Analysis Of Kidnapped By Robert Louis Stevenson

In Kidnapped, David Balfour is a young Whig that decides to seek his share of inheritance after his father’s death. In David’s time period, Whigs were loyal under the king after the Glorious Revolution while Jacobites looked to restore the previous king. After arriving at his uncle’s house, however, David discovers that he is unwanted company and his uncle’s plan to sell him into slavery. The story unfolds as he is tricked onto the slave ship and later meets a Jacobite named Alan Breck. They go through a series of events that both threaten and build their friendship. In order to demonstrate that loyalty surpasses any unfavorable situations, Stevenson portrays two characters with clashing ideologies and backgrounds that eventually resolve their …show more content…
While Alan engages in a fierce sword fight with one of the pirates, David worriedly prepared himself for a battle of bullets. David thinks, “As for hope, I had none; but only a darkness of despair and a sort of anger against all the world that made me long to sell my life as dear as I was able… as I turned back to my place, I saw him pass his sword through the mate’s body” (62). Alan is straightforward and unhesitant because he is used to bloody conflict as a Jacobite; his mission to restore the true heirs contains inevitable physical turmoils. On the other hand, David has lived a relatively peaceful life. The fact that David decides to put himself in danger for Alan’s sake shows a huge sacrifice that paves the way for a friendship. The next morning after defeating the pirates, they sit down for breakfast where Alan gives David a silver button as a symbol of their friendship. David takes it lightly at first, then realizes the significance of the button to Alan, “For all that, when I saw what care he took to pluck out the threads where the button had been cut away, I put a higher value on his gift” (68). The silver button represents their friendship as well as the guidance that Alan gives to David throughout the novel. By showing the button when he gets lost, David finds his way to security. At the end of a live-or-die conflict, David and Alan have developed a strong bond between them, showing …show more content…
When David and Alan are hiding in a cave to evade prosecutors looking for them as suspected murderers, David secretly relishes in seeing his face misrepresented on a flyer, “...if I were to separate from Alan and his tell-tale clothes I should be safe against arrest, and might go openly about my business.. But he believed he was serving, helping, and protecting me. And what could I do but hold my peace, and chafe, and take my chance of it?” (148). It is understandable that David desires to escape trouble since he is not the murderer anyway; Alan is the only one insisting on freeing the killer. David’s conscious that tells him to stay in chaos because of friendship is important to the theme of the book. During another sprint to reach safety, David becomes so tired that he releases all of his fury at Alan and spits scorning words about Jacobite beliefs. He instantly regrets his words, “At this the last of my anger oozed all out of me… I would have given the world to take back what I had said… I minded me of all Alan’s kindness and courage in the past, how he had helped and cheered and borne with me in our evil days; and then recalled my own insults, and saw that I had lost for ever that doughty friend” (175). Any past thoughts of abandoning Alan have completely dissolved from David’s head at this point. This climatic event allows David to realize how