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You May Lay To That: Honor In Treasure Island By Robert Louis Stevenson

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“You May Lay to That”: Honor Promoted in Treasure Island When Robert Louis Stevenson first wrote Treasure Island, the title of the book was Sea Cook (Hardesty and Mann). The author’s original title alludes to the centrality of the character Long John Silver, the mutinous Sea Cook. Silver is a problem character from the beginning, as enigmatic as he is charismatic. There is embedded in Silver a curious question of morals and value in trust. In reference to Silver, Lisa Honaker remarks that Stevenson has made “the villain the hero of Treasure Island” (29). However, an examination of the reader’s response to the characters of Jim Hawkins and Long Silver together will reveal instead that it is the duality of these two characters which create the …show more content…

The character of Long John Silver is constructed deliberately from ambiguity in the very beginning of the story, when Billy Bones pays Jim Hawkins to keep a “weather-eye open for a seafaring man with one leg” (Stevenson 3). This elusive attitude of wariness continues throughout. Silver becomes something more than himself: it is remarked that all were afraid of Captain Flint, but even Flint was afraid of Silver. Thus he is distinguished in the reader’s mind as distinct from the other pirates-- more intelligent, less base, more admirable, less vile. The distinction from other pirates and the enigma produce in readers a sort of admiration and allows for a construction of who the real Silver might be. Of the many pirate phrases employed by Silver, one of the most common is: “You may lay to that.” According to “Treasure Island: Chapter Notes”, this is “a phrase common in John Silver's dialect, and meaning "You may depend upon that" (Baker). Ironically, there is not much that Silver does that you may depend upon. His ability to fool Dr. Livesey and company in the beginning as an honest sea cook, and switch just as easily to a vicious and persuasive Captain for the mutineers contributes to an ever changing mask which one cannot trust. Jim observes this mutability when the mutineers find the treasure:

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When Robert Louis Stevenson first wrote his famed novel Treasure Island he did so with the claim that, ’If kids do not like this book, why they have gone rotten since my day’. It includes a host of characters, good and bad, but the one I will be focusing on in this essay will be the main antagonist, Long John Silver. He has heavily influenced the view of a classic pirate, like having a parrot on his shoulder and holding a crutch because of his missing leg. He is portrayed in many different ways, negative and positive. He is introduced as a likable and quite successful landlord, but by the end he seems to shed this mask and becomes the charismatic leader of the pirate mutiny against Captain Smollett and all his supporters.

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