Long John Silver

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Long John Silver is a fictional pirate character from the novel Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson . On the ship of Captain Flint the one-legged Silver served as master's mate (in the original quartermaster ). He has a reputation for being the only person Captain Flint fears. On the Hispaniola , the expedition ship on the journey to Treasure Island, he later hires as a ship's cook.

Treasure Island

At the time of the storyline of Treasure Island , Silver is around 50 years old. Under the pirate captain Edward England he got £ 900 and under Captain Flint £ 2,000 and u. a. laid out in the Zum Fernrohr inn in the English port city of Bristol , which he runs with his black wife.

Long John Silver finds the skeleton of the sailor Allardyce, illustration by George Roux

Appearance

The model for the figure of Long John Silver is said to have been the writer William Ernest Henley , who was friends with Stevenson . Long John Silver has lost a leg and is using a wooden crutch, which doesn't restrict his actions in the least. In the films, however, he often has a wooden leg (for practical reasons).

Character traits

As with many of Stevenson's characters, there is also an ambiguous personality to be found in the person of Silver . On the face of it, he is a hard-working former sailor who, after his voyage, earns his living with his own pub and is jovial, humorous and patronizing towards everyone. In the course of the novel, however, the devious side of Silver becomes more and more apparent. Not only does he organize the mutiny on the Hispaniola , he also murders a crew member who refused to join the mutiny and makes the helmsman Mr. Arrow so drunk that he can throw him overboard without causing a stir. He is the only one from the former gang of Captain Flints, who was also on the treasure hunt, who succeeds in making the return journey on the Hispaniola and escaping with a not inconsiderable part of the treasure found.

While Silver does not make any positive changes in character in the original (he is more selfish), in more recent representations he is often described as a kind of father figure for the young Jim Hawkins , quite capable of caring for the boy and his greed for gold to suppress him in favor.

More novels

The character of Long John Silver was taken up again in other novels after the success of the novel published in 1881. So published Artur D. Howden Smith 1925, the prequel Portobello Gold (also titled The treasure ship appeared). In his novel, Smith oriented himself on the few and only hinted at stories about how the treasure got to the island, and combined them into a coherent story. RF Delderfield made a similar attempt in his novel The Pirates of Treasure Island , in which Jim Hawkins describes in more detail the story of Ben Gunn's how the treasure got to the island. In the novel The Islands of Captain Flint by Louis Dufour, John Silver goes back to Treasure Island to recover the treasures that have remained there. John Goldsmith wrote a similar sequel to Treasure Island with the title Return to Treasure Island , which was also made into a film in 1986. Other serial novels include The Pirate Captain by Heinrich Rosemann and Jim Hawkins and The Curse of Treasure Island by Francis Bryan , in which Silver again has a leading role. Björn Larsson wrote a fictional autobiography of Silver in 1995 entitled Long John Silver . A comic series entitled "Long John Silver" has also appeared and tells a fictional story about the one-legged pirate again.

Film adaptations

In the numerous film adaptations of the novel, Long John Silver was portrayed by Wallace Beery , Orson Welles , Charlton Heston , Robert Newton , Tim Curry , Jack Palance , Brian Blessed and Tobias Moretti , among others . The portrayal of Robert Newton in the 1950 Disney film adaptation was so convincing that a sequel was shot with him in 1954 called Long John Silver's Return to Treasure Island , which in German was called The Treasure of the Corsairs and thus had no connection to the previous story exhibited. At the same time, a series called The Adventures of Long John Silver was shot with Newton . In the Disney cartoon The Treasure Planet (which takes the plot of the novel into space), Silver is portrayed as a cyborg in which the right eye, right leg and right arm are artificial.

In the ZDF adaptation Treasure Island (1966), Silver was played by the English actor Ivor Dean . After filming was over, Dean had the idea of ​​making a sequel, as fellow actor Robert Newton once did. By his death in 1974, however it was not until 1986 in the ten-part series The Return to Treasure Island (Return to Treasure Iceland) realized on the novel by John Goldsmith; Silver was played in it by Brian Blessed . Another sequel to the novel was shot in 1996, entitled Jim Hawkins' Return to Treasure Island with Stig Eldred in the role of John Silvers. The film was broadcast as a feature film and as a four-part mini-series.

(Selection)

Others

media

  • Long John Silver - A pirate radio play , radio play by Johannes Steck based on the novel by Björn Larsson , three CDs, Steinbach Talking Books, ISBN 3-88698-493-1
  • Running Wild : Hymn of Long John Silver , a song from Running Wild's album Ready for Boarding , tour intro from 1988

literature

  • 1925 Howden Smith published the novel Porto Bello Gold (also published as Das Schatzschiff )
  • In 1995 Björn Larsson wrote a fictional autobiography called Long John Silver . Translated by Jörg Scherzer . Goldmann, Munich 1998 ISBN 3-442-43778-4
  • Robert Louis Stevenson: Treasure Island
  • Xavier Dorison: Long John Silver Volumes 1-3 , Carlsen Verlag 2009/10, ISBN 978-3-551-73441-9 , 978-3-551-77786-7, 978-3-551-73443-3 (comic Line)