The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean
(1858) is a novel written by Scottish juvenile fiction
author R. M. Ballantyne at the height of the British
Empire. The story relates the adventures of three boys
marooned on a South Pacific island, the only survivors
of a shipwreck. A typical Robinsonade – a genre of
fiction inspired by Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe – and
one of the most popular of its type, the book first went
on sale in late 1857 and has never been out of print.
Among the novel's major themes are the civilising effect
of Christianity, the spread of trade in the Pacific and
the importance of hierarchy and leadership. It was the
inspiration for William Golding's dystopian Lord of the
Flies (1954), which inverted the morality of The Coral
Island; in Ballantyne's story the children encounter
evil, but in The Lord of the Flies evil is within them.
Although considered by modern critics to feature a dated
imperialist view of the world, The Coral Island was
voted one of the top twenty Scottish novels at the 15th
International World Wide Web Conference in 2006. The
story is written as a first person narrative from the
perspective of one of three boys shipwrecked on the
coral reef of a large but uninhabited Polynesian island,
15-year-old Ralph Rover. Ralph tells the story
retrospectively, looking back on his boyhood adventure:
"I was a boy when I went through the wonderful
adventures herein set down. With the memory of my boyish
feelings strong upon me, I present my book specially to
boys, in the earnest hope that they may derive valuable
information, much pleasure, great profit, and unbounded
amusement from its pages."[8] Jack, Ralph and Peterkin
after reaching the island, from an 1884 edition of the
novel The account starts briskly, with only four pages
devoted to Ralph's early life and a further fourteen to
his voyage to the Pacific Ocean on board the Arrow. He
and his two companions – 18-year-old Jack Martin and
14-year-old Peterkin Gay – are the sole survivors of the
shipwreck. The narrative is essentially in two parts.
The first describes how the boys feed themselves, what
they drink, the clothing and shelter they fashion, and
how they cope with having to rely on their own
resources. The second half of the novel is more
action-packed, featuring conflicts with pirates,
fighting between the native Polynesians, and the
conversion efforts of Christian missionaries. At first
the boys' life is idyllic. Food in the shape of fruits,
fish, and wild pigs is plentiful, and they fashion a
shelter and construct a small boat using their only
possessions: a broken telescope, an iron-bound oar, and
a small axe. Their first contact with other humans comes
after several months, when they observe two large
outrigger canoes land on the beach. The two groups of
Polynesians disembark and engage in battle; the three
boys intervene to defeat the attackers, earning them the
gratitude of the chief, Tararo. The natives leave, and
the boys are alone once more.
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