Dead men don’t bite

So my prevailing question through a lot of this novel was: is the most concentrated usage of pirate tropes, or, did this book invent all of those pirate tropes? And I think the answer is probably a little in the middle, but it’s interesting because this book feels like THE pirate book. And it’s kind of barely about pirates really. What I mean by this, is that this book more than anything else is a book about a mutiny. Yes, there’s a parrot who sings “Sixteen men on a dead man’s chest” and yes there’s a buried treasure quest and yes there’s a pegleg, but none of this book even needs to be about pirates, and when it comes down to it, there’s not a whole lot of pirating happening.

It’s also a very interestingly small book. There’s a decent amount of action, but there’s not much scope to it. The book is relatively short and goes quickly, and things happening almost in a bottle episode kind of way all around Treasure Island, and not elsewhere much. And because Robert Louis Stevenson is a very clear and concise writer, it’s a very readable book too, especially given that it’s 135 years old.

All in all, I felt like I’ve read this book a thousand times before, and I might have even read the Great Illustrated Classics edition at some point, because everything here is super familiar and recognizable, even if it is a first time read. It’s very much the book you expect it to be. One surprising thing about it though is the use of multiple narrators.

(Photo: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Muppet-Treasure-Island-and-The-Great-Muppet-Caper-Blu-ray/81115/)

(Photo: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Treasure-Island/Robert-Louis-Stevenson/Enriched-Classics/9781416500292)