Friendship on Treasure Island

Friendship is a personal relationship shared between each friend for the welfare of other, in other words, it is the relationship of trust, faith and concern for each other feelings. It is a relationship of mutual caring and intimacy among one another. A friend is one who knows you as a person and regards you for what you are and not what he or she is looking in a good friend. Best friend is one who accepts the good as well bad qualities of his friend and also takes an initiative in correcting and mending them. Friendship is a distinctive kind of concern for your friend; it is a relationship of immense faith and love for each other. Friendship is very important to have in life; almost everyone has friends. Without friendship it is really hard to grow, to become more of an adult. Friends help you out when you’re in need. If parents aren’t there to help you friends are. Sometimes friend seem like they are going to help you but they don’t. Some friend are just in it for themselves and don’t think of others. There are many examples of friendship in the novel Treasure Island. Jim becomes friends with Long John Silver, a bitter, mean pirate.

Long John Silver is the book's most powerful and developed character, one whose motivation is believable but not unambiguous and whose complexity makes Treasure Island a true work of genius. Silver is much more than a type; he is a genuine individual, attractive and repellent by turns, frightening at times and at other times nearly sympathetic, always compelling. Unlike the other characters, Silver is presented in specifics: You know his age, his appearance, and something of his history. He is the only one who seems to have a life outside the novel, a past and a future for which there is actual evidence in the text. And he is the only character who is presented against type; Jim describes him as "intelligent and smiling . . . clean and pleasant-tempered"(45) very different from what he expects a pirate to be. Silver further convinces Jim that he is not Billy Bones' "seafaring man with one leg" by sending runners out of his tavern after Black Dog and going back with Jim to report on the incident. He is frugal, plans ahead, speaks respectfully to Trelawney and the others, and is known for being sober and abstemious in his habits. In other words, although you may see Long John Silver now as the archetypal pirate, complete with peg leg and parrot, he was certainly not that to Stevenson's first readers.

Jim Hawkins is the son of an innkeeper near Bristol, England, and is probably in his early teens. He is eager and enthusiastic to go to sea and hunt for treasure. He is a modest narrator, never boasting of the remarkable courage and heroism he consistently displays. Jim is often impulsive and impetuous, but he exhibits increasing sensitivity and wisdom. Jim and Long John Silver became friends on the ship. Silver looks out for Jim on the ship, he protects Jim like a little brother.

“Of Silver we have heard no more. That formidable seafaring man with one leg has at last gone clean out of my life; but I dare say he met his old Negress, and perhaps still lives in comfort with her and Captain Flint. It is to be hoped so, I suppose, for his chances of comfort in another world are very small.”(203) Jim and Silver had a very strong friendship on the ship.

“Well, squire … I don’t put much faith in your discoveries, as a general thing; but I will say this, John Silver suits me.”(47) Dr. Livesey delivers these remarks to Squire Trelawney at the end of Chapter VIII, when the men first meet the crew that will accompany them to Treasure Island. This quotation raises the issue of judgment of another person’s character. First, Livesey’s skepticism about Trelawney’s prudence suggests that the squire’s knowledge of human affairs might be less reliable than that of the practical man of science. We later verify this hypothesis when we discover that the squire has been tricked into manning his ship with a band of pirates; his judgment is indeed unsound. Yet Long John Silver tricks even the wise Dr. Livesey. Though in reality the ringleader of the pirates, Silver is a man whom Livesey trusts instinctively. The doctor’s trust suggests that Silver has extraordinary powers of deception, but also that there is something genuinely likable about the pirate. Even though Silver is a miscreant, he is charismatic and repeatedly earns the respect of others. Indeed, Silver wins Jim’s affection and admiration by the end of the adventure, and he acts like a gentleman on several occasions. Livesey and Trelawney are deceived by Silver because he is such a contradictory character, not fully good but not fully evil either.

“The bar silver and the arms still lie, for all that I know, where Flint buried them; and certainly they shall lie there for me. Oxen and wain-ropes would not bring me back again to that accursed island; and the worst dreams that ever I have are when I hear the surf booming about its coasts, or start upright in bed, with the sharp voice of Captain Flint still ringing in my ears: ‘Pieces of eight! pieces of eight!”(125) These final lines of the novel summarize Jim’s feelings about his adventure. Ironically, one of the results of Jim’s treasure hunt is that he learns he does not actually want the treasure, and that he is happy to leave the silver buried on the island. Similarly, at the end of the novel, Jim also realizes that he does not truly want adventure. The negative tone with which he closes his account seems out of place, as in the end everything has worked out well for him: Jim is safely back home, his friends have survived, and he presumably possesses a fair share of the pirates’ loot as reward. Yet Jim calls the island “accursed,” and he is plagued by nightmares of treasure and Silver’s screeching parrot. Jim’s continuing dreams signify that his adventure is still with him, for better or for worse, and that his experience with the pirates has had an indelible impact on his life. However, it also appears that the tragedies of the adventure—the greed and death—still trouble him. Though Captain Flint is long dead and buried, and Jim is back in the relative safety of the civilized world, he still feels the influence and temptation of the pirates’ underworld. Jim is having trouble adjusting to the upright, civilized world and the fact that it completely rejects the darker, more lawless world of the pirates. That a pirate literally has the last words in the novel (the parrot’s cry of “pieces of eight!”) shows that the pirates, and the life and values they represent, will always haunt Jim and the civilized world.