Question

*****I WILL GIVE BRAINLIESTT****** In the book "Treasure Island," (Chapter 30,) The doctor believes that Jim has loyally aided the Captain’s men at every turn. Is this true?

Answer 1

Jim's adventure with Israel Hands and his success in saving the Hispanolia, gave him the sufficient stature to enable him to be the hero in a boy's adventure - to serve as the character with which the reader identifies himself as he reads - without removing him too far into the realm of the heroic so that he ceases to be recognizable as an ordinary boy. The major thing to remember is that his good fortune is due as much to luck as to skill. That is evident, even to the other characters, in this chapter as Dr. Livesey tells him, "There is a kind of fate in this. Every step, it's you that saves our life." Jim has courage and resourcefulness, but it is not these qualities alone that enable him to save himself and his friends. He has a kind of beginner's luck.

Why would Stevenson deliberately keep Jim from achieving too impressive a heroic stature? The obvious reason is that he is to stand for the boy reader and must not therefore move too far above the reader's conceivable accomplishment. Another reason, however, is that he must not compete in picturesque bravado with Long John Silver no in calm adult competence with dr. Livesey. He is the ordinary boy thrown into the midst of adventure by pure chance and acquitting himself very creditably.

In the course of the story he develops from a purely passive character into an experienced and resourceful campaigner. This development takes place under the readers' eyes, and the reader can see it as natural and inevitable under the circumstances. With his outwitting of Israel Hands in the previous chapter, Jim achieves his full stature as a man of action, just as in his refusal to go back on his word and escape from Silver and his men with Dr. Livesey in this chapter, he achieves his full moral stature.