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Themes and conflicts

One of the principal conflicts in Treasure Island is between middle class virtue versus proletarian indiscipline. Jim Hawkins, Dr. Livesey, and Captain Smollett, among the principal heroes, stand for virtues such as loyalty, truthfulness, thrift, discipline, religious faith, and temperance (especially with alcohol). The pirates suffer from drunkenness, impiety, and mutual betrayal, and tend to seize immediate gratification on the premise that life is short and uncertain. Long John Silver occupies a middle ground in this conflict: he shares the middle class heroes' virtues of temperance, thrift, and deferred gratification, but is willing to lie, betray, and murder to achieve his ends.

Truthfulness and loyalty

The novel can be seen as a bildungsroman, dealing, as it does, with the development and coming-of-age of its narrator, Jim Hawkins. Jim's moral development culminates when he promises Silver not to attempt an escape, and then meets with Dr. Livesey at the edge of the stockade. Jim, fearing that he may divulge the Hispaniola's location under torture, tells Livesey where the ship is so that the doctor can move it away before the pirates can find it. Moved by the prospect of a youngster facing torture, Livesey tells Jim to escape with him. Jim refuses, saying "I passed my word," adhering to the middle class heroes' ethic of truthfulness even at the risk of an excruciating death. Livesey counters by offering to make Jim's moral standing dependent on his own: "I'll take it on my shoulders, holus bolus, blame and shame, my boy." Jim refuses this dependency, choosing to act as an independent adult like Livesey and his comrades: "'No,' I replied, 'you know right well you wouldn't do the thing yourself--neither you, nor squire nor captain; and no more will I.'"

Several of the other heroes are remarkable for standing by their word, notably Dr. Livesey who, loyal to the Hippocratic Oath, keeps his word to render assistance to the sick, even those he despises such as Billy Bones and the pirates who have captured the stockade. It is mainly lack of loyalty and truthfulness that distinguish Long John Silver from the heroes, who otherwise share many values with him. Silver is not only a chronic liar, but an extremely skilled and convincing one. He pretends so convincingly not to know Black Dog that Jim Hawkins admits that "I would have gone bail for the innocence of Long John Silver." His tales to his fellow mutineers about his early career under Captains England and Flint are probably at least partly fanciful (see historical time frame below). When Jim Hawkins falls into his hands, Silver readily promises to abandon his crew and return to Captain Smollett's orders in exchange for Jim's intervention to spare Silver's life. Then, when he believes Flint's treasure is in his reach, Silver plans (at least according to Jim's perception) to go back on his word, kill Jim, and seize the Hispaniola for himself . Finally, when he finds the treasure gone, Silver again changes sides and betrays his crew. As his last ruse, Silver escapes his captivity with a bag of guineas and disappears.

Temperance versus drunkenness

A strong contrast is constantly drawn between the drunkenness of the pirates (except Silver) and the temperance of the heroes, especially Dr. Livesey. Alcohol undoes many of the villains in Treasure Island. Captain Flint dies from excessive rum drinking. Dr. Livesey warns Billy Bones against drinking further after his first stroke; Bones ignores this warning, suffers a relapse, and dies. Drunkenness leads to the fatal fight between Israel Hands and O'Brien, enabling Jim Hawkins to recapture the Hispaniola. It is strongly implied that the drunken state of the pirates on the island leads to a lack of vigilance, enabling Ben Gunn to kill some of them in their sleep. It is Silver himself who most strongly warns Israel Hands against the consequences of overindulgence in alcohol: "But you're never happy till you're drunk. Split my sides, I've a sick heart to sail with the likes of you! ... You'll have your mouthful of rum tomorrow, and go hang."

Religion versus irreligion

The conflict of piety versus irreligion is mainly developed between Jim Hawkins and Israel Hands on the Hispaniola. Hands is feigning mortal illness, and Jim says that he should pray like a Christian man if he is nearing death. When Hands asks him why, Jim answers heatedly, "For God's mercy, Mr. Hands, that's why." Hands answers at uncharacteristic length, "I never seen good come o' goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don't bite; them's my views-Amen, so be it." Also, Jim's faith contrasts with Hands' scepticism regarding an afterlife. When discussing O'Brien, the pirate and mutineer that Hands has murdered, Jim says, "You can kill the body, Mr. Hands, but not the spirit; you must know that already ... O'Brien there is in another world, and maybe watching us." Hands replies, "Well, that's unfort'nate--appears as if killing parties was a waste of time. Howsomever, sperrits don't reckon for much, by what I've seen. I'll chance it with the sperrits, Jim."

Silver's place in the religious conflict is ambiguous. He utters dire imprecations against his shipmates for defacing a Bible, and warns that Dick, the man who yielded his Bible to be defaced, will suffer bad luck for the rest of his life. However, he says this in the context of his men trying to depose him as captain, and his religious threats may be merely tactical, intended to intimidate his opponents. Aside from the Bible incident, Silver shows no obvious inclination toward religion. Many of Silver's men, in turn, take the stigma of defacing the Bible quite seriously, indicating that they have religious feelings and fears of their own. But for both Silver and his men, the idea of inflicting physical damage to the Bible is more frightening than violating the Bible's precepts, suggesting a more ritual than spiritual outlook on religion.

Thrift versus profligacy

The conflict of thrift versus profligacy runs through much of the book. Most of the pirates are unable to hold on to their money; Silver relates that Pew "spends twelve hundred pound in a year, like a lord in Parliament. Where is he now? Well, he's dead now and under hatches, but for two year before that, shiver my timbers! the man was starving. He begged, and he stole, and he cut throats, and starved at that, by the powers!" Ben Gunn exceeds even Pew's lack of foresight; given a thousand pounds of Flint's treasure, he spends and gambles it all away in nineteen days.

According to Silver, these two are wholly typical of pirates: "[W]hen a cruise is done, why, it's hundreds of pounds instead of hundreds of farthings in their pockets. Now the most goes for rum and a good fling, and to sea again in their shirts." Silver himself, again, adheres to the middle class value of thrift. Billy Bones manages to hang on to much of his money through the simple expedient of not paying his innkeeper. The heroes are largely thrifty: Jim Hawkins' mother will risk facing pirates rather than let Bones's debt to her go uncollected, Captain Smollett uses his share of the treasure to retire from the sea, and the loyal crewman Gray saves enough money to become a master's mate and raise a family.