Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

A battered old sailor checks into a sleepy inn and does nothing violent for weeks—so why are you, and Jim, already terrified of him?

Read Chapters IV–VI. Analyze the motivations of at least three characters in the raid on the inn using textual evidence.

Read Chapters VII–IX. Identify at least four techniques Stevenson uses to make Silver simultaneously likable and suspicious.

Read Chapters X–XII. Define dramatic irony and explain precisely what gap of knowledge the apple barrel creates.

Read Chapters XIII–XV and revisit Jim's imagined island in VII. Contrast the imagined island with Stevenson's actual description and explain the effect of the gap.

Read Chapters XVI–XVIII. Explain why Livesey narrates Chapters XVI–XVIII.

Read Chapters XIX–XXI. Compare Smollett's and Silver's leadership styles using specific moments from the parley and the battle.

Compare Jim and Livesey in Chapters XIV and XVI–XXI, and test what their accounts allow you to know.

Read Chapters XXII–XXIV. Explain how Stevenson builds suspense in the coracle sequence through timing and limited knowledge.

Read Chapters XXV–XXVII. Analyze how mutual deception structures the Jim–Hands confrontation.

Read Chapters XXVIII–XXX. Construct an evidence-based claim about why Silver protects Jim, weighing at least three possible motives.

Finish Chapters XXXI–XXXIV. Explain how the empty cache functions as a structural reversal and what it does to the pirates' power.

With the whole novel finished, connect early dread, Silver's rhetoric, his bargain with Jim, and Jim's homecoming. Identify at least three motifs that recur across the novel and explain what each accumulates into.