Class Assignments  Short Papers  1) Captain Kidd paper  a) TA has graded them  b) Will be handed back today  2) Long Paper proposal  a) Due Wednesday

 2) Treasure Island Paper  word paper based on the Robert Louis Steven’s Treasure Island and the movie Treasure Island  Due Wednesday 7 th April  Can turn it in before  Compare book to movie (as before)  But ask how and why Stevenson and the Muppets have adapted history to suit their intended audiences  Consider how they have helped shaped our understanding of pirates

 Long Paper  2800 – 3200 word paper  Based, of course, upon your proposal  Due April 21 st  I will be happy to talk with you as you progress or chat with you about draft papers

Piracy and Literature  Edgar Allan Poe  The Gold Bug  J.M. Barrie  Peter Pan  Gives us another of the great childhood pirate icons  Captain Hook  Action takes place in Kidd bay

 Barrie student a Edinburgh University  friends with another well known write of the era  Arthur Conan Doyle  Best known for Sherlock Holmes  But, also wrote tales of the sea and piracy  Captain Sharkey

 Another Edinburgh Student and friend of both Doyle and Barrie was  Robert Louis Stevenson  He and Barrie worked together on the school newspaper  And of course Stevenson was the author of Treasure Island  Which we will be watching on Wednesday

Treasure Island & Robert Louis Stevenson

Muppet Treasure Island  Cast list:  Captain Smollett – Kermit  Benjamin / Benjamina Gunn – Miss Piggy  Billy Bones – Billy Connolly  Blind Pew – Blind Pew Muppet  Black Dog – Black Dog Muppet  Dr Livesly – Dr. Bunsen Honeydew  Jim Hawkins – Kevin Bishop  Long John Silver – Tim Curry  Mr. Bimbo – A man who lives in the index finger of the Squire Trelawney Jr’s left hand  Squire Trelawney Jr. – Fozzie Bear  Big-Fat-Ugly-Bug-Face-Baby-Eating O'Brien

 “Explodes with Wit, Weirdness and Wildly Inventive Fun”  New York Post  Not however, the first film representation of the book  Over 50 movies and numerous TV adaptations have been made  Suggest the depth of influence that the story has

 Treasure Island movies  First I have been able to find is a 1912 version – very early  First ‘narrative’ movie Great Train Robbery in 1903  Production Company – Edison  1934 first ‘Hollywood’ version  1971 Orson Welles as Long John Silver  Also co-scripted

 1990  Made for TV version  Charlton Heston as Long John Silver  Christian Bale as Jim Hawkins  Oliver Reed as Capt. Billy Bones  Christopher Lee as Blind Pew

International  Zhi yao wei ni huo yi tian (1993)  "Schatzinsel, Die" (1966) TV mini-series  Ostrov sokrovishch (1971)  "Takarajima" (1978) TV series

Celebrity Treasure Island And of course the list would not be complete without

 But lets return briefly to the Muppets  Over 400 Muppet characters appeared in the film  Shot at Shepperton Studios in England  All the shots were indoors  Had a complete seaport with and 18 ton boat  Forty foot beach with palm trees and 200,000 gallons of water

 From the movies Press Packet:  Q. This is such a physical role. How do you feel you compare to other big screen action heroes?  Kermit:  Hmmm. I would have to say that I’m shorter than Arnold, greener than Sly, and I have less hair than Mel  Q. Were you aware that traditionally Polly is played by a parrot?  Polly:  Yeah, I’ve heard. But that’s just a stereotype. I like to think we live in a forward thinking society

 Q. Is this the first time you have had to sing while bound upside down over a cliff?  Miss Piggy:  Professionally, yes. But, frankly, it is none of your business what Kermit and moi do in our personal relationship  And finally the green man himself  “I do believe that Robert Louis Stevenson originally wrote the part of the captain as a frog”  Kermit the Frog

Who was Stevenson?  Born November 1850 Edinburgh, Scotland  Father an Engineer  strict and powerful man  Believed to be the cause of the lack of strong father son relationships in Stevenson’s novels

 Treasure Island:  Father dies early in novel  Rebellious Jim Hawkins  Potential father figures in both Doctor Livesly and Squire Trelawney  Tends to gravitate more to Long John Silver  Kidnapped:  An orphan sold into indenture  Take up eventually with a Scottish Patriot against the British  Both cases unattached boy searching for an identity with a rebellious figure

 Also see conflict in his novels  Between the upright ideals of Victorian middle class life and reckless abandon  Obvious in Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde  But also in Hawkins  Frequently turns away from the “right thing”  Leaving the ship  Running from the fort

 The idea of turning from the straight and narrow is also evident in Stevenson’s own life  While on a visit to France met and fell in love with  Fanny Van De Grift Osbourne  A divorced women, with two small children, ten years his senior  He married her – a very risqué and rebellious thing to do in Victorian British Society

Stevenson’s tomb Mount Vaea  Stevenson would return to California with his new wife  Before eventually moving to the “South Seas”  Samoa in 1889  Where he died in 1894

The Map  Plays a significant part in the story  For the characters  It is a treasure map!  And for the understanding of the book

 In a review of the book W.E. Henley wrote  “Primarily it is a book for boys….But it is a book for boys which will be delightful to all grown men who have the sentiment of treasure-hunting and are touched with the true spirit of the Spanish Main”  It has been argued that it is the ‘map’ which  A) allows the involvement of adults into the novel  B) drives the novel

 Henley wrote of another moment when one Professor Beesley was discovered by his family in his study  “his history books thrown by... His Herbert Spencer all forgotten, sunk to the throat in ‘Treasure Island.’ He had a magnifier at his eye, and through that magnifier he was (historian like) a- studying the map of Captain Flint”  The map links  Stevenson - the man  through  Hawkins - the boy  to  Beesley - the man

 In addition the map is a manly not a boyish item  When the map is unfurled at Squire Trelawny’s house  Hawkins states that though the map was to him  “incomprehensible, it filled the squire and Dr Livesey with delight. ‘Livesey’ said the squire ‘ you will give up this wretched practice at once. Tomorrow I start for Bristol”  The boy unable to understand the map and is excluded from the beginning of the adventure  And of the story

 But what of the map’s creation  The initial idea for the book came as Stevenson sat with his stepson, Lloyd, in California and they drew the map  “the future characters began to appear there among imaginary woods”  Creation of the map involved a boy  But the creation of the story was from the mind of a man  Original map was lost (stolen?) and the final map was created from points in the completed story  Not from the imagination of a boy

 The map also leads Hawkins out of boyhood and into manhood  As the story, and hunt, progresses Hawkins matures  at the end of the story Hawkins the man has ironically (?) lost the desire for additional treasure  His nights are filled not with dreams of treasure  but nightmares of gold coins and the sound of Silver’s parrot crying  Pieces of eight, Pieces of eight