Kidnapped (novel)Kidnapped is a historical fiction adventure novel by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson

The full title of the book gives away major parts of the plot and creates the false impression that the novel is autobiographical. It is, Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: How he was Kidnapped and Cast away; his Sufferings in a Desert Isle; his Journey in the Wild Highlands; his acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart and other notorious Highland Jacobites; with all that he Suffered at the hands of his Uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws, falsely so-called: Written by Himself and now set forth by Robert Louis Stevenson.

The central character and narrator is a young man named David Balfour (Balfour being Stevenson's mother's maiden name), young but resourceful, whose parents have recently died and who is out to make his way in the world. He is given a letter by the minister of Essendean, Mr. Campbell, to be delivered to the ominous House of Shaws in Cramond, where David's uncle, Ebenezer Balfour, lives. On his journey, David inquires to many people where the House of Shaws is, and all of them speak of it darkly as a place of fear and evil.

David arrives at the House of Shaws and is confronted by his paranoid Uncle Ebenezer, armed with a blunderbuss. His uncle is also niggardly, living on "parritch" and small ale, and indeed the House of Shaws itself is partially unfinished and somewhat ruinous. David is allowed to stay, and soon discovers evidence that his father may have been older than his uncle, thus making himself the rightful heir to the estate. Ebenezer asks David to get a chest from the top of a tower in the house, but refuses to provide a lamp or candle. David is forced to scale the stairs in the dark, and realizes that not only is the tower unfinished in some places, but that the steps simply end abruptly and fall into the abyss. David concludes that his uncle intended for him to have an "accident" so as not to have to give over his inheritance.

David confronts his uncle, who promises to tell David the whole story of his father the next morning. A ship's cabin boy, Ransome, arrives the next day, and tells Ebenezer that Captain Hoseason of the brig Covenant, needs to meet him to discuss business. Ebenezer takes David to South Queensferry, where Hoseason awaits, and David makes the mistake of leaving his uncle alone with the captain while he visits the docks with Ransome. Hoseason later offers to take them on board the brig briefly, and David complies, only to see his uncle returning to shore alone in a skiff. He is then immediately struck senseless.

David awakens bound hand and foot in the hull of the ship. He becomes weak and sick, and one of the Covenant's officers, Mr. Riach, convinces Hoseason to move David up to the forecastle. Mr. Shuan, a mate on the ship finally takes his routine abuse of Ransome too far and murders the unfortunate youth. David is repulsed at the crew's behaviour, and learns that the Captain plans to sell him into servitude in the Carolinas.

David replaces the slain cabin boy, and the ship encounters contrary winds which drive her back toward Scotland. Fog-bound near the Hebrides, they strike a small boat. All of its crew are killed except one man, Alan Breck {Stewart}, who is brought on board and offers Hoseason a large sum of money to drop him off on the mainland. David later overhears the crew plotting to kill Breck and take all his money. The two barricade themselves in the round house where Alan kills the murderous Shuan, and David wounds Hoseason. Five of the crew are killed outright, and the rest refuse to continue fighting.

Alexander Stoddart's 'Kidnapped' statue at Corstorphine, Edinburgh, depicting David Balfour and Alan Breck Stewart at their final parting on Corstorphine Hill (unveiled 2004)

Alan is a Jacobite Catholic who supports the claim of the House of Stuart to the throne of Scotland. He is initially suspicious of the pro-Whig David, who is also friendly toward the Campbells. Still, the young man has given a good account of himself in the fighting and impresses the old soldier.

Hoseason has no choice but to give Alan and David passage back to the mainland. David tells his tale of woe to Alan, and Alan explains that the country of Appin where he is from is under the tyrannical administration of Colin Roy of Glenure, a Campbell and English agent. Alan vows that should he find the "Red Fox," he will kill him.

The Covenant tries to negotiate a difficult channel without a proper chart or pilot, and is soon driven aground on a rocky reef. David and Alan are separated in the confusion, with David being washed ashore on the isle of Erraid near Mull, while Alan and the surviving crew row to safety on that same island. David spends a few days alone in the wild before getting his bearings.

David learns that his new friend has survived, and has two encounters with beggarly guides: one who attempts to stab him with a knife, and another who is blind but an excellent shot with a pistol. David soon reaches Torosay where he is ferried across the river and receives further instructions from Alan's friend Neil Roy McRob, and later meets a Catechist who takes the lad to the mainland.

As he continues his journey, David encounters none other than the Red Fox (Colin Roy) himself, who is accompanied by a lawyer, servant, and sheriff's officer. When David stops the Campbell man to ask him for directions, a hidden sniper kills the hated King's agent. David is denounced as a conspirator and flees for his life, but by chance reunites with Alan. The youth believes Breck to be the assassin, but Alan denies responsibility. The pair flee from Redcoat search parties until they reach James (Stewart) of the Glens, whose family is burying their hidden store of weapons and burning papers which could incriminate them. James tells the travellers that he will have no choice but to "paper" them (distribute printed descriptions of the two with a reward listed), but provides them with weapons and food for their journey south.

Alan and David then begin their flight through the heather, hiding from English soldiers by day. As the two continue their journey, David's health rapidly deteriorates, and by the time they are set upon by wild Highlanders who serve a chief in hiding, Cluny Macpherson, he is barely conscious. Alan convinces Cluny to give them shelter. The Highland Chieftain takes a dislike to David, but defers to the wily Breck's opinion of the lad. David is tended by Cluny's people, and soon recovers, though in the meantime Alan loses all of their money playing cards with Cluny.

As David and Alan continue their flight, David becomes progressively more ill, and he nurses anger against Breck for several days over the loss of his money. The pair nearly come to blows, but eventually reach the house of Duncan Dhu, who is a brilliant piper.

While staying there, Alan meets a foe of his, Robin Oig—son of Rob Roy MacGregor, who is a murderer and renegade. Alan and Robin nearly fight a duel, but Duncan persuades them to leave the contest to bagpipes. Both play brilliantly, but Alan admits Robin is the better piper, so the quarrel is resolved and Alan and David prepare to leave the Highlands and return to David's country.

In one of the most humorous passages in the book, Alan convinces an innkeeper's daughter from Limekilns that David is a dying young Jacobite nobleman, in spite of David's objections, and she ferries them across the Firth of Forth. There they meet a lawyer of David's uncle, Mr. Rankeillor, who agrees to help David receive his inheritance.

David and the lawyer hide in bushes outside Ebenezer's house while Breck speaks to him, claiming to be a man who found David nearly dead after the wreck of the Covenant and is representing folk holding him captive in the Hebrides. He asks David's uncle whether to kill him or keep him. The uncle flatly denies Alan's statement that David had been kidnapped, but eventually admits that he paid Hoseason "twenty pound" to take David to "Caroliny". David and Rankeillor then emerge from their hiding places and speak with Ebenezer in the kitchen, after which the story of David's patronage is revealed: Apparently, his father and uncle had once quarrelled over a woman, and the older Balfour had married her; informally giving the estate to his brother while living as an impoverished school teacher with his wife. This agreement had lapsed with his death, and David was provided two-thirds of the estate's income for as long as his wicked uncle survived.

The novel ends with David and Alan parting ways, Alan going to France, and David going to a bank to settle his money. At one point in the book, a reference is made to David's eventually studying at the University of Leyden, a fairly common practice for young Scottish gentry seeking a law career in the eighteenth century.

The End.

Kidnapped by Robert Louis StevensonPublisher: Huntington Library PressNumber of pages: 334

Summary:

The story is set in the mid-eighteenth century in Scotland. David Balfour is a boy who sets out in the world to seek his fortune and undergoes hardship and danger in his travels but returns as a man to claim his rightful inheritance. Planning to cheat him of his inheritance, David’s uncle had him kidnapped. David strikes a friendship with Alan Breck, a fleeing Jacobite leader, who happens to be on the same ship as David.

At sea, David and Alan become comrades and go through quite a few adventures. There are many suspenseful events like sea battles and perilous chases across the Scottish halls. As John Senior puts it, Kidnapped is a "bonny good adventure, it transports a colonial American boy back to his ancestral highlands and the Scottish honor, poverty, audacity, hilarity and spunk that still flows in his blood."

Note: Kidnapped can be found in many satisfactory current editions. This Huntington Library Press edition, however, is a special one, using the original text exactly as written by Stevenson, including Scottish dialect words. The story is preceded by an introduction and notes by Barry Menikoff, a leading authority on Stevenson. The book concludes with explanatory notes on matters mentioned in the text with which general readers are not familiar, a glossary of the Scottish dialect words used, and a gazetteer identifying the location of places mentioned.

Strong points:

The story is rooted in realism in a way that, for instance, Treasure Island or Ivanhoe is not. Stevenson’s knowledge of his country is based on observation. The accounts of some events such as the account of being washed ashore near Iona has almost a documentary immediacy fascinating to the reader.

The teacher will be able to give to the students some very interesting historical background on the Jacobite wars and the fight of the valiant Scottish Highlanders for the cause of the Stuart Catholic heir to the throne, "Bonnie Prince Charlie."

Robert Louis Stevenson was brought up a Presbyterian but as a man of fire and compassion, was drawn to the Stuart cause. David Balfour, a Protestant is attracted by Alan Breck. The Stuart cause is not explicitly supported but shown as gallant and self-sacrificing.

It is very interesting to compare the two main characters and to show both their defects and their virtues. David Balfour can be a bit dour, but he has his qualities. Alan Breck is vain and quarrelsome, but also has good points.

Kidnapped says as much about Stevenson as any autobiography. In David Balfour and Alan Breck "he gives substance to two sides of his own character, adventurer and rationalist, man of duty and man of passion, restless traveler with a mountain of Calvinist baggage to shoulder."

More profoundly, Stevenson writes about two conflicting cultures within Scottish history which have become two deeply battling sets of sympathies within himself: The mercantile Lowland Hanoverian, law abiding and rational and the adventurous Highland Jacobite, romantic and sentimental. Deeper still, there is the conflict between the Protestant and Catholic cultures.

Cautions:

Some students may find the Scottish dialect difficult and will need help to understand some words. Stevenson, in spite of his Catholic sympathies (he wrote a pamphlet to defend Fr. Damien), remains a Protestant. The

teacher should point out how a Catholic novelist may have written differently on the same theme. G.K. Chesterton wrote (and this is especially true of other novels like The Master of Ballantrae): "There is really and

seriously an influence of Scottish Puritanism upon Stevenson; though I think it rather a philosophy partially accepted by his intellect than the special ideal that was the secret of his heart. But every philosopher is affected by philosophy; even if, as in the immortal instance in Boswell, cheerfulness is always breaking out."

Conclusion:

Kidnapped is really one of the best historical novels ever written, and has quite subtle characterization and exploration of mood and motive, as seen especially in the self-analysis by David Balfour in the pages preceding the famous quarrel scene. But central to the success of this novel over a long period of time is its narrative power. It is a great tale superbly told. Without either the absorbing treatment of the post-Culloden theme, or the vivid colour and drama of the narrow escape from death in Uncle Ebenezer’s house, the battle of the round-house, the flight across the heather, the encounter with James, of the Blen, or the re-visiting of the House of the Shaws, this novel would not have lasted. It is not theme or characterization alone which make it a perennial favorite, but rather its art of narrative. (Peter Hunt)

A Summary of the Action of The Adventures of Oliver Twist or, The Parish Boy’s Progress from the Charles Dickens CD

Oliver Twist is born in a workhouse in a provincial town. His mother has been found very sick in the street, and she gives birth to Oliver just before she dies. Oliver is raised under the care of Mrs. Mann and the beadle Mr. Bumble in the workhouse. When it falls to Oliver’s lot to ask for more food on behalf of all the starving children in the workhouse, he is trashed, and then apprenticed to an undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry. Another apprentice of Mr. Sowerberry’s, Noah Claypole insults Oliver’s dead mother and the small and frail Oliver attacks him. However, Oliver is punished severely, and he runs away to London. Here he is picked up by Jack Dawkins or the Artful Dodger as he is called. The Artful Dodger is a member of the Jew Fagin’s gang of boys. Fagin has trained the boys to become pickpockets. The Artful Dodger takes Oliver to Fagin’s den in the London slums, and Oliver, who innocently does not understand that he is among criminals, becomes one of Fagin’s boys.When Oliver is sent out with The Artful Dodger and another boy on a pickpocket expedition Oliver is so shocked when he realizes what is going on that he and not the two other boys are caught. Fortunately, the victim of the thieves, the old benevolent gentleman, Mr. Brownlow rescues Oliver from arrest and brings him to his house, where the housekeeper, Mrs. Bedwin nurses him back to life after he had fallen sick, and for the first time in his life he is happy.However, with the help of the brutal murderer Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy Fagin kidnaps Oliver. Fagin is prompted to do this by the mysterious Mr. Monks. Oliver is taken along on a burglary expedition in the country. The thieves are discovered in the house of Mrs. Maylie and her adopted niece, Rose, and Oliver is shot and wounded. Sikes escapes. Rose and Mrs. Maylie nurse the wounded Oliver. When he tells them his story they believe him, and he settles with them. While living with Rose and Mrs. Maylie Oliver one day sees Fagin and Monks looking at him in through a window. Nancy discovers that Monks is plotting against Oliver for some reason, bribing Fagin to corrupt his innocence. Nancy also learns that there is some kind of connection between Rose and Oliver; but after having told Rose’s adviser and friend Dr. Losberne about it on the steps of London Bridge, she is discovered by Noah Claypole, who in the meantime has become a member of Fagin’s gang, and Sykes murders her. On his frantic flight away from the crime Sykes accidentally and dramatically hangs himself. Fagin and the rest of the gang are arrested. Fagin is executed after Oliver has visited him in the condemned cell in Newgate Prison. The Artful Dodger is transported after a court scene in which he eloquently defends himself and his class.Monks’ plot against Oliver is disclosed by Mr. Brownlow. Monks is Oliver’s half-brother seeking all of the inheritance for himself. Oliver’s father’s will states that he will leave money to Oliver on the condition that his reputation is clean. Oliver’s dead mother and Rose were sisters. Monks receives his share of the inheritance and goes away to America. He dies in prison there, and Oliver is adopted by Mr. Brownlow.

On the Origin of Species Summary:

The Origin of Species is an extended argument for the belief that species that are now living were not created independently by God, but evolved from other, past species through the process of natural selection. The text of the book is divided into two purposes: first, explaining what natural selection is and how it could produce species; second, responding to the objections of those who do not agree with it.

The book opens with an introduction that provides an outline of the book and its general purpose. The first chapter discusses how plants and animals exhibit variations in physical traits and behavior when kept domestically and how breeders use these variations to improve their stock. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an analogy to how nature gradually changes and improves forms of life living in the wild

Darwin’s theory is based on the notion of variation. It argues that the numerous traits and adaptations that differentiate species from each other also explain how species evolved over time and gradually diverged. Variations in organisms are apparent both within domesticated species and within species throughout the natural world. Variations in colors, structures, organs, and physical traits differentiate a multitude of species from one another. Heredity is the mechanism that perpetuates variations, Darwin argues, as traits are passed from parents to offspring. What is important about these variations to Darwin, though, is the way they allow species to adapt and survive in the natural world. He gives numerous examples of variations that illustrate the wondrous adaptations that allow species to survive in their natural environments: the beak that allows the woodpecker to gather insects, the wings that allow the bat to fly, the paddles that allow the porpoise to swim, and so on. Darwin hypothesizes that the minor variations we see within a single

species—such as variations in size, shape, and color of organisms—are related to the more distinct variations seen across different species. His theory of evolution explains how variations cause the origin of species.

Natural selection is the key component of Darwin’s theory, as it explains the relationship between variation and the eventual evolution of a species. Borrowing from Thomas Malthus’s principle of exponential population growth, Darwin argues that the possibility of infinite growth of population sizes is checked by the limits of geography and natural resources, which will not allow an infinite number of beings to survive. As a result of limited food, water, shelter, and so on, species must engage in a “struggle for existence,” creating competition for survival. What decides, then, which species will survive and which will become extinct? Here is where “natural selection”comes in. Darwin argues that organisms exhibiting “advantageous variations”—variations that will allow them to adapt to their environment better than other organisms do—will be more likely to survive. Through heredity, these advantageous variations will be passed on to the organisms’ offspring. Eventually, natural selection will allow those species best adapted to their environments to survive and prosper, while species without these advantageous adaptations will lose the struggle for existence and become extinct.

Natural selection is the mechanism that leads to “descent with modification,” Darwin’s term for the process of evolution. Organisms will continually give birth to offspring that carry variations, some of which are advantageous and some of which are not. As advantageous variations are naturally selected and become perpetuated through successive generations, organisms carrying these advantageous variations will diverge from the original species, eventually becoming a species of their own. Continual modification and divergence, then, create a branching scheme of evolution, in which new species continually branch off from old ones. The “branches” help biologists link later species back to an original parent species, identifying the point at which different species are related to one another. Darwin notes that existing classification systems developed by naturalists already show these relationships between species. Darwin’s theory of descent with modification, then, simply provides an explanation for why many species seem so similar: Either they evolved from one another, or they both evolved from a common parent species.

After laying out the main principles of his theory in the early chapters of Origin of the Species, Darwin devotes much of the rest of the book to defending his theory against criticisms and presenting detailed examples of how natural selection occurs. The geological record is a formidable impediment to Darwin’s theory, as the existing fossil record does not provide the “missing links” in the chains of descent that Darwin proposes. In response, Darwin argues that the geological record is imperfect and that many fossil remains have been destroyed by changes in the earth or have yet to be discovered.

Darwin also attempts to explain how variations occur in species, driving natural selection and the creation of new species. Geographical isolation is a key component of Darwin’s theory. Darwin hypothesizes that because all species originated from one or a few original beings, species needed modes of transportation to migrate between geographical areas throughout the world. Barriers such as oceans and mountain ranges restrict the ability of organisms to migrate, and the few that manage to do so play a large role in shaping the evolution of species on islands and in geographically isolated areas. Geographical isolation accounts for the plethora of unique species on islands, as well as the wider distribution of species across continents.

Darwin’s theory challenged not only the prevailing view of the independent creation of species but also larger claims of religion and science. Darwin explicitly denied the validity of natural theology, which posited that species’ adaptations to their environments was proof of their “intelligent design” by a creator. It was natural selection, not independent creation, that resulted in these adaptations, Darwin argued. Moreover, Darwin’s use of scientific methodology to prove his theory amounted to an explicit critique of naturalists who would attempt to ignore the scientific validity of his theory because of its controversial nature. While the text of The Origin of Species did leave room for religious theology, Darwin’s overall commitment to scientific rationale rather than theological reasoning pitted him against religious doctrine. Darwin’s text was controversial when it was published, and it remains controversial today. However, his theory of natural selection has stood the test of time in scientific circles, and it remains the leading scientific explanation for the origin of species.