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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} the Blue Lagoon by Henry De Vere Stacpoole Literature / the Blue Lagoon Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Blue Lagoon by Henry de Vere Stacpoole Literature / The Blue Lagoon. The Blue Lagoon is a 1908 novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole, which follows a pair of teenagers as they attempt to survive on an idyllic tropical island. In the Victorian era, a ship goes off course and sinks, with three people — a galley cook named Paddy Button, and cousins Richard and Emmeline Lestrange — fleeing to a rowboat and sailing towards an island in the distance. Once they arrive, they begin to make the island their permanent home, and Paddy teaches them basic survival skills. However, Paddy wanders off and dies in a drunken haze, leaving the two to fend for themselves. Several years pass, and the now-mature teenagers begin to explore the island, discovering relics and hidden secrets in the process. Their hot-cold friendship also turns into a full-blown romance and eventually results in Emmeline giving birth to a child and the newly-formed family inadvertently leaving the island. Two sequels were made following the success of the original book. The Garden of God , published in 1923, follows Richard and Emmeline's son, Dick Lestrange (called "Dick M." because he says "Dick" and "Em" while playing with the sailors who rescued him). He ends up with his grandfather (Richard's father) and a sailor from his grandfather's ship, on the same island, and as a young adult meets a marooned woman named Katafa, from the nearby island of Karolin, with whom he eventually begins a romance. The Gates of Morning , published in 1925, has Dick become the king of the native Kanaka tribe on Karolin, and grapples with newfound responsibility and the threat of a rival tribe. All three original novels can be online here under "E-texts" . There have been several adaptations: A 1923 silent film directed by W. Bowden and Dick Cruickshanks. Serious scholars of Edgar Rice Burroughs' work believe they can track part of his inspiration for Tarzan to these novels and to Morgan Robertson's earlier novella, Primordial . The novels and the films provide examples of: A Date with Rosie Palms: In the film, Richard does this to vent his sexual frustration for Emmaline. Emmaline catches him in the act and later mocks him for it. Adult Fear: Richard and Emmaline fear for Paddy when he swallows some of the poisonous "never-wake-up" berries. Worst when they both realize that there's no way they could induce vomiting and realizing their son's going to die. In the book, all we know is that Em has a branch of the plant, called arita, in her hand; it's only implied that she and Richard ingest any, and the sailors believe their child got some through Em's milk but it's clear he wasn't seriously harmed. Artistic License – Medicine: In the film, when Emmeline walks in the water she accidentally steps on a fish and gets sick. The fish that the movie shows is called Stone Fish and in fact if you step on one the venom will cause excruciating pain, shock, paralysis, tissue death and if not treated within few hours, death. Emmeline doesn't seem to suffer from any of these symptoms outside of extreme pain and fever, and it seems it takes some time until Richard finds her. As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The commentary track on the DVD for the 1980 movie mentions that Randal Kleiser and his crew never could get a straight answer out of the native islanders they had doing the Human Sacrifice scene as to whether the ceremony they put on in that scene was based on any actual historical religious rituals of theirs. He and his fellow commentators on the track also admit they have no idea what the natives were chanting at that ritual; it could be an actual religious ritual chant, they could be making fun of the cast and crew, or they could just be reciting total gibberish. The commentators go on to invite anyone who happens to know those islanders' language to get in touch with the studio. Babies Ever After: Richard and Emmaline have a son whom they name Paddy (Hannah in the book — it's the only baby name they know. The sailors later call him Dick M.). In "Return To The Blue Lagoon", Richard Jr and Lily have a little girl. Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Even though they're stuck on a deserted island for years, the leads never really look like they're any worse for wear, besides a couple tears in their clothes and deep tans. The 2012 movie is especially bad about this. Belligerent Sexual Tension: As they become teenagers, Richard and Emmaline find themselves fighting a lot even though it's playful. Chapter 2. The children had never returned to the old place. They had kept entirely to the back of the island and the woods--the lagoon, down to a certain point, and the reef; a wide enough and beautiful enough world, but a hopeless world, as far as help from civilisation was concerned. For, of the few ships that touched at the island in the course of years, how many would explore the lagoon or woods? Perhaps not one. Occasionally Dick would make an excursion in the dinghy to the old place, but Emmeline refused to accompany him. He went chiefly to obtain bananas; for on the whole island there was but one clump of banana trees--that near the water source in the wood, where the old green skulls had been discovered, and the little barrel. She had never quite recovered from the occurrence on the reef. Something had been shown to her, the purport of which she vaguely understood, and it had filled her with horror and a terror of the place where it had occurred. Dick was quite different. He had been frightened enough at first; but the feeling wore away in time. Dick had built three houses in succession during the five years. He had laid out a patch of taro and another of sweet potatoes. He knew every pool on the reef for two miles either way, and the forms of their inhabitants; and though he did not know the names of the creatures to be found there, he made a profound study of their habits. He had seen some astonishing things during these five years-- from a fight between a whale and two thrashers conducted outside the reef, lasting an hour, and dyeing the breaking waves with blood, to the poisoning of the fish in the lagoon by fresh water, due to an extraordinarily heavy rainy season. He knew the woods of the back of the island by heart, and the forms of life that inhabited them, butterflies and moths and birds, lizards, and insects of strange shape; extraordinary orchids--some filthy-looking, the very image of corruption, some beautiful, and all strange. He found melons and guavas, and breadfruit, the red apple of Tahiti, and the great Brazilian plum, taro in plenty, and a dozen other good things--but there were no bananas. This made him unhappy at times, for he was human. Though Emmeline had asked Koko for Dick's whereabouts, it was only a remark made by way of making conversation, for she could hear him in the little cane-brake which lay close by amidst the trees. In a few minutes he appeared, dragging after him two canes which he had just cut, and wiping the perspiration off his brow with his naked arm. He had an old pair of trousers on--part of the truck salved long ago from the Shenandoah--nothing else, and he was well worth looking at and considering, both from a physical and psychological point of view. Auburn-haired and tall, looking more like seventeen than sixteen, with a restless and daring expression, half a child, half a man, half a civilised being, half a savage, he had both progressed and retrograded during the five years of savage life. He sat down beside Emmeline, flung the canes beside him, tried the edge of the old butcher's knife with which he had cut them, then, taking one of the canes across his knee, he began whittling at it. "What are you making?" asked Emmeline, releasing the bird, which flew into one of the branches of the artu and rested there, a blue point amidst the dark green. "Fish-spear," replied Dick. Without being taciturn, he rarely wasted words. Life was all business for him. He would talk to Emmeline, but always in short sentences; and he had developed the habit of talking to inanimate things, to the fish-spear he was carving, or the bowl he was fashioning from a cocoa-nut. As for Emmeline, even as a child she had never been talkative. There was something mysterious in her personality, something secretive. Her mind seemed half submerged in twilight. Though she spoke little, and though the subject of their conversations was almost entirely material and relative to their everyday needs, her mind would wander into abstract fields and the land of chimerae and dreams. What she found there no one knew--least of all, perhaps, herself. As for Dick, he would sometimes talk and mutter to himself, as if in a reverie; but if you caught the words, you would find that they referred to no abstraction, but to some trifle he had on hand. He seemed entirely bound up in the moment, and to have forgotten the past as completely as though it had never been.
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