose for the hunt--no mother's inn to be saved, no orphanage to rescue, just treasure to be dug up, for its own sake.

The treasure itself is a zone of negative energy, a sort of black hole that sucks everyone into its orbit against their will, destroying lives both literally and metaphorically; Silver loses a leg, Pew his eyes, Ben his sanity, the pirates their lives, and Hawkins his pleasant dreams, all in the pursuit of a treasure that is recovered as an afterthought.

All in all, if any lesson is to be gleaned from Treasure Island, it would seem to be a negative commentary on the pursuit of riches for their own sake.