No single part of the tale belongs to any one particular property-owner, and grown-ups need to remember this. Stories are not like real estate, houses, office buildings, automobiles, and other such personal property. Yet Stevenson wanted to get paid for his writing and thus had to lay claim to his own work; like every other modern writer who needs copyright protection, he required official recognition that he was the owner of Treasure Island, in order to sell the book to the public. Otherwise he knew that such stories belong to all of us and are merely spoken by the author. His early stories and essays had brought him some fame, but not enough money to live on. He had a family to support. It was therefore ironic that when he adopted the ancient communal role of storyteller, he began to make money, for Treasure Island soon became a best-seller and stayed one for more than a hundred years.

The book is a classic partly because it has the economical design of an exciting heroic quest. Here we may get the wrong idea of heroism, which absolutely does not mean acquiring an unexpected material reward. Instead, this is the story of a young boy becoming a man, of his discovering his own character, his strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears, gallantry and uncertainty all rolled up together into one remarkable person. For Jim Hawkins this is the story of seeking independence by confronting outward threats to his physical and emotional balance. Jim finds himself teamed up with some truly devious and dangerous compatriots. He finds himself more than once torn by accident from his older guardians and friends, alone on a forbidding island, under attack. More than once he must join battle with ominous superstitions. Somehow he survives, no doubt because there is scarcely a trace of sentimental foolishness about him; he is physically strong, shrewd, and well equipped psychologically to enter upon a voyage of discovery. In the course of the thrill-packed twists and turns of his story he learns that the goal of his quest is self-knowledge. Such a quest defines heroism, and through this voyage he achieves the status of a young, but impressively mature person.

The tone of the story and the quality of its mythical voice are therefore realistic and tough-minded, and will perhaps change a modern reader’s ideas of what to expect from a Victorian adventure story written about a long-gone time of buccaneering exploits. Written at great speed, one chapter per day, the book was designed with one unexpected episode chasing another, as can be guessed from the chapter titles, such as those that begin the book: “The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral Benbow,” “Black Dog Appears and Disappears,” “The Black Spot,” “The Sea-chest,” “The Last of the Blind Man,” and “The Captain’s Papers.” The action moves rapidly from placid, uninterrupted daily life to danger and mutiny on the high seas, and that is only the beginning. Because Stevenson is a master of uncanny coincidences, the tone of the book builds mainly on its pragmatic treatment of chance, good and bad luck, and their ef fects on human destiny. There is nothing placid about this treatment. By taking action, often in a flash, Jim weakens the awesome grip of fear, changing his dangerous situation to allow space for new hopes.

QUIET DESPERATION AND THE BOOK

In this manner, without preaching any sermons, Stevenson developed an important ethical idea in his book. As the apostle of adventure he was responding to a famous statement from a great American, Henry David Thoreau, one of his favorite authors. Thoreau once said: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Thoreau was looking at a deeply boring adult world of daily tasks, a world lacking in genuine excitement, despite survival or the benefit of profit, and he saw that “quiet desperation” required a cure. Stevenson found the cure in an American optimism, an almost religious attitude he found in another American favorite, Walt Whitman. The novelist had good reason to adopt this positive view of life, for it kept him alive through the ravages of a terrible illness. Though he died young, at the age of forty-four, a victim of tuberculosis, he always acted the optimist. He always insisted that children and adolescents, playing games of make-believe, are imagining freedom from the labor and pain of basic human survival. Admittedly, when childhood gives way to adulthood, their imaginative dreams of liberation almost necessarily wither away, in work, in school, in merely “growing up.” Maturity obstructs the visions of the young.

On this topic there is much in common between Stevenson and Mark Twain. Like most young people, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are sworn enemies to chores around the house; chores are like practicing the piano—fun only when you no longer need it. Chores interfere with the pursuit of happiness, Thomas Jefferson’s noble political vision. The serious interrogation of socially restricted happiness, treated so lightly, mostly as escape, transforms Mark Twain’s books for young people into books to be read by skeptical adults.