The Nexus Archive
Gothic Fiction · Novel
Treasure Island
by Stevenson · The Anatomist of the Split Self · Victorian Gothic, 1850-1894
Stevenson's sea-adventure novel of maps, mutiny, greed, courage, and Long John Silver's dangerous charm.
- Intermediate
- 1883
- ~5 hr read
- 10 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the The Map Unfolded guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
A Boy Among Experienced Men
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, published as a book in 1883, begins far from its destination, at an English seaside inn. Jim Hawkins helps his parents run the Admiral Benbow, where an intimidating lodger pays him to watch for a sailor with one leg. The stranger brings the dangers of his former life into a household already troubled by illness and unpaid bills. Before an island can become a place of adventure, someone else’s fear has become part of Jim’s daily work.
Jim tells the story afterward, at the request of the men who shared the voyage. His account sometimes distinguishes what he thought at the time from what he learned later. He knows the coast around his home, but the language, work and authority of a ship are new to him. Adult confidence offers little assurance: a man may be generous, knowledgeable and pleasant without being trustworthy, while another’s unwelcome precautions may have a sound purpose.
The voyage depends on practical things as well as courage: fresh water, powder, a safe anchorage, enough hands to sail, and information that reaches the right people. A map can describe where to look without settling who has a right to what is found. The opening dedication and verse place the tale among earlier adventures; Jim’s narration gives those promises the scale of a boy’s experience, in which excitement, bereavement and danger arrive together.
The opening pages
The Stranger at Admiral Benbow
PART ONE--The Old Buccaneer
I
The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral Benbow
Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17—, and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.
I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow--a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:
“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest--
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste and still looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.
“This is a handy cove,” says he at length; “and a pleasant sittyated grog-shop. Much company, mate?”
My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity.
“Well, then,” said he, “this is the berth for me. Here you, matey,” he cried to the man who trundled the barrow; “bring up alongside and help up my chest. I’ll stay here a bit,” he continued. “I’m a plain man; rum and bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there for to watch ships off. What you mought call me? You mought call me captain. Oh, I see what you’re at--there”; and he threw down three or four gold pieces on the threshold. “You can tell me when I’ve worked through that,” says he, looking as fierce as a commander.
Chapter guides · 10
The Map Unfolded
The Terror Becomes a Map
The papers from Billy Bones’s chest turn a household’s danger into an expedition that Trelawney is eager to begin.
A debt collected under threat
Billy Bones makes Jim’s family live with his fear of former shipmates. After Jim’s father dies, the captain receives the black spot and dies of a stroke; Jim and his mother must seek their unpaid lodging money from his chest. She insists on taking only her due, but counting unfamiliar coins delays them. Jim carries away the oilskin packet as they flee. Pew’s search is for those papers, rather than the money the raiders find, and the arrival of the revenue officers ends in his accidental death.
Violence becomes opportunity
The packet contains an account of plunder and a chart with directions to Flint’s buried stores. Trelawney immediately imagines a ship and a fortune; Livesey agrees to the voyage but fears the squire’s inability to keep quiet. Jim has acquired something valuable by surviving other men’s pursuit of it. The map changes how the adults describe that danger: what terrified the household now looks like an opportunity, though the surviving pirates still have reasons to seek the papers.
Counting the Loyal Men
The Cook Has a Crew
Jim’s overheard conversation gives Captain Smollett’s precautions a purpose the boy had not understood.
Trust earned and misplaced
At Bristol, Silver’s useful advice and apparently candid account of Black Dog’s escape persuade Jim that his first suspicions were mistaken. Smollett makes a less agreeable impression by questioning the arrangements and refusing favourites. His requests to secure the weapons and keep the chart private precede proof of a plot. Livesey’s judgment that both men are honest shows how easily competence and courtesy can be mistaken for loyalty.
A secret changes the voyage
Hidden in the apple barrel, Jim hears Silver recruiting Dick and discussing mutiny with Israel Hands. Silver wants the officers to navigate and find the treasure before the pirates seize it; he also intends to eliminate the loyal party. Jim tells the doctor, squire and captain privately. They count seven people they can trust, including Jim, against a larger crew. Smollett proposes waiting and maintaining appearances. Their immediate advantage is knowledge Silver does not know they possess, rather than command of the men surrounding them.
Ben Gunn
The Island Has a Witness
Jim’s unapproved trip ashore exposes Silver’s violence and brings a possible ally into view.
Redruth’s Last Fight
The Doctor Fills the Gap
Livesey recounts the loyal party’s departure from the ship while Jim was elsewhere on the island.
The Stockade Assault
The Stockade Holds
Smollett rejects Silver’s terms, but the repulse of the attack leaves the defenders with fewer able people.
Closing on the Hispaniola
Jim Bets Everything at Sea
Jim cuts the schooner adrift and reaches it again through a mixture of observation, risk and favourable weather.
Back to the Block House
The Victory Becomes a Trap
Jim brings the schooner into North Inlet, then returns to a refuge whose occupants he has not checked.
Silver Faces the Council
Silver Holds the Floor
Silver protects a useful witness and restores his command by producing a map neither he nor Jim can yet explain.
The Empty Cache
The Map Leads to Nothing
The treasure-hunters reach the marked place, where old directions prove insufficient to guarantee a prize.
Home from Treasure Island
The Treasure Does Not Cleanse the Adventure
The remaining chapters explain the empty cache and bring the survivors home with money and unsettled memories.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read Treasure Island?
- About 5 hr in total.
- How difficult is Treasure Island?
- Intermediate. A long novel; about 5 hours of reading.
- Can I read Treasure Island for free?
- Treasure Island is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and two chapter guides on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 10 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. Two open in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, essayist, and travel writer. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde became one of literature's most durable images of divided identity, reputation, addiction, and hidden appetite.
“What happens when a person tries to separate his public self from his hidden desires?”
Stevenson gives Nexus a compact gothic anatomy of the divided modern self.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. Treasure Island is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.