The Coral Island
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.
Read more about The Coral Island: Biographical Background and Publication, Plot Summary, Genre and Style, Themes, Critical Reception, Influence, References
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Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! Now I hear them—ding-dong bell.”
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