Treasure Island: The Parrot’s Tale

Abstract

In Treasure Island a parrot gets the last word, and turns out to be a two-hundred-year-old deconstructionist. Moreover, these last verbal fragments uttered by an uncomprehending fowl, while they effortlessly rupture conventional relations between signifier and signified, are, firstly, the fine but troublesome summation of a composition which signifies Jim Hawkins’ accession to authority via authorship, and, secondly, the surprising means of galvanising Jim out of his sleep and having him sit up in bed in fear and horror of that ‘accursed island’ on which, one might have thought, he had enjoyed his finest hour.

‘Were you never taught your catechism?’ said the Captain. ‘Don’t you know there’s such a thing as an Author?’

‘The Persons of the Tale’

‘You could say that the parrot … was Pure Word. If you were a French academic, you might say that he was un symbole du Logos.’

Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot