Treasure Island

I got a lot of stories in the early 90's. It was the era of the return of the Disney Musical. Little mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King. While those stories are amazing and I love them, I have to admit that some of them were a bit morally bankrupt. Aladdin is a jerk, Ariel is an obnoxious teenager and her father is just what every teen thinks their parents are in their self centered teen age world. As much as we loved them, I'm sure my parents really hoped I didn't take Ariel as my role model. (I did, but mostly the singing on tall rocks part.) I guess the assumption of story writers was that if a character was too virtuous, we couldn't identify with him and grow to love him. Beast was great that way, that was the point of the movie, but I wonder why they didn't give Belle some major flaw. We sure like her a lot despite her virtue. There was also a sense that if the characters didn't have some moral flaw there would be no story cause they would never get into any trouble, or have any fun. It was the age of "Follow your heart" which was often in direct conflict with "Do what's right." In any case, I always got excited when I read or watched a story in which the main characters were somewhat admirable. When they did the right thing even when it was hard and it meant a sacrifice. It's kind of refreshing when you don't want to slap the main character for being such an idiot. You can overcompensate; thus we have characters in a Jules Vern novel. They are so perfect you just have to laugh at them. I'm very fond of them too. Likewise Robert Louis Stevenson. I loved Treasure Island for many reasons (one of them being that it involved pirates) but one of the biggest was that the main characters were fairly admirable. Jim was a good kid. Dr. Livsey is my hero. The Captain is like a rock! While the Squire was kind of a dork he wasn't a bad sort. I hate every movie adaptation for Treasure Island with a passion (except the Muppet version, and I don't know why I forgive them so much) because they always mess it up in one way or other. They make Long John too much of a good guy. Yeah, he was redeemable but they never make him quite as bad as he is in the book. And they never make Jim quite as brave and noble. I think of the old Disney version with the Shirley Temple's male counterpart as Jim. *shudder* I have heard people complain that the book glorifies violence because the climax of the coming of age story is when Jim shoots one of the pirates. In Jim's defense, a real man destroys evil when he cannot redeem it, especially if it's about to destroy him. I like them that way. I love all the adventure in that book too, of course. Jim manages to get into plenty of trouble without off-putting character flaws.