"The Lantern-Bearers" Response

It may take a while for someone to fully grasp what Stevenson is trying to say in his essay The Lantern Bearers. He starts off by painting a picture of his childhood experiences every autumn at a certain fishing village; how he and his boys went about doing fun activities. [Y]ou might golf if you wanted. [A]gain, you might join our fishing parties. [O]r again, you might climb the Law, where the whale's jawbone stood landmark. And then he describes his favorite sport -- lantern bearing.

The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night; the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned; not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public; a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool's heart, to know you had a bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge. (144)

Stevenson and his boys would play a game of hide-n-seek by identifying the smell of "blistered tin." Upon discovering each other, they would sit down and have their inappropriate talk. And that was the climax of the lantern bearing sport.

Stevenson is known for his adventure stories for youth. The author himself has a fascination for nature, children and exotic climes. As a storyteller and a critic, he voices his defense on imaginative fantasy in personal essays as oppose to the 'realist' way of writing essays, which lack the real 'life' of the scene. He does so by telling the story as a participant rather than an observer.

 His use of language when describing his adventures/activities, as sentences would start with words like: Or, or again, Again -- like how a young person would talk. And again, the author spends a lot of the piece building up the scene with rich imaginative-like imagery as if the author was inciting the inner-child within the reader.     

The 'lantern within the coat' is a metaphor signifying that even the average man has a special story to tell, and just like the highlight scene of the boys unveiling their lanterns; it is through the unveiling of a person's inner life and thoughts where true literary joy is found. 

The whole lantern game is also a metaphorical critic to 'observer/realist' writers, who, in Stevenson's opinion, only focus on recording external details. Stevenson opposes this way of writing because he thinks writers like 'Zola' will miss the mark of telling a story's "true joy/meaning," hence the scene is only a collection of details that do not add up to anything. Stevenson writes: [T]o one who has not the secret of the lanterns, the scene upon the links is meaningless. And hence the haunting and truly spectral unreality of realistic books. 

But, if one dives deep into the person's pool of thought "in the mysterious inwards of psychology,"--participating in the act-- then the true story is found. He uses the gathering of lanterns an an example.

[T]o the eye of the observer they are wet and cold and drearily surrounded; but ask themselves, and they are in the heavens of a recondite pleasure, the ground of which is an ill smelling lantern.

Therefore, I believed Stevenson's use of the lantern as a metaphor is effective as well as relevant even in today's world of nonfiction writing.