Perhaps by the time Treasure Island saw print, most of its cast of characters had assumed stock proportions, not unlike the white-hat good guys and the black-hat bad guys in Hollywood cowboy movies or the heroes and villains of melodrama. Regardless, the novel lacks the religiosity and high seriousness of purpose of Crusoe; it is equally plain that Treasure nowhere exhibits the brilliant ironies and devastating satires so successfully accomplished in Gulliver. And yet Treasure Island, great adventure story that it is, endures as a favorite novel for readers of all ages, and its first Hollywood version has become a classic film, several of its silver screen personages having endured through the memories of whole generations: the one-legged good-hearted pirate, the parrot ("pieces of eight!"), blind Pew, Black Dog, villainous Israel Hands, mad Ben Gunn.
Ben Gunn, cast away among goats and parrots, would do flip-flops for a piece of cheese and says that the birds drove him crazy; Robinson Crusoe, in the same situation, milks the goats, makes some cheese, and teaches parrots to talk. Swift, through Gulliver, mocks nautical terminology as a species of jolly gob whistle-talk, whereas in Treasure Island, that same salty talk is the very stuff of adventure.
Crusoe, Gulliver, Ben Gunn — each character is given, by his author, a mission of sorts. Crusoe's is to instruct the reader in how to live; Gulliver's is to make the reader laugh at human foibles. Ben Gunn's mission, like that of the novel he appears in, is simply to entertain. But what grand entertainment Treasure Island is.
