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The Coral Island

Title page, illustrated 1893 edition of The Coral Island
Author	R. M. Ballantyne
Language	English
Genre	Adventure novel
Publisher	W. & R. Chambers
Publication date	1858
Publication place	Scotland
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	NA Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character
Preceded by	Ungava: A Tale of Eskimo Land (1859)
Followed by	Martin Rattler; or, A Boy's Adventure in the Forests of Brazil (1858)

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. The book first went on sale late in 1857, and since then has never been out of print.

A typical Robinsonade – a genre of fiction inspired by Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe – and one of the most popular of its type, the novel is best remembered today as having been the inspiration for William Golding's dystopian The Lord of the Flies (1954). The Coral Island was voted one of the top-twenty Scottish novels at the 15th International World Wide Web Conference held in 2006.

Biographical background and publication

Ballantyne never visited the coral islands of the South Pacific, relying instead on the accounts of others that were then beginning to emerge in England, which he exaggerated for theatrical effect by including "plenty of gore and violence meant to titillate his juvenile readership".

The first edition of The Coral Island is dated 1858, although it was actually on sale in bookshops from early December 1857; dating books forward was a common practice at the time, especially during the Christmas period. It has subsequently never been out of print.

Ballantyne was an "immensely prolific" author who wrote more than 100 books in the 40 years he was an active novelist, three of them published in 1858 alone, the year of The Coral Island.

Plot summary

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. 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 companions – 18-year-old Jack Martin, and 14-year-old Peterkin Gay – are the sole survivors from the ship.

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 even 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 three boys are alone once more.

Less welcome visitors then arrive in the shape of British pirates, who make a living by trading or stealing sandalwood. The three boys conceal themselves in a hidden cave, but Ralph is captured when he ventures out to see if the pirates have left, and is taken on board the pirate schooner. He strikes up an unexpected friendship with one of the pirates, Bloody Bill, and when they call at an island to trade for more wood he meets Tararo again. There he experiences many facets of the island's culture, including the popular sport of surfing, the sacrificing of babies to eel gods, rape, and cannibalism.

Rising tensions result in the inhabitants attacking the pirates, leaving only Ralph and Bloody Bill alive. The pair succeed in making their escape in the schooner, but Bill is mortally wounded. He makes a death-bed repentance for his evil life, leaving Ralph to sail back alone to the Coral Island, where he is reunited with his friends.

The three boys sail to the island of Mango, where a missionary has converted some of the population to Christianity. The boys find themselves caught up in a conflict between the converted and non-converted islanders, and in attempting to intervene are taken prisoner. They are released a month later after the arrival of another missionary, and the conversion of the remaining islanders. The "false gods" of Mango are consigned to the flames, and the boys set sail for home, older and wiser.

Genre and style

The Coral Island is a typical Robinsonade, a genre of fiction inspired by Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and one of the most popular of its type.

Themes

Martine Dutheil has written that The Coral Island can be thought of as epitomising a move away from "the confidence and optimism of the early Victorian proponents of British imperialism to self-consciousness and anxiety about colonial domination".

Critical reception

Despite the view of modern critics that the text features "dated Colonialist themes and arguably racist undertones", The Coral Island was widely admired by its contemporaries, and was praised by novelist Robert Louis Stevenson for its "better qualities".

William Golding's 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies, was written as a counterpoint to The Coral Island. Despite having enjoyed the book many times as a child, Golding strongly disagreed with the views that it espoused, and in contrast Lord of the Flies depicts the English boys as savages themselves.

References

Notes

1. The first edition was dated 1858, but it was common practice at the time to date books forward, especially during the Christmas period.

Citations

1. Top twenty Scottish novels, WWW2006, retrieved 4 May 2012 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
2. ^ "The Coral Island", Children's Literature Review, January 2009, retrieved 4 May 2012 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)  – via HighBeam (subscription required)
3. McCulloch, Fiona (2000), "'The Broken Telescope': Misrepresentation in The Coral Island", Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 25 (3): 137–145  – via HighBeam (subscription required)
4. Jolly, Roslyn (2006), "Ebb Tide and The Coral Island", Scottish Studies Review, 7: 79–91  – via HighBeam (subscription required)
5. Townsend 1974, pp. 61–62.
6. Ballantine 1884, p. 484.
7. Dutheil, Martine Hennard (2001), "The Representation of the Cannibal in Ballantyne's The Coral Island: Colonial Anxieties in Victorian Popular Fiction", College Literature, 28 (1): 105–22, JSTOR 25112562 (subscription required)

Bibliography

• Ballantine, R. M. (1884), The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean, Thomas Nelson and Sons
• Townsend, John Rowe (1974), "1840–1915: Nineteenth-Century Adventures", Written for Children: an Outline of English Language Children's Literature, Viking Children's Books, pp. 61–62, ISBN 978-0-7226-5466-8

External links

• The Coral Island at Project Gutenberg
• The Coral Island at LibriVox (audiobook)
• The Coral Island at Internet Archive and Google Books (scanned books original editions illustrated)

• 1857 novels
• Adventure novels
• Fictional islands
• Scottish children's literature
• Pirate books
• Novels set in Oceania