Sunday, March 28, 2010

Treasure Island - R. L. Stevenson

'Treasure Island' has been hailed as one of the finest pirate books. None other than J. M. Barrie, the man responsible for 'Peter Pan', praised the book as : "Over Treasure Island I let my fire die in winter without knowing I was freezing." And the name is in itself alluring. So it was with much expectation that I sat down to read the book.

I would be wronging the book if I said it was not as good as I had expected, for it was I that was expecting an enchantment out of it. The book in itself is a good piece of literature. And the world that it presents to us is a conformation of all the pirate stories, movies and fantasies that has caught our fancies at various points of time. But perhaps the charm of the book lay in its novelty, for I failed to see the book leaving an etched impression upon me. I, like all of my gender, had been a fantasiser of adventures and excitement as a boy. It is that aspect of the male psychology that the book appeals to. But I still find the abridged and illustrated version of 'Peter Pan' that I read as a kid as my epitome on pirates and their adventures.

About the book itself, what I did happen to appreciate was the remarkable crispness with which the main characters are described, especially Long John Silver, the one legged buccaneer. The rowdy pirate nature, the swinging alliances, the dominating control, all mark the very exhilarations that I was seeking from the pages. The story too is inherently a very fast and gripping one. It moves from peak to peak, avoiding the ridges and plateaus of boredom. The catchy phrases and lines are best exemplified by :
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest -
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
But very ironically, the very thing that make the book fast failed to make the book great for me. The books catches your fancy fleetingly but fails to fuel your imagination. It is too quick; the descriptions are too short to live them. At times I was yearning for the story to slow down and let me "see" myself on the ship, on the island, defending the stockade, dodging the boatswain. But alas, I was thrown to the next scene as rapidly as I was put in the last.

Overall, it is a good read. Though it has lost quite a lot of its originality in the face of the several pirate movies and stories that I had already been exposed to. But I still think I would have been jumping out of excitement had I read this book as a kid. Too bad I did not.