Robert Louis Stevenson's story of the hunt for the buried pirate treasure on an island is considered the quintessential adventure novel, although its literary qualities are often overlooked. With the one-legged pirate Long John Silver, who is the true main character of the novel, the author created a prototypical figure for his entire body of work: brutal yet warm-hearted towards the young hero Jim Hawkins, he is a psychologically complex character. The ever-increasing interplay of attraction and repulsion between the two is primarily responsible for the fact that "Treasure Island" has lost none of its fascination for readers to this day.