“Treasure Island”, by Robert Louis Stevenson

 

328 pages, Rand, McNally & Company

The Fraser Public Library has a book sale every summer, at the end of which I was asked to throw out the books that patrons had donated but that did not sell – like this one, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, part of the Canterbury Classics line and published in – are you ready? – 1903! Now, I understand probably why it didn’t sell, being that its in rather rough shape and all, but it is still intact and able to be read. So I took it. Why, you ask? Why pick up a 120-year-old edition of a book I could get brand new…anywhere? History, Dear Reader, history; as in personal history, for this copy has all sorts of notes and jottings from past owners that add a certain something a new book doesn’t have. Alva Frederick, whom I presume was the original owner, wrote her name in the front, while Paul Kiesling added his sometime later. Someone scribbled notes on personal hygiene found in paragraphs 168 and 186, while on the back page can be found jottings…that I can’t decipher. Was it Alva who wrote these? Or Paul? Or someone else entirely? Don’t know. But the mere fact that this century-plus old book contains the writings of people long gone is a detail that sends shivers up my spine and reminds one why used books are the best books.

So there. Anyway, am I ever glad that I took this book for, while I was, of course, familiar with the tale, having seen the 1972 version in which Orson Welles played Long John Silver (and even the animated 2002 adaptation, Treasure Planet), I never appreciated just what a fine piece of fiction Treasure Island really is. This edition was of the Canterbury Classics line by Rand, McNally & Company and was intended as a teaching tool, edited by one Theda Gildemeister, who was the Training Teacher in the State Normal School in Winona, Minnesota (birthplace of one Winona Laura Horowitz…er, Ryder). As such, it was intended to “bear its share in acquainting school children with literature suited to their years”. Quite. But just what kind of kids are we talking about here? This kind:

 

That childhood is poor that has not had for friends many of the goodly company represented by Hector, Achilles, Roland, Sigurd, My [El] Cid, Don Quixote, Lancelot, Robin Hood, Percy, the Douglas, Gulliver, Puck, Rip Van Winkle, and Alice in Wonderland. College class-rooms, where Dante and Spencer, Goethe and Coleridge are taught, speedily feel the difference between minds nourished from babyhood up, on myths of Olympus and myths of Asgard, Hans Christian Anderson, old ballads, the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’’, the ‘Arabian Nights’, the ‘Alhambra’, and minds which are still strangers to fairyland and hero-land and all the dreamlands of the world’s inheritance. Minds of this later description come almost as barbarians to the study of poetry, deaf to its music and blind to its visions [emphasis added].

In these few sentences, Katharine Lee Bates (of Wellesley College) described the modern college know-it-all who is ignorant of so much of the Western canon. How many of our “woke” darlings of today spent “goodly company” with the heroes of their culture’s past? How obvious is it that they are barbarians because they know nothing of the myths that nourished their ancestors’ hearts and minds? How many are so intellectually stunted and have nothing but needless and destructive hate towards the culture that raised them and are indeed “deaf” and “blind” to their own cultural inheritance? It’s frightening to think of the numbers of these masses that our universities have churned out in the name of passing fads and intellectual fashions that will not stand the test of time, unlike the classics that they denigrate so, out of recognition of their superiority, I suspect.

So what is it about Treasure Island that has made it a timeless classic, popular with generations of readers since its original serialization in 1881/82? That it’s a Boy’s Own Adventure featuring pirates, voyages, danger, treasure and all the rest goes a long way to explaining its appeal. But there’s something more than that, a deeper meaning underneath the piratical razzmatazz. Stevenson illustrates that the search for treasure and the pursuit of avarice pale in comparison to the pursuit of self-knowledge and the search for wisdom; characters led by their greed for material wealth are drawn down paths of treachery and violence and suffer devastating consequences as a result, while those seeking personal advancement – exemplified, of course, by Jim Hawkins – attain pride in substantial accomplishments in growth and learning.

Would I have ferreted all of that out if I had read this book as a kid? Um…sure (although I rather suspect not). No doubt I would have reveled in the search for hidden treasure and the race against pirates and the approval of adults that are all to be found in Treasure Island. The deeper meaning may have passed me by, but maybe, just maybe, I would have grown along with Jim and seen the truth behind the idea that the search for the treasure of the world pales in comparison to the search for the treasure of the spirit. Perhaps I would have seen the dangers of avarice and the rewards of generosity and become a better person before my time. And perhaps, just perhaps, the Woke Mobs who populate our university campuses and spew hate on all and sundry would have grown too if they had read Treasure Island and other classics of the Western canon they despise.