Treasure Island — Study Guide for “And Last” (Final Chapter)

Note on language: This chapter includes 19th-century racial terms that are now outdated and offensive. They reflect the historical context of publication and should be discussed critically.

Themes / Big Ideas (and how they tie to the novel as a whole)

• Moral ambiguity and survival: Long John Silver remains charming, helpful, and treacherous all at once; his escape with a sack of coins underscores how flexible morality underwrites survival throughout the novel.
• Justice vs. mercy: The crew’s decision to leave the mutineers on the island (instead of risking mutiny or taking them home “for the gibbet”) reprises the book’s ongoing tension between legal justice and pragmatic mercy.
• The cost of adventure / coming of age: Jim’s relief at leaving and his lingering nightmares show that the treasure quest leaves scars; the thrill of adventure gives way to maturity and sober reflection.
• Greed and what wealth reveals: “Drink and the devil” and the fates of the survivors (Gray prospers; Gunn wastes his windfall) emphasize that character—not luck—determines how treasure is used, a throughline from the beginning.
• Leadership and community vs. mutiny and lawlessness: With Smollett’s steady authority, Livesey’s ethics, and teamwork aboard the Hispaniola, lawful order reasserts itself over pirate anarchy, echoing the siege at the palisade.
• Civilization and empire: The brisk return to a bustling colonial port—and the narrator’s gaze on “Negroes and Mexican Indians and half-bloods”—highlights the era’s imperial worldview and contrasts “civilization” with the island’s violence.
• Fate, chance, and seamanship: Baffling winds, gales, and luck keep shaping outcomes, as they have across the voyage; skill matters, but chance intrudes.
• Memory and haunting: The parrot’s cry—“Pieces of eight!”—becomes a lasting nightmare, a motif of how greed and violence echo beyond the island.
• Closure with unresolved edges: Silver vanishes, Flint’s remaining hoard lies buried, and not all accounts are settled—an ending that fits the novel’s mix of finality and lingering danger.

Vocabulary

Quotes to Look For

• “Heaven forgive them,” said the doctor; “’tis the mutineers!” — Compassion in conflict with caution.
• “All drunk, sir,” struck in the voice of Silver from behind us. — Silver’s ever-present commentary and opportunism.
• “You would lose your precious life, and you may lay to that.” — Silver’s blunt pragmatism; idiom in use.
• “No,” said the doctor. “You’re the man to keep your word, we know that.” — Livesey’s cutting irony about Silver’s “honor.”
• “A council was held, and it was decided that we must desert them on the island…” — The crew’s hard moral choice.
• “It went to all our hearts, I think, to leave them in that wretched state; but we could not risk another mutiny; and to take them home for the gibbet would have been a cruel sort of kindness.” — Justice vs. mercy distilled.
• “…sent a shot whistling over Silver’s head and through the main-sail.” — Final rupture with the mutineers.
• “…the highest rock of Treasure Island had sunk into the blue round of sea.” — Physical and symbolic departure/closure.
• “It was just at sundown when we cast anchor in a most beautiful land-locked gulf…” — Return to “civilization”; serene contrast to the island.
• “…the lights…made a most charming contrast to our dark and bloody sojourn on the island” — The novel’s central contrast between violence and order.
• “Silver was gone.” — The slippery survivor eludes justice again.
• “I think we were all pleased to be so cheaply quit of him.” — Relief at losing Silver at a small cost.
• “Five men only of those who had sailed returned with her. ‘Drink and the devil had done for the rest,’ with a vengeance…” — The human toll of greed and vice.
• “All of us had an ample share of the treasure and used it wisely or foolishly, according to our natures.” — Wealth reveals character.
• “Of Silver we have heard no more.” — Open-ended fate; enduring ambiguity.
• “The bar silver and the arms still lie…where Flint buried them; and certainly they shall lie there for me.” — Unclaimed treasure; temptation left behind.
• “Oxen and wain-ropes would not bring me back again to that accursed island…” — The cost of adventure; refusal to repeat it.
• “…the sharp voice of Captain Flint still ringing in my ears: ‘Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!’” — Haunting memory; the enduring echo of greed.