Treasure Island

Yet when Stevenson's biographer Ian Bell says that "personality" in this book is "dispensable," he is not quite correct. Character is dispensable; such as it is, it exists only to further the plot. But character and personality are not exactly the same thing. Trelawney, for example, has plenty of personality, which is all he needs to make the reader believe in him, for readers do believe in him and never question his motivation. In great part, the reader's belief in Trelawney is due to Stevenson's gift for language. Not a word comes out of Trelawney's mouth or emerges (in his letter to Livesey and Redruth) from his pen that could have been said by any other character in the book. From his very first remark ("Mr. Dance, you are a very noble fellow. And as for riding down that black, atrocious miscreant, I regard it as an act of virtue, sir, like stamping on a cockroach" — this without ever before having heard of Pew) to his last ("John Silver, . . you're a prodigious villain and imposter — a monstrous imposter, sir"), he is blustering, overstated, self-important, and rather silly. In fact, Silver's having directly or indirectly caused the deaths of nineteen men angers Trelawney, but not much more than his having presented himself as an honest seaman and fooled Trelawney. Thus, although you cannot know the squire as a character in his own right, you do know him as a personality, true to his type.