Shiver my Timbers: Issues with “Treasure Island”

Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson published his most famous book, Treasure Island back in 1883, a hundred years before I was born. And yes, I know this off the top of my head since Wikipedia is down to protest against SOPA (which I urge you to support, by the way). So Treasure Island is considered a classic, the ultimate pirate novel or, more often, an annoyance in your elementary school life. I read the book recently the first time and this is my report why I think having the book in the curriculum at that point is rubbish.

My Backstory

To celebrate the order of my physical Kindle that would not ship for the next two days back then, I got me the Kindle Reader software for my computer which came with some public-domain eBooks such as Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, Aesop’s fables and, well, Treasure Island. Since I always wanted to catch up on a novel I had the impression of being the ultimate adventure-story, I started reading immediately and after ten days I was through. While I was reading, I did some research about book and author because I’m a geeky guy and eventually stumbled across more than 400 reviews of the book on Amazon.

It was then when I learned that the book was and still is part of a majority of US elementary schools. As a tutor and teacher I was flabbergasted: Who would consider such a book age-appropriate?! So that’s the beef I have with this book being mandatory reading in 4th grade or so:

The Story

Yes, the story is quite okay. Written from the perspective of a boy who in the end keeps saving the day over and over again for reckless risk-taking and not thinking his actions through more often than not. In the it oftentimes is dumb luck that saves him. Personally I found it at first very engaging and straight forward, losing momentum towards the middle and creeping onward towards the oh-so-predictable end. There were only two or three occasions where a twist in the plot did surprise me. No, the story is not very complicated, it is only obstructed by intricate descriptions of details that are littered all over and, my opinion again, do more harm than good. Yes, descriptions cater to a dense and atmospheric environment, but when they hinder the action and progression of the story it just becomes a bit bothersome.

I think the pretty linear story and the adventurous pirate-theme is what keeps this book still in every English class in the US.

The Language

The first thing that struck me after I picked it up was the language. Yes, it is a bit different from what we’re used to nowadays, no problem there. Yet there’s an awful lot of dialogue in dialect, which might be interesting for any linguist or even researcher of the jargon of ill-educated English sea-folk: The grammar is off, the phrases are oftentimes peculiar to the point of being (at least to me) uninterpretable or, as quite a number of the Amazon reviewers state “Makes no sense”.

Consider this: The book was written 130 years ago, further the novel is set a hundred years before that still, so today it is almost a Renaissance text. no wonder an average 9-year old finds it “boring”; no doubt, it must be extremely frustrating when it’s hard (if not impossible for them) to understand and follow!

The Vocabulary

As mentioned before, the grammar and language hits you pretty hard at first if you don’t expect it, but after a few chapters you should have grown accustomed.
But the one thing you will need desperately is a good dictionary: Robert Louis Stevenson had an interest in traveling and ships and so the book is crammed with as many technical terms for various parts and equipment of a vessel there is! Almost on every page in the book I had to consult my dictionary at least twice, and sometimes I even didn’t find an answer in it.
Sometimes the frequency of those unfamiliar words was so high, that I had no idea where on the ship a scene was talking place for all the plentiful descriptions were bristling with naval-lingo that was occasionally even used in analogies. Whew!

That’s pretty much the deal-breaker why I wouldn’t force a kid to read this book: If you have to look up almost every word in the dictionary and, once you got hold of their individual meaning, you still need to puzzle out what the hell they all mean together. And if you don’t happen to be the child of a seaman, shiver my timbers, you’re pretty much fucked. It’s incredible that there still are kids who went through with it and didn’t burn their copy of the book along with their English teacher…

The Portrayal of Conflict

Oh boy, pedagogically this book is really outdated, or might even hadn’t been up to date ever: Jim Hawking’s mother, the only woman in the book, by the way, is in fact more often mentioned than actually portrayed and even that only in the first few chapters. What we learn about her character in total is that she loves her son (of course) is stubborn to get the pay for the rent, even if in a dangerous situation, easily faints and worries a lot. That’s all about it. If you’re a girl having to read the book, you will be repulsed to read it even more than boys¹

So one day the mutiny is raised and essentially divides the crew into two camps. There is not so much the question of how to deal with the situation that a compromise could be reached or even how to avoid mindless killing, no, it is tolerated with a mere shrug. That’s what you get, “it’s us or them.”

And the big bounty, the treasure everybody is after: It is the life’s savings of a cruel and merciless pirate captain, stolen from countless pillaged villages and merchant vessels. Yet, even for the protagonists it is out of question that the treasure could be restored to their rightful owners, once found ². No, everybody (friend or foe alike) sees the treasure as solely their easy fortune. Not a though is wasted on the blood that was spilled for it.

The message generally is: “If some grown-ups are doing bad things, it’s okay to do bad things to stop them, too. Take the initiative, even if that gets you in danger or everybody else because the luck is always with you in the end.”

Well, so that’s it from me. I never had to read the book in a mandatory fashion and it wasn’t a “bad book” or a “stupid book”; it was a book that was a nice challenge to read, occasionally even entertaining and sometimes a bit hard to follow. I’d fire 6 of 10 possible cannon-balls at this book — and I’d do so to at the schmucks who thought (or the schmucks who still think) Treasure Island is age-appropriate for 9-year olds. Give them something (anything!) from Neil Gaiman to read instead and the would would be a better place. Especially if your world consists mostly of mandatory reading, homework and playing ball in the yard.

Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson published his most famous book, Treasure Island back in 1883, a hundred years before I was born. And yes, I know this off the top...

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