How do you make your commitment to your heritage timeless? How do you draw people in and cast a spell over them and make them feel for a while that your heritage is their heritage? If you have a divided heritage, how do you connect the two pieces of your heart? Countless authors such as James Berry of Jamaican roots, Susan Power of Native-American ancestry, Sandra Cisneros of Latin-American heritage, and Yoshiko Uchida of Japanese-American origin, have a fairly simple yet powerful answer to this question...Writing. Robert Louis Stevenson, a notable Scottish author, has struggled with two halves of his heritage. When he published Kidnapped in 1886, he was satisfied to acknowledge that writing this book has finally allowed him to fully explore and share his fascination with his roots. The main protagonist of the tale shares the same surname as his mother’s maiden name “Balfour,” so that he would be able to pretend that he had an ancestor who was involved in the turbulent times of the late eighteenth century and be able to explore his country’s history through the eyes of a fictional predecessor. His wife Fanny Sitwell Stevenson, described, “My husband was always interested in this period of his country’s history…The tale was to be of a boy, David Balfour, supposed to belong to my husband’s own family, who should travel in …show more content…
After being kidnapped, David treks on a journey back home with the daring Highland rebel Alan Breck Stewart. The bristling struggle between the clashing Highlander and Lowlander cultures form a central conflict in this narrative, as David learns to accept differences and begins to grow up. Searching deeper into the character relations in this story, you would see why the conflict between Highlander and Lowlander has not let these two characters drift