How Does Jim Hawkins Change In Treasure Island

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Jim Hawkins, from Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel, Treasure Island, are changed through tragic experiences and the people around him. Throughout the course of the classic book, Jim Hawkins transformed from someone hesitant to leave home, to a pirate, willing to end lives to recover treasure. His exposure to the harsh reality of war and the evil of greed hardened him into the treasure seeking mutineer he has become by the end of the story. The deaths Jim Hawkins experienced in the beginning of the novel began the long list of tragedies endured by the protagonist. The first, the “early and unhappy” (Stevenson ch.1) death of his father. Next, the Captain, who Jim did not like but pitied. After Captain dies, Jim, still devastated from the death of his father, “burst into a flood of tears.” (Stevenson ch.3) Starting a story this way allows the author to create a new personality of the character and detach him from his backstory, which begins the new current story. When Jim goes back to visit his mother in chapter seven, he finds a boy his mother hired to replace him. During this encounter, he understands “for the first time my situation.” (Stevenson, ch.7) Now that he understands what he has signed up for, he appears excited to …show more content…

This is clear proof that those around him had influenced his behavior and actions. Gone was the weak, sentimental boy, afraid to leave home. Jim Hawkins transformed into a ruthless pirate, willing to fight and kill to discover the sought after treasure. Hawkins even admits to Long John Silver that he killed his men, saying “as for the schooner, it was I who cut her cable, and it was I that killed the men you had aboard her.” (Stevenson

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