Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
The balance between agency and the challenges to it proposed by unexplained or supernatural occurrences is of central importance in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Additionally, the question of human control over various surroundings seemingly develops commensurate to the title character’s increased reliance on and understanding of his faith. That particular conflict is a replication of the overall theme of the narrative — Crusoe’s finding increasing discomfort the more familiar he becomes with his environment. For Defoe, then, familiarity is nothing if not problematic. Crusoe’s at times prosperous (and later at least tolerable and regimented) routine is interrupted at almost regular intervals throughout the text, raising issues of the importance of temporality and ultimately the role of individual hegemony in the surrounding world, whether that world is England, Brazil, the lonely island or the ship that leaves Crusoe there.
The underlying reason for Crusoe’s suffering, and one to which he continually refers and bemoans, is his filial disobedience. This defiance is treated by Defoe as a representation of Adam’s fall, especially since he opens the narrative in the fashion of Genesis, focusing on Crusoe’s beginnings as a way to contextualize his later dire straits. By defying his father, Crusoe initiates the chaos that will come to define most of his adult life — undergoing a physical and spiritual disembarkation from England and the relative safety it represents. During his time in Brazil as a plantation owner, Crusoe foreshadows a later paradox; that futile are attempts to reinvent civilization after rejecting a preexisting model such as the father, whether that of religion or family...
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Perhaps, then, Crusoe is not an exception to the supernatural; like Poll and the vision of a black figure, much of Crusoe’s success on the island goes unexplained in terms of so-called normality. Poll, who is transplanted mysteriously across the island, is a smaller version of Crusoe, and the language he is able to speak mirrors that of Crusoe early during his captivity. By the same account, the black figure who comes to kill Crusoe but refrains from doing so is representative of a later Crusoe, who hedges between killing and sparing new human inhabitants on the island. As important as is Crusoe’s transformation from a figure around whom the supernatural operates to the embodiment of its prophecies, however, equally vital to the narrative is merely the fact that Crusoe has the agency to undergo that change despite constant challenges to temporal structure.
In the afterword to Becoming a Poet—David Kalstone’s study of Elizabeth Bishop—James Merrill writes that the poem “Crusoe in England” is “an exception to Bishop’s preference for the happy ending, or the ruefully cheerful one” (259).1 If the melancholy of “Crusoe in England” makes it uncharacteristic of Bishop’s work, “One Art,” another of the poems in her collection Geography III, exhibits a similar deviation, although it notably begins with a “ruefully cheerful” declaration: 241 The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. (1–3) In the face of overwhelming loss, Bishop appears in this first stanza to have constructed an admittedly bittersweet, but nonetheless
James Joyce on Robinson Crusoe: “…the man alone, on a desert island, constructing a simple and moral economy which becomes the basis of a commonwealth presided over by a benevolent sovereign” (Liu 731).
throughout the book. In this essay I will look at how they do or do
Daniel Defoe wrote his fictional novel Robinson Crusoe during the 18th century, a time of colonization, and the British agricultural revolution. In the novel Robinson Crusoe desires civilization and comforts during his years on the island, so much that he alters the ecology of the fictional “island” in order to fulfill his craving. Consequently, Robinson Crusoe changes the ecology of the island, with the introduction of invasive species, European crops, and enclosures. Crusoe uses the practices of the British agricultural revolution to colonize the island, and to better his life during his stay.
This paper is an attempt to examine the seeming opposition of religion vs. self-interest with respect to the character of Robinson Crusoe. I will venture to demonstrate that in the novel, Defoe illustrates the contradictions with which Crusoe must contend as he strives to please God while ensuring his own survival in the world. In part, I will endeavor to show that a distorted sense of Puritanism as well as the existing colonial mindset exacerbated this opposition, and resulted in what I propose to be Defoe's (possibly retroactive) imposition of a religious justification for Crusoe's actions.
"Daniel Defoe achieved literary immortality when, in April 1719, he published Robinson Crusoe" (Stockton 2321). It dared to challenge the political, social, and economic status quo of his time. By depicting the utopian environment in which was created in the absence of society, Defoe criticizes the political and economic aspect of England's society, but is also able to show the narrator's relationship with nature in a vivid account of the personal growth and development that took place while stranded in solitude. Crusoe becomes "the universal representative, the person, for whom every reader could substitute himself" (Coleridge 2318). "Thus, Defoe persuades us to see remote islands and the solitude of the human soul. By believing fixedly in the solidity of the plot and its earthiness, he has subdued every other element to his design and has roped a whole universe into harmony" (Woolf 2303).
In Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, Robinson faces the biggest and longest challenge of his life. As Robinson attempts to find his role in life, he travels around the world to experience what he might deem worthy to live for. He takes comfort in material things such as wealth and possessions, which is what gets him in trouble over time. Robinson was told to take the middle path in life, but choosing the high path instead, Robinson was separate from everything considered materialistic in his social life. Robinson Crusoe has to face the consequences of his self-created ordeal and handle any challenges that face him.
If the book is not holding the reader's attention because of the suspense, then it is held by the profound spiritual insight that Defoe includes within the pages of his work. This was the biggest surprise to me of all. For example, in chapter 12, Robinson Crusoe states: "From this moment I began to conclude in my mind that it is possible for me to be more happy in this forsaken solitary condition, that it was probable I should ever have been in any other particular state in the world, and with this thought I was going to give thanks to God for bringing me to this place." Crusoe was convinced that the reason for all of his calamities was the result of his disobeying the counsel of his father. The theological discussions with Friday are wonderful. Indeed, every Christian can relate to Crusoe's wrestling with faith and fear. I finished the book with the conclusion that this book should be standard reading for every Christian, particularly preachers. Preachers will find a wealth of sermon illustrations in Robinson Crusoe.
Daniel Defoe tells tale of a marooned individual in order to criticize society. By using the Island location, similar to that of Shakespeare's The Tempest, Defoe is able to show his audience exactly what is necessary for the development of a utopian society. In The Tempest, the small society of Prospero's island addresses the aspects of morality, the supernatural and politics in the larger British society. In Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, the island's natural surroundings highlights the subject of man's individual growth, both spiritually and physically. Nature instantly exercises its power and control over man in the tropical storm that leads to the wreckage of Crusoe's ship. "The fury of the sea" (Defoe, 45) thrusts Crusoe to the shores of the uninhabited "Island of Despair" (Defoe, 70). Isolated on the island, Crusoe is challenged to use his creativity in order to survive.
On initial reading, I found it that Athol Fugard’s use of Sophocles’ Antigone in his (collaborative) play, The Island (1973) was imperative to achieve what I understand to be the major (cl)aim of the work: a critique of the government which John and Winston (the two characters in the play) had been sanctioned to prison by. However, deeper reflection reveals that not only is the presence of Antigone of significance, the manner through which the performance of the contents of Antigone is conceived by John and Winston is telling, as well. It is on reflecting on this second component of Antigone’s impact on The Island that we become more aware of the elements of hybridity present in the latter work as identified by William Worthen, most specifically,
The Progression of the Eighteenth Century Novel Shows How Society Takes Over the Role of God The progression of the Eighteenth Century novel charts the transformation of the role of God into the role of society. In Daniel Defoe’s early Eighteenth Century novel, Robinson Crusoe, God makes the laws, gives out the punishments, and creates the terror. By the end of the century, the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror announce to the world that society is taking over the role of God and now people will make laws, give out punishments, and incite terror. Early Eighteenth Century novel, Robinson Crusoe, shows the development of a new self, one conflicted with the idea of both relying on God’s Providence while also realizing their own power to make things happen. The novel shows the development of Homo Economico, the economic man. With the voyages to the new colonies, many lower and middle class men prove able to create their own fortunes overnight. The concept of the Great Chain of Being becomes lost when members of the lower classes become wealthier than many of the upper class aristocrats. Now many men from the lower classes buy land and/or titles. When lower class members become landowners, the idea of Divine Right to rule over the land no longer proves valid. Defoe illustrates society’s changes through Crusoe, who battles with the notion of God’s Providence. At certain moments he thanks God for His Providence, but then later conceives that actually God did not cause the ...
Being stranded on the island gave Robinson Crusoe a renewed spiritual connection to God and his faith and he had to out his faith in the hands of God. He realizes that money was no longer of great importance to him. The highest aspect in this story is how a man how to survive on his own. In this case Defoe succeeds to inform this matter of survival on ones own and how one becomes a different improved person form the unexpected events that throws at you.
The roots of the novel extend as far back as the beginning of communication and language because the novel is a compilation of various elements that have evolved over the centuries. The birth of the English novel, however, can be centered on the work of three writers of the 18th century: Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) and Henry Fielding (1707-1754). Various critics have deemed both Defoe and Richardson the father of the English novel, and Fielding is never discussed without comparison to Richardson. The choice of these three authors is not arbitrary; it is based on central elements of the novel that these authors contributed which brought the novel itself into place. Of course, Defoe, Richardson and Fielding added onto styles of the past and writing styles of the period, including moralistic instruction and picaresque stories. Using writing of the time and the literary tradition of the past, Defoe first crafted the English novel while Richardson and Fielding completed its inception.
Daniel Defoe has frequently been considered the father of realism in regards to his novel, Robinson Crusoe. In the preface of the novel, the events are described as being “just history of fact” (Defoe and Richetti ). This sets the tone for the story to be presented as factual, while it is in of itself truly fiction. This is the first time that a narrative fictional novel has been written in a way that the story is represented as the truth. Realistic elements and precise details are presented unprecedented; the events that unfold in the novel resonate with readers of the middle-class in such a way that it seems as if the stories could be written about themselves. Defoe did not write his novel for the learned, he wrote it for the large public of tradesmen, apprentices and shopkeepers (Häusermann 439-456).