Jims Hawkins Hero's Journey

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While the hero Jims Hawkins, in Island Treasure, narrates retrospectively in first person narrative of his treasure-hunting adventure back at the age of seventeen, Alice, both in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, begins her adventure – after having been bored by her older sister’s reading of a picture-less book – in Wonderland and the Looking Glass house in attempts to satisfy her “curiosity.” Despite the fact that these stories have a slightly different structural framework that differ from one another – in one finding treasure, in the other a game of cards and chess – both Victorian authors fixate on the notion of what it means to be in adulthood in Victorian Children Literature. Whereas Robert Louis Stevenson…show more content…
If readers account Campbell’s theory into Stevenson’s Treasure Island, then it follows that the hero Jim Hawkins must not only go through a series of stages and tests in his adventure but, within these tests, win a victory in order to achieve “adulthood.” As readers may recall early in the novel, shortly after Jim’s father’s funeral, Billy Bones, who has a close relationship with Jim, also has passed away. Jim, through Billy’s belonging, not only comes across to a treasure map, but – along with the Doctor and the squire – decides to pursue the unknown island listed on the treasure map in hope to uncover a vast buried treasure from a prominent deceased pirate, Captain Flint. This particular scene echoes Campbell’s “departure” stage, for – as Campbell writes – destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his attention from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown (48; emphasis mine). Given the unorganized family, it is destined that Jim pursues an adventure towards the “unknown zone” – in this case – the treasure island. It is during Jim’s journey of finding the treasure island that he must go through a series of “trials” that determines his

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