Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday by Carl Offterdinger

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1719 and sometimes regarded as the first novel in English. The book is a fictional autobiography of the title character, an English castaway who spends twenty-eight years on a remote island, encountering savages, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. This device, presenting an account of supposedly factual events, is known as a "false document", and gives a realistic frame to the story.

The full title of the novel is The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner: who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an uninhabited Island on the coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pirates. Written by Himself.

Reception and sequels

The book was first published on April 25 1719. The positive reception was immediate and universal. Before the end of the year, this first volume had run through four editions. Within years, it had reached an audience as wide as any book ever written in English.

No single book in the history of Western literature has spawned more editions, spin-offs, and translations (even into languages such as Inuit, Coptic, and Maltese) than Robinson Crusoe, having spawned more than 700 such alternative versions, including children's versions with mainly pictures and no text. There have been hundreds of adaptations in dozens of languages, from the Swiss Family Robinson to Luis Buñuel's film adaption. J.M. Coetzee's 1986 novel, Foe, is a reimagining, retelling, and reevaluation of the story. The term "Robinsonade" has even been coined to describe the various spin-offs of Robinson Crusoe.

Defoe went on to write a lesser-known sequel, The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. It was intended to be the last part of his stories, according to the original title-page of its first edition, but in fact a third part, entitled Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, was written; it is a mostly-forgotten series of moral essays with Crusoe's name attached to give interest.

Real-life castaways

Since Defoe usually capitalized on current news events, it is likely that his real-life inspiration for Crusoe was a Scottish sailor named Alexander Selkirk, who was rescued in 1709 by Woodes Rogers' expedition after four years on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernández off the Chilean coast. Rogers's "Cruising Voyage" was published in 1712, with an account of Alexander Selkirk's ordeal. However, Robinson Crusoe is far from a copy of Woodes Roger's account. Selkirk was abandoned at his own request, while Crusoe was shipwrecked. The islands are different. Selkirk lived alone for the whole time, while Crusoe found companions. Furthermore, much of the appeal of Defoe's novel is the detailed and captivating account of Crusoe's thoughts, occupations and activities which goes far beyond that of Rogers' description of Selkirk.

Other real-life castaways were reduced to an extremely primitive condition, or lost the use of speech, in a space of a few years. One report describes a Frenchman who, after two years of solitude on Mauritius, tore his clothing to pieces in a fit of madness brought on by a diet of nothing but raw turtles. Another story has to do with a Dutch seaman who was left alone on the island of Saint Helena as punishment. He fell into such despair that he disinterred the body of a buried comrade and he set out to sea in the coffin (Mandelslo, 1662: 246). Another castaway, the Spaniard Pedro Serrano, was rescued after seven years of solitude, according to Rycaut and Secord. However, studies of life on desert islands available to Defoe were neither long nor detailed; perhaps two or three covered more than a dozen pages. To plunder from any one of these a story so abundantly stocked with detail as "Robinson Crusoe" is manifestly impossible.

Interpretations

Despite its simple narrative style and the absence of the supposedly indispensable love motive, no modern book can boast of such worldwide esteem. Novelist James Joyce eloquently noted that the true symbol of the British conquest is Robinson Crusoe: "He is the true prototype of the British colonist… The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity".

According to J.P. Hunter, Robinson is not a hero but an everyman. He begins as a wanderer, aimless on a sea he does not understand; he ends as a pilgrim, crossing a final mountain to enter the promised land. The book tells the story of how Robinson gets closer to God, not through listening to sermons in a church but through spending time alone amongst nature with only a Bible to read. This view was not welcomed by the established Anglican church of the time who thought the message in the book was anarchic and close to heresy. Defoe's views are reflected in those of Christian anarchism.

Robinson Crusoe is filled with religious aspects. Defoe was himself a Puritan moralist, and normally worked in the guide tradition, writing guide books on how to be a good Puritan Christian. He wrote such guide books as The New Family Instructor (1727) and Religious Courtship (1722). While Robinson Crusoe is far more than a guide for youth on how to embark on life's journey, it shares many of the same themes that would have been obvious to a contemporary reader as being in the same category. It shares the same concerns as guide books, and presents the same theological and moral point of views. The very name "Crusoe" is very possibly taken from a Timothy Cruso who was a classmate of Defoe's and who had written a number of guide books including God the Guide of Youth (1695) before dying at an early age — just eight years before Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe. Cruso's name would still have been remembered to contemporaries and the association with guide books clear. It has even been suggested that Cruso's God the Guide of Youth inspired Robinson Crusoe because of a number of passages in that work that are closely tied to the novel, however this is unknown and speculation.Template:Fn

Cultural influences

The book proved so popular that the names of the two main protagonists have entered the language. The term "Robinson Crusoe" is virtually synonymous with the word "castaway", and the term "Man Friday" (or "Girl Friday") is used to mean a helpmate — Crusoe refers to "my man, Friday" as he would a butler or employee, but the assistant's name is never anything but "Friday".

In Jean-Jacques Rousseau's treatise on education, Emile, or Education, the main character, Emile, is allowed to read only one book before the age of twelve, Robinson Crusoe. Rousseau wants Emile to identify himself as Crusoe, required to rely upon himself for all of his needs. In Rousseau's view, Emile needs to imitate Crusoe's experience, allowing necessity to determine what is to be learned and accomplished. This is one of the main themes of Rousseau's educational model.

Nobel Prize-winning (2003) author J. M. Coetzee in 1986 published a novel entitled Foe, in which he explores an alternative telling of the Crusoe story, an allegorical story about racism, philosophy, and colonialism.

Jacques Offenbach wrote an opéra comique called Robinson Crusoé which was first performed at the Opéra-Comique, Salle Favart on 23 November 1867. This was based on the British pantomime version rather than the novel itself. The libretto was by Eugène Cormon and Hector-Jonathan Crémieux.

The story

Crusoe leaves England on a sea voyage in September 1651 against the wishes of his parents. The ship is taken over by Salè pirates and Crusoe becomes the slave of a Moor. He manages to escape with a boat and is befriended by the Captain of a Portuguese ship off the western coast of Africa. The ship is en route to Brazil. There with the help of the Captain, Crusoe becomes owner of a plantation.

He joins an expedition to bring slaves from Africa, but he is shipwrecked in a storm about forty miles out to sea on an island near the mouth of the Orinoco river on September 30 1659. His companions all die; he manages to fetch arms, tools and other supplies from the ship before it breaks apart and sinks. He proceeds to build a fenced-in habitation and cave, keeps a calendar by making marks in a piece of wood. He hunts, grows corn, learns to make pottery, raises goats, etc. He reads the Bible and slowly becomes religious, thanking God for his fate in which nothing is missing but society.

He discovers native cannibals occasionally visit the island to kill and eat prisoners. At first he plans to kill the savages for their abomination, but then he realizes that he has no right to do so as the cannibals have not attacked him and do not knowingly commit a crime. He dreams of capturing one or two servants by freeing some prisoners, and indeed, when a prisoner manages to attempt escape, Crusoe helps him, naming his new companion "Friday" after the day of the week he appeared, and teaches him English and converts him to Christianity.

After another party of natives arrive to partake in a grisly feast, Crusoe and Friday manage to kill most of the natives and save two of the prisoners. One is Friday's father and the other is a Spaniard. The Spaniard informs Crusoe that there are other Spaniards shipwrecked on the mainland. A plan is devised where the Spaniard would return with Friday's father to the mainland and bring back the others, build a ship, and sail to a Spanish port and salvation for all.

Before the Spaniards return, an English ship appears; it turns out that a mutiny had broken out on the ship and the mutineers intend to maroon their captain on the island. The captain and Crusoe manage to retake the ship. They leave for England but leave behind three of the mutineers on the island to fend for themselves and inform the Spaniards when they arrive what happened. Crusoe left the island on December 19 1686. He travels to Portugal to find his old Captain friend who informs him his plantation in Brazil was well cared for and he has become wealthy. From Portugal he travels overland to England, to avoid mishaps at sea, via Spain and France; in a mountainous region in winter, he and his companions have to fend off an attack of vicious wolves. Back in England, he decides to sell his plantation, as returning to Brazil would entail converting to Catholicism. Later in life after marrying and having two children and becoming widowed, he returns to his island for a last time. The book ends with a hint about a sequel that would detail his return to the island, which has since been discovered.

See also

• Robinsonade
• Robinson Crusoe on Mars

Notes

• Template:FnbHunter, J. Paul (1966) The Reluctant Pilgrim. As found in Norton Critical Edition (see below).

References

• Shinagel, Michael, ed. (1994). Robinson Crusoe. Norton Critical Edition. ISBN 0393964523. Includes textual annotations, contemporary and modern criticisms, bibliography.

External links

• Robinson Crusoe at Project Gutenberg
• Free eBook of Robinson Crusoe RSS version.
• Free eBook of Robinson Crusoe with illustrations by N. C. Wyeth
• Free audiobook of Robinson Crusoe from Librivox