The writer himself said that the creation of the novel was determined by chance. In England at the time were very popular stories about distant lands, travel on the seas and oceans, the search for treasure. One day, at the turn of the seventies and eighties, Stevenson saw his stepson playing with a drawn map of a certain island. According to the writer, it was at that moment that a sudden inspiration came over him and a novel plot was born in his mind.

It is not known exactly when Stevenson began work on Treasure Island. From the eighty-first to the eighty-second year, excerpts of the novel were published in Young Folks magazine. The writer often read them out to people close to him. At first Stevenson focused primarily on children, giving his work such titles as The Sea Cock or Treasure Island: A Story for Children. In 1883 the novel was published as a complete work.

The novel Treasure Island was created by Stevenson as part of the “neo-romanticism” literary movement, of which he was an ardent supporter. As a result, the work adopts a general romantic mood, telling us about incredible adventures and exotic latitudes far from civilization. At the same time, however, the novel does not focus on a romance hero detached from the world around him, but on the most ordinary people, portrayed in an extremely authentic and naturalistic way.

The genre of the work “Treasure Island” can be defined as an adventure novel. The narrative covers a long period of time and includes a large number of characters. The plot is based on a long adventure that has a huge impact on the characters, who, overcoming the many dangers and trials, grow over themselves.

The plot of the novel Treasure Island begins in mid-eighteenth century Britain. Jim Hawkins and his mother keep an inn, the Admiral Benbow, in southwest England. One day a new lodger arrives, a veteran sailor named Billy Bones, who promises to pay four pence a day to Jim if he will watch to see if a one-legged sailor appears nearby. The one-legged man never arrives, but Bones is visited by a man who calls himself Black Dog. A fight ensues between Billy and the Black Dog, and the mysterious visitor escapes, but Bones himself lies in bed. The innkeeper confesses to Jim that he once served as navigator for the legendary pirate Flint.

A few days later, another acquaintance of Bones, Blind Pugh, visits the tavern and hands the former navigator a black marker, which means that pirates will soon come for him. Billy Bones’ health fails and he dies. Jim and his mother leave the inn, taking the money Bones owed them, as well as a certain package. A short time later the place is raided by a bunch of bandits, the Hawkins family barely escaping in time. Armed soldiers arriving from the nearest customs office drive the bandits away and accidentally trample Blind Pugh’s horses.

Fate brings the protagonist together with the wealthy aristocrat John Trelawney and Dr. David Livesey. In a package from Bones’ trunk, the trio discovers a map of the island where Captain Flint’s treasure is hidden. Trelawney and Livesey decide on an adventure – to hire a ship, sail to the island and take the treasure for themselves, and take young Hawkins with them as a cabin boy.

Some time later, the ship Espagnola and the crew hired by Trelawney are ready to set sail in the port of Bristol. The whole town already knows the purpose of the expedition. In Bristol, Jim meets the owner of the Spyglass Tavern, one John Silver, who advised Trelawney on crew selection and was himself hired on the Española as a ship’s cook. At Silver’s tavern, Jim accidentally runs into Black Dog, who rushes into hiding. An encounter takes place with the ship’s hired captain, Alexander Smollett, who does not trust his own crew, as Trelawney and Livesey explicitly state.

Nevertheless, the expedition begins. A few months of measured sea life go by. The sought-after island already appears on the horizon. At that moment, Jim, climbing into a barrel of apples, becomes a casual witness to a conversation between Silver and the other sailors. It turns out that the whole crew of “Española” consists of pirates, and the one-legged cook was in fact Captain Flint’s quartermaster. The bandits intend to wait until Livesey and Trelawney find the treasure and then kill their employers and the captain and take the treasure of the legendary pirate for themselves.

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The work is based on the true story of the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, who served as bosun on the ship “Sank Por” and was landed in 1704 at his personal request on the uninhabited island of Mas-a-Tierra (Pacific Ocean, 640 kilometers from the coast of Chile). The cause of the misfortune of the real Robinson Crusoe was his intractable nature, the literary – disobedience to his parents, the choice of the wrong path in life (sailor instead of an official in the royal court) and heavenly punishment, which manifested itself in the natural disaster for any traveler – shipwreck. Alexander Selkirk lived on his island for four and a half years, Robinson Crusoe for twenty-eight years, two months and nineteen days.

The time of the novel is September 1, 1651 – December 19, 1686 + that period which the character needs to return home and tell of his unusual adventure. The motif of breaking the parental ban (a parallel to the biblical prodigal son) reveals itself twice in the novel: at the very beginning of the work, Robinson Crusoe, caught up in the swell, repents for what he has done, but the shame of showing his family (including his neighbors) brings him back to the wrong path, which ends in long-term isolation on an uninhabited island. The hero leaves his parents’ home on September 1, 1651; Brazil, where he lives comfortably for the following years, on September 1, 1659. The symbolic warning in the form of a recurring sea storm and the time of the beginning of the adventure turns out to be an insignificant fact for Robinson Crusoe.

Daniel Defoe’s novel is at the origin of the novel genre itself. In terms of its style (simple, precise language, devoid of specific artistic devices) it refers more to the journalistic genre of “travel”, which first appeared in English literature in the 16th century than exactly the literary novel, but the presence of the adventure story, a clearly expressed artistic idea (preservation of humanity in a difficult struggle for life) and character development (growing up Robinson Crusoe, ennobling ogre Friday, repentance pirates) makes it a full literary work. The adventure component gives Robinson Crusoe the features of an adventure novel; the main character’s knowledge of the physical hardships of life points to a novel of education; the character’s difficult journey to settle on an uninhabited island brings the work closer to an allegorical parable about the development of human civilization; the novel’s exotic elements for the English environment (distant countries, sea voyages, wild animals, ogres and pirates) make it a classic adventure novel. Robinson Crusoe was originally created for adult readers, but over time it naturally moved into the circle of children’s reading.

The main idea of the work – the spiritual and intellectual maturation of a young man, put in the unique conditions of life. Robinson Crusoe begins his life journey on a desert island with a minimum of knowledge about the device of things necessary for survival and a basic set of the latter. Some of the items the hero has to make his own. He does not mind spending time on this, as he realizes that the latter, as well as his “labor was very cheap, so do not care what and where they went?

Vital things (ship boards, food supplies, clothing, carpenter’s tools, knives, weapons, gunpowder, etc.) are contrasted with money in the novel. Robinson Crusoe sees the latter as “worthless trash”: on an island devoid of people and merchants’ shops, they are useless. However, the hero nevertheless wraps the gold found on the ship in a piece of sailcloth and takes it with him to the island. The action is in no way explained by him, but the reader understands that it is dictated by the hope of returning to the bosom of civilization.

In addition to his factory art (making a smoking pipe, baskets, fur clothing, etc.), Robinson Crusoe learns the trades of farmer and herdsman on the island: he quickly realizes that he cannot survive long on the ship’s provisions, so he begins gathering turtle eggs and grapes, taming the wild goats, growing rice and barley.

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