Sarah and I just finished reading Daniel Defoe's classic adventure novel, Robinson Crusoe. This is considered the first full-length novel to be written in the English language, and its story has captured the imagination of the world for almost 300 years.
The basic story line is well known. However, a few details significantly enrich the plot. Crusoe's father encouraged him to settle down for a quiet but satisfying middle-class life. However, Crusoe's hunger for adventure sent him sailing the seas. He was captured by Moroccan pirates and made into a slave. He managed to escape by boat, lost his bearings, and became adrift at sea. A Portuguese vessel rescued him and took him to Brazil, where he settled and began developing a prosperous plantation. However, greed pushed him to make an illegal slave trading mission to Africa. On the way, his boat was shipwrecked and he was the lone survivor on an uninhabited island near Trinidad.
At this point the more familiar story begins. Crusoe must learn to survive alone and without most of the technology he knows. Slowly and falteringly, which much labor and struggle and trial and error, he becomes master of his island. Also, with only the Bible to read, he has a deep spiritual awakening. His one great complaint is loneliness.
Eventually, he discovers that South American cannibals occasionally visit his island for feasts of the meat of prisoners of war. From this point forward, he lives in constant fear of his life. However, he eventually manages to rescue one prisoner of war, whom he names Friday. Friday immediately commits himself body and soul to Crusoe.
Later, Friday and Crusoe are able to rescue others from certain death, and these rescues combine to provide a way off the island and back to Europe for Crusoe. After almost 30 years of being "lost," Crusoe discovers that his Brazilian plantation, which he left in trust with his partners has prospered and he is now a man of some wealth.
Through it all, he gives persistent credit to God for his provision and miraculous protection and mercy. We were both surprised at the spiritual elements of this story. However, we were also put off by Crusoe's open prejudice against the South American natives and willing acceptance of slavery. It was strange to read of spiritual awakenings on one page and desires to slaughter savages (because of their cannibalism) on the next page. However, I guess that's often how our life goes. Even as we get light in one area of our lives, we remain blind in another.
This is a thrilling and intriguing story. However, the details of his struggles for technological innovation and his long stay on the island grew monotonous in the middle section of the book. The introduction warned us of this, though, so we pushed through and the pace picked up quite a bit once Crusoe saw the first footprint of another human on his island.
This is a great read, and it only looses one J because of its slow pace in the middle: JJJJ.
The basic story line is well known. However, a few details significantly enrich the plot. Crusoe's father encouraged him to settle down for a quiet but satisfying middle-class life. However, Crusoe's hunger for adventure sent him sailing the seas. He was captured by Moroccan pirates and made into a slave. He managed to escape by boat, lost his bearings, and became adrift at sea. A Portuguese vessel rescued him and took him to Brazil, where he settled and began developing a prosperous plantation. However, greed pushed him to make an illegal slave trading mission to Africa. On the way, his boat was shipwrecked and he was the lone survivor on an uninhabited island near Trinidad.
At this point the more familiar story begins. Crusoe must learn to survive alone and without most of the technology he knows. Slowly and falteringly, which much labor and struggle and trial and error, he becomes master of his island. Also, with only the Bible to read, he has a deep spiritual awakening. His one great complaint is loneliness.
Eventually, he discovers that South American cannibals occasionally visit his island for feasts of the meat of prisoners of war. From this point forward, he lives in constant fear of his life. However, he eventually manages to rescue one prisoner of war, whom he names Friday. Friday immediately commits himself body and soul to Crusoe.
Later, Friday and Crusoe are able to rescue others from certain death, and these rescues combine to provide a way off the island and back to Europe for Crusoe. After almost 30 years of being "lost," Crusoe discovers that his Brazilian plantation, which he left in trust with his partners has prospered and he is now a man of some wealth.
Through it all, he gives persistent credit to God for his provision and miraculous protection and mercy. We were both surprised at the spiritual elements of this story. However, we were also put off by Crusoe's open prejudice against the South American natives and willing acceptance of slavery. It was strange to read of spiritual awakenings on one page and desires to slaughter savages (because of their cannibalism) on the next page. However, I guess that's often how our life goes. Even as we get light in one area of our lives, we remain blind in another.
This is a thrilling and intriguing story. However, the details of his struggles for technological innovation and his long stay on the island grew monotonous in the middle section of the book. The introduction warned us of this, though, so we pushed through and the pace picked up quite a bit once Crusoe saw the first footprint of another human on his island.
This is a great read, and it only looses one J because of its slow pace in the middle: JJJJ.
5 comments:
yeah i think in the american lit modernists there's a lot of getting away from society and the industrial revolution. i couldn't stand walden...the guy is crazy. he writes about making his own hair-shirt clothing. 20,000 leagues under the seas is a great read. even back then those writers knew technology was about alienating us even though it was meant for the opposite effect. that reminds me of the frankenstein monster and dracula and dr jekyl/mr. hyde and the face we allow ourselves to show in public.
- b
Funny you mention those works. We just watched 20,000 leagues, and we read Frankenstein and Jekyl w/n the past year. I didn't make the connections, though.
Yeah, we have to be careful how we use technology. I'm trying not to email if I can call, trying to push toward the personal instead of the impersonal.
Glad you enjoyed Robinson Crusoe! I agree with your analysis-- interesting read in general, with a few slow parts and a number of things (like his blatant belief in racial superiority, or his simplicistic theology of his physical deliverance from the island being equated to spiritual deliverance) that get quite tiresome. I actually wrote my thesis in college comparing Robinson Crusoe to another book (La Oscuridad Radiante, by Oscar Uzin), and I definitely think both are written as religious fiction, which is an interesting genre. Defoe wrote primarily in the Puritan literary tradition, where even claiming authorship of something creative could be a bad thing (detracting from THE Author of all things). Defoe actually positions himself more as the editor of a (fictitious) spiritual autobiography, like a case study in religious interpretation and in reading God's will. Robinson Crusoe is probably more well known as an adventure or a travel novel, but I find it more enlightening and interesting to read it as religious fiction. Strong themes, they are!
Thanks Nikki. That's interesting that you wrote your college thesis on this. Were you an English Lit major?
Not exactly, but close. I was a Comparative Literature major-- hence the comparison and the foreign language.^^
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