The Theme Of Deception In Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in his book, Treasure Island, “Standing on the dock, I started talking to another man passing the time. He told me he was a former sailor, but now kept an inn in Bristol. Now that his health was not as good on land, he was looking for a job as a cook on a ship.” At this point in the book, Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, Squire Trelawney is writing to Dr. Livesey about the person he hired to be the cook on the Hispaniola, the ship that Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the protagonist, Jim Hawkins, are taking to find Captain Flint’s treasure. But the person who is hired as the cook is actually Long John Silver, one of Flint’s pirates, and he brings many of his pirate friends with him onto the ship
To begin, Silver and his crew convinced Squire Trelawney to hire him and his pirate crew. The text states, “Standing on the dock, I started talking to another man passing the time. He told me he was a former sailor, but now kept an inn in Bristol. Now that his health was not as good on land, he was looking for a job as a cook on a ship” (61). This is where all the deception starts, because Silver wanted to sail to Treasure Island to find Flint’s lost treasure, but he deceived the squire into thinking he was completely innocent. Because Silver and his pirate crew deceived the squire from the very beginning, deception becomes a key theme in this book. Next, once they are on the island, Silver tries to get the other pirates to think he is on their side but also tries to convince Jim that he is on his side. As Long John Silver told Jim, “You have to understand one thing now, Jim. I’ve switched to the squire’s side” (201). Silver also tried to tell the pirates that he was on their side and with them, but all he wanted was to get the treasure for himself, and he deceived the other people so they could help guide him to the treasure. Finally, Jim’s friends and Ben Gunn had some deception of their own up their sleeves. The book declares that when Silver and his pirates made it to the spot where the treasure was, it
First, the book starts in England, which is where the journey starts, and without the setting of England, there would have been no hunt for treasure, and no deception either. In the beginning of the story, Squire Trelawney writes his letter to an inn in Bristol, and he mentions it in his letter again (58, 61). Bristol is a city in England, which is where the ship takes off from. This part of the setting is crucial because this is where the entire journey starts where Jim, his friends, and the deceptive pirates all look for the treasure. Next, one way that Treasure Island is important to the plot is because that is where the treasure is. As the book confirmed, “The doctor now turned to the sealed paper and broke the wax carefully. It was a detailed map complete with longitude and latitude. The geography of this island was clearly marked… …What stood out for us were the two red crosses on the north end of the island, and the single one on the southwest portion. To the side of this was the writing, ‘Here is most of treasure’” (52-53). Here the setting of the island is important because if Dr. Livesey had not found the map, then the hunt for the treasure never would have started in the first place. If this had