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" — very different from what he expects a pirate to be. Silver further convinces Jim (and perhaps the reader, too) 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 (and maybe an eye-patch thrown in), he was certainly not that to Stevenson's first readers.
Silver is portrayed in the round, from various angles. His honesty and forthrightness are convincing to Livesey and Jim at first because he truly is honest and forthright, hiding his true motive but not his true personality. He controls the other mutineers as well as anyone can by force of his personality, his strength of mind, his courage, and his real cheerfulness. He has supreme control of himself, physically and mentally. Even his brutality is controlled; when he takes the reluctant crewman Tom apart from the others it is clear that he wants to persuade the man, not to kill him; but, when they hear the others kill Alan, Silver knows he must be rid of Tom, too, and he accomplishes this so swiftly and coldly that the reader's shock is nearly as great as Jim's.
