Marooned!
Jim Hawkins, on a remote desert island, has escaped pirates only to be caught by a shadowy figure among the trees.
1883
Jim Hawkins, on a remote desert island, has escaped pirates only to be caught by a shadowy figure among the trees.
1883
Young Jim Hawkins has sailed thousands of miles to a desert island to dig up a king’s ransom in hidden treasure, only to find on arrival that his ship’s crew were all pirates. He has just escaped from them — but now a strange figure emerges from the trees to confront him.
“WHO are you?” I asked.
“Ben Gunn,” he answered, and his voice sounded hoarse and awkward, like a rusty lock. “I’m poor Ben Gunn, I am; and I haven’t spoke with a Christian these three years.”
Of all the beggar-men that I had seen or fancied, he was the chief for raggedness. He was clothed with tatters of old ship’s canvas and old sea-cloth, and this extraordinary patchwork was all held together by a system of the most various and incongruous fastenings, brass buttons, bits of stick, and loops of tarry gaskin. About his waist he wore an old brass-buckled leather belt, which was the one thing solid in his whole accoutrement.
“Three years!” I cried. “Were you shipwrecked?”
“Nay, mate,” said he; “marooned.”
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why did Ben Gunn’s voice sound hoarse?
He had not spoken for three years.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
His shipmates left Ben Gunn alone on an island. He survived for three years. He ate oysters and goat’s meat.