Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Coracle
Jim discovers the coracle—the small boat that Ben Gunn
has constructed out of wood and goatskin—at the end of Chapter XXII.
In the chapters that follow, Jim uses the coracle to sail out to
the Hispaniola, cut it adrift, ruin the pirates’ chances of escape,
and climb aboard to kill Israel Hands. The irony of a small boy
using a small boat to overpower a large man in a large ship points
to a David-and-Goliath symbolism in Jim’s adventure. Indeed, Jim
ultimately proves a victorious underdog.
However, the coracle, which belongs to a former pirate,
also symbolizes Jim’s desertion of Captain Smollett. In leaving
his superior to go hunt for the boat, Jim becomes a bit like a pirate
himself. His heroism is not unequivocally good in a moral sense,
which may be why the captain does not wish Jim to accompany him
on any more voyages. Despite Jim’s disloyalty, his adventurous spirit
leads him eventually to save many lives and stop the pirates from
escaping. The coracle therefore also represents the boy’s moral
ambiguity and his pirate apprenticeship.
The Treasure Map
Though the treasure map appears in the novel’s first chapter,
when Jim and his mother ransack Billy Bones’s sea chest, it retains
its fascinating and mysterious aura nearly to the end of the novel.
The map functions as a sort of magic talisman that draws people
into the adventure story. Jim’s possession of the map transforms
him from an ordinary innkeeper’s son to a sailor and a hero, and
changes the stodgy squire and doctor into freewheeling maritime
adventurers.
In addition to symbolizing adventure, however, the map
also symbolizes desire—and the vanity of desire. Everyone wants
the map and seems willing to go to unbelievable ends to attain it.
Ironically, however, Stevenson ultimately shows us that the map
has been useless throughout the whole novel, as Ben Gunn has already
excavated the treasure and moved it elsewhere. The map directs Silver,
its possessor, not to a final happiness but to a significant letdown:
the empty hole where the treasure should be. In this sense, the
map symbolizes the futility of hunting for material satisfaction.
Rum
Rum reappears throughout the novel as a powerful symbol
of the pirates’ recklessness, violence, and uncontrolled behavior.
In Stevenson’s time, people considered rum a crude form of alcohol, the
opposite of the refined and elegant wine that the captain’s men occasionally
drink. The pirates do not engage in light social drinking—when they
indulge in rum, their drunkenness is destructive, as reflected in
the pirate song lyric about the “dead man’s chest.” The first sailor
to drink himself to death is Billy, who keeps drinking though Livesey
warns him it will kill him. Later, Mr. Arrow, the first mate aboard
the Hispaniola, is constantly tipsy until he falls overboard, presumably
to his death. When Jim climbs on board the ship, he finds that in
their rum-induced drunkenness the two watchmen have lost control
of the ship and that one of them has killed the other. Jim is able
to defeat his adult attacker largely because Jim is sober and Israel
Hands is drunk. Rum therefore symbolizes an inability to control
or manage what is one’s own: one’s property, one’s mission, and
one’s very self.
