Treasure Island | Robert Louis Stevenson | full plot overview

Treasure Island
 by Robert Louis Stevenson

Overview

In the mid 1700s, Jim Hawkins is a twelve-year-old boy whose family owns an inn near the town of Bristol, England. One night a drunken sailor named Billy Bones arrives and gives Jim a little money to watch for his former shipmates, who Billy says are after his valuables. Some of Billy's shipmates do eventually arrive, literally frightening poor Billy to death, but fail in their attempt to steal Billy's property – which turns out to be a map to buried treasure on a distant island. 

A local nobleman, Squire Trelawney, decides to buy a ship and hire a crew to go search for the treasure, and will take young Jim on board as cabin boy. Other members of the crew are Captain Smollett, who is quite suspicious of the sailors and the purpose of their voyage; Dr. Livesey, a local physician who is now ship's doctor; and Long John Silver, a one-legged tavern keeper who's been hired as ship's cook. During the voyage out on the Hispaniola, Jim is befriended by the smart, slick-talking Long John Silver and almost begins to trust him. 

But before long, Jim and the captain and therest of the honest crew realize they're trapped on board a ship full of pirates who intend to mutiny once the treasure is found. And Silver is one of those pirates. At the island, keeping up the pretense of not knowing about the pirates, Jim goes ashore with the mutineers – but when they kill two men who refuse to join them, Jim runs away to save his own life. While hiding on the island Jim encounters a man named Ben Gunn, who says he was marooned there years before by Captain Flint –the same captain whom Billy Bones and Long John Silver served. 

Gunn offers to help fight the mutineers in return for passage home and a share of the treasure. Trelawney, Smollett, and Livesey are forced to abandon ship and hide out in an island fortress with Jim and Ben.

 The mutineers then hoist the pirate's flag– the white skull and crossbones on a black background, sometimes called the Jolly Roger– over the Hispaniola. After the pirates fire on the fortress, Long John Silver approaches it under a lag of truce and demands their surrender. Captain Smollett refuses and the pirates attack again, wounding Smollett and continuing the siege.

That night, Jim slips away from the fortress,takes Ben Gunn's makeshift boat, and goes out to the Hispaniola. There are only two pirates still on boardand while they're in the midst of a drunken quarrel, Jim manages to cut the anchor ropesand let the tide carry the ship out. But the exhausted Jim falls asleep in thelittle boat, and it also drifts out with the tide and with the ship. Jim gets back on board and finds that onepirate has killed the other one during their fight. 

Jim is forced to shoot the remaining piratein self-defense, and after re-anchoring the ship he goes back to shore to try to helpthe others. Returning to the fortress in darkness, Jim is caught by Long John Silver and five other pirates.

 Silver tells him that Captain Smollett and the others traded the treasure map for their freedom and are gone. The next morning, Silver and the other pirates take Jim with them as a hostage and go out to follow the treasure map.

But when they find the place where the treasureshould be, there is nothing. The pirates realize, now, why Smollett and his men were willing to hand over the treasure map – because it was worthless. Now that they've lost both the treasure andthe ship, the remaining pirates turn against Long John Silver. They are about to attack him when three ofthem are shot dead by Dr. Livesey, Ben Gunn, and another of the honest sailors.

They all stayed behind to rescue both Jim and Long John Silver, since Silver did help to protect Jim from the other pirate's back at the stockade. It turns out that Ben Gunn actually found and re-hid the treasure months before. After abandoning the remaining mutineers on the island, Gunn, Jim and the others take the treasure on board the Hispaniola and set sail for home.

 At the first port of call, Long John Silver steals some valuables and jumps ship, getting away clean. But the rest return to Bristol, where they divide up the treasure and make the decision never to follow treasure maps again. Treasure Island is largely an exciting and straightforward adventure tale, though it is also a coming-of-age story for Jim Hawkins.

He is tested in every way by the quest to find treasure in exotic places while encountering danger at nearly every turn. It is a simple metaphor for a boy becoming a man. Jim must learn to recognize what is worthwhile and what isn't – that is, to recognize the real meaning of "treasure" – and, most important,learn which men are trustworthy and which are not.

 Long John Silver is one of Jim's greatest tests, for Silver is far smarter and braver than most of the other simple-minded, drunken pirates. Silver is described as an educated gentleman who would seem to be an unlikely pirate, but that is precisely what makes him so dangerous. 

Silver also represents an image of what Jim could become if he is not careful. That is, if Jim does not use his own intelligence and bravery wisely, he could end up living outside the law the way Silver does. Jim Hawkins's journey to Treasure Island and back can be seen as the universal human adventure of finding one's own strength and worth through self reliance learning that that is the real treasure. 

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