Arguably the first English novel, Daniel Defoe’s prose romance Robinson Crusoe recounts the fictional adventures of the title character, an ambitious Englishman, through Crusoe’s first-person autobiographical narrative. In the formally titled The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner. Written by Himself, Crusoe describes in realistic detail his adventures, his struggles to survive, his religious quandaries, and his strivings for economic advancement, from his headstrong youth into his relative old age.
The majority of the book, and the part most popularly familiar, consists of Crusoe’s description of his experiences stranded for 28 years on an uninhabited island off the coast of South America. Written when Defoe was nearly 60, Robinson Crusoe was the first of a number of novels he wrote late in life after an earlier career as a prolific essayist and pamphleteer. Robinson Crusoe was probably inspired by the popularly reported, real-life adventures of Alexander Selkirk, a British sailor rescued in 1709 from Juan Fernandez, a desolate island off the coast of Chile, where he had lived alone for more than four years.
Although the young Crusoe of the first part of the novel sneaks off to sea against his father’s wishes, he nevertheless impresses with his industry and hard work, building a successful plantation in South America after only several years away. Crusoe is a self-made man well on his way to economic success when, prodded by ambition, he sets sail to obtain plantation slave labor for himself and neighboring plantation holders. Crusoe’s subsequent adventures with pirates, his capture, and eventual escape, shipwreck, and his strivings for survival largely alone on his island, coupled with the book’s descriptions of exotic places, scenes, and wildlife, undoubtedly appealed to contemporary readers with whom travel and adventure books were very popular.
After the shipwreck, Defoe provides a detailed account of Crusoe’s industry and self-reliance in his use of wreck-salvaged material first to provide for his own survival and later to build a comfortable home alone on his island. The virtues of hard work are clearly stressed, and later critics felt Defoe clearly embraced his culture’s enthusiasm for mercantilist endeavors.
Crusoe’s self-reflective and self-critical remarks form the basis for a Puritan message on obedience and duty, despite his headstrong behavior and failure to heed his father’s advice to accept and pursue the “middle station” in life. Thus, his physical struggles for survival mirror his ethical struggles on religion and duty. While Crusoe periodically returns to his ethical reflections, he reaches a pivotal point when, alone and sick on the island, he repents and vows to be a better, more obedient servant of God. His epiphany is foreshadowed as he thinks to himself after having spent some time on the island, “I never felt so earnest, so strong a desire, after the society of my fellow-creatures, or so deep a regret at the want of it.” The fever of his illness, symbolic of his spiritual disease, breaks with his repentance and new resolve.
His interactions and adventures with two characters, Xury and later the more famous Friday, further underscore the Puritan religious message. Unlike Crusoe, who has to learn to accept his station in life, the “savages” willingly accept theirs as subjects to Crusoe. The subjugation of Xury and Friday is just another part of God’s order, additionally justified by their resulting education in Christianity and European deportment. They are also, in effect, cheap labor for Crusoe. The book’s secular Puritanism extols acquisition and the accumulation of wealth as the natural result of hard work, a Puritan value, and thus virtually a religious duty. As Crusoe instructs Friday, he strengthens his own beliefs and proves the value of proselytizing, musing that “in laying things open to him, I really informed and instructed myself in many things that I either did not know or had not fully considered before.”
Modern readers may find the emphasis on Puritan Christianity, laissez-faire economics, middle-class economic individualism, and the white man’s Christian burden as a justification for slavery farcically outdated. Even though the views expressed on these issues, especially Crusoe’s treatment of Xury and Friday, seem offensive now, they most probably simply reflect the views of Defoe’s time and place. As such, Robinson Crusoe can be read as a period piece indicative of 18th-century English political and racial views as well as a Puritan religious fable and adventure tale.
This first-person novel is written so convincingly, and with such realistic detail, even to the point of detailed accountings of Crusoe’s assets, that it easily captures readers’ imaginations. The book’s autobiographical format underscores its individualist hue while also providing details that add to Crusoe’s realism. Although Crusoe was not well received by refined readers, it sold very well to the general public, going through several printings. Its success encouraged Defoe to follow it with The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) and The Serious Reflections… of Robinson Crusoe (1720), neither of which proved nearly as popular as the original novel.
Robinson Crusoe is a moral tale, extolling the virtues of a secular Puritanism, wrapped up in an appealing, realistic adventure story. It also appealed to contemporary readers because of its novelty. Robinson Crusoe represents a middle-class character, neither the classical figure nor the stereotype typically used in earlier works. The original plot and Defoe’s strong rendering of an ordinary man, his island milieu, and his adventures in striking realistic detail continue its appeal. The use of realism and a common-man protagonist in a vivid and convincingly detailed plot such that readers identify with Crusoe and his plight separates the novel from preceding books.
Critic Ian Watt argues that these qualities are important to the development of the novel as a literary form. He also argues as essential the growth of a protagonist’s sense of identity over the course of a book, a quality that many argue is lacking in Crusoe. But while some argue that Crusoe does not fully evolve as a character and lacks the psychological development that marks the protagonist in a fully developed novel, Defoe clearly takes the written word in new and important directions. Robinson Crusoe remains available in print, as well as in various media forms, and continues to be widely studied and enjoyed.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hunter, J. Paul. “The Conclusion of Robinson Crusoe.” Daniel Defoe: A Collection of Critical Essays. Edited by Max Byrd. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976.
———. The Reluctant Pilgrim: Defoe’s Emblematic Method and Quest for Form in Robinson Crusoe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966.
Novak, Maximillian E. “Robinson Crusoe’s Original Sin.” Daniel Defoe: A Collection of Critical Essays. Edited by Max Byrd. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1976.
Starr, George A. “Robinson Crusoe’s Conversion.” Daniel Defoe: A Collection of Critical Essays. Edited by Max Byrd. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976.
Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis, Travel Literature
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