Treasure Island

For the read your own book Presentation I choose to read Treasure Island. Part of my interest in it was that it has been depicted in film and television so many times and referenced by so many other works but I had never read the actually book. I really enjoyed reading and felt the author, Robert Louis Stevenson, creates an imaginative story full of adventure. Treasure Island begins with the story of Jim Hawkins, a teenage boy, who works in his family’s Inn. One day a man named Billy Bones comes and begins an extended stay in the family’s inn. Billy is constantly drinking and singing sea shanties but always has an eye open for other someone or something. As it turns out he is keeping an eye out for his old pirate crew. When the crew catches up with him they send a messenger to deliver him the ‘Black Spot’ marking his death. Shortly after Billy’s health fails him. Before dying he tells Jim that in his possession is a treasure map to the famous Captain Flint’s treasure. This map will lead Jim on adventurous voyage across the ocean to Treasure Island where he will battle mutinous pirates and meet many strange characters on his quest for riches.
After reading I decided to do some more research on my own about the story and about the author. I learned that Robert Louis Stevenson first began writing Treasure Island while on a family vacation. It was a rainy day and one of the people he was staying with drew a map. With that map started the story of Treasure Island and an entire adventure developed around it. Stevenson originally had his work published in a series of installments in a magazine. It was only later that the full story was compiled into the novel we have today. In reading Treasure Island it is easy to see its influence in many of today’s works of literature. It has many of the stereotypical pirate images coining things like ‘X’ marking the spot and the pirate with a peg leg and a parrot on one shoulder. Over all I would recommend reading treasure Island to others.