Daniel Defoe (–1731)

There are so many classics I still haven't read and thankfully my bookish buddy Veronica from The Burgeoning Bookshelf bravely agreed to tackle Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe with me recently. We were both reading the Penguin clothbound edition and when I encountered a sentence 21 lines long within the first six pages - and looking further ahead saw zero chapter breaks - I knew I was in for a challenging read.

Published more than 300 years ago in 1719, this review is going to contain plot show more developments so if you're precious about having the plot of Robinson Crusoe spoiled you should give this review a miss. This book is about Robinson Crusoe and his adventures after being shipwrecked on an island. We get a surprising amount of backstory before the eventual shipwrecking but we're told on the title page that Crusoe spends 28 years alone on an un-inhabited island so how's that for a 300 year old spoiler from the author?

As a character, I wasn't a fan of Crusoe at all and I found him selfish and self-serving. The novel contains much internal reflection and thoughts about God and purpose and you could argue it was a spiritual story of sorts, although lacking a conclusion.

"Upon the whole, here was an undoubted testimony, that there was scarce any condition in the world so miserable, but there was something negative or something positive to be thankful for in it; and let this stand as a direction from the experience of the most miserable of all conditions in this world, that we may always find in it something to comfort our selves from, and to set in the description of good and evil, on the credit side of the accompt." Page 54

Crusoe has a good attitude in this regard and the ability to see the silver lining is an important life lesson still being learned today. There's also a heavy focus on gratitude, as this quote attests:

"It put me upon reflecting, how little repining there would be among mankind, at any condition of life, if people would rather compare their condition with those that are worse, in order to be thankful, than be always comparing them with those which are better, to assist their murmurings and complainings." Page 132

Naturally we have many sayings to this effect (the grass is always greener, there's always someone worse off than you, a bird in the hand etc.) but 300 years ago, I wonder if this sentiment was as well known as it is today.

However, I was most entertained when Crusoe was being industrious on the island. Scavenging everything he could from the shipwreck, he sets up a camp with defences, plans out his rations, ingeniously cultivates food sources and builds and makes almost anything. In the time he was alone, he dries grapes for raisins each season, builds pens for wild goats, sows corn and barley, weaves baskets and makes clothes, furniture and more.

The scariest part of the book by far was when Crusoe saw a footprint in the sand that wasn't his own. He was terrified and for the next two years worked to increase his defences while continuing to monitor his surroundings in fear.

Eventually we learn the footprint belongs to visiting 'savages' as Crusoe calls them - and again the reader needs to remember this was written 300 years ago - and he witnesses them killing and eating human prisoners. Embarking on a plan to rescue a prisoner was a grand idea, until Crusoe shares his ultimate purpose is not for a companion but to make one his slave.

"Besides, I fancied myself able to manage one, nay, two or three savages, if I had them so as to make them entirely slaves to me, to do whatever I should direct them, and to prevent their being able at any time to do me any hurt." Page 158

I found this abhorrent and was grinding my teeth in anger when Crusoe succeeds. He calls his freed captive Friday - for the day he was rescued - which I found terribly insulting. With all of that religious reflection, why didn't he choose to call the man Providence, Faith or Adam? He teaches Friday english and tells him his name is Master (eye roll). Friday is grateful to Crusoe for saving his life and swears fealty - in effect - for life.

Other similar rescues occur after this point, including Friday's father. Their reunion was an emotional moment, but he and a Spaniard return to the mainland in a canoe to rescue fellow Spaniards and plan to return to Crusoe's island and share in the plentiful provisions. In that time, a mutinied ship arrives, a battle of weapons and wits takes place, and Crusoe becomes the captain of sorts.

Without any hesitation, Crusoe decides to leave the island for good, completely setting aside his previous plan with Friday's father. I was infuriated that Crusoe has no qualms abandoning his previous agreement, instead believing a letter will suffice. He also doesn't acknowledge any reluctance by Friday to leave the island before his father has returned, knowing they may never see each other again.

When Crusoe reaches society, there was plenty about his business dealings but I was interested to hear how Friday was adjusting to the culture shock. Crusoe goes on to have a family, but did Friday want to return home or have a family of his own?

Alas we never find out because the protagonist is too selfish to care, taking pains to provide for a loyal old woman from his earlier life as a young man yet completely dismissive of his year's long companion. There's also no reflecting on God after his 'salvation' either. He just goes back to business and his affairs, ugh!

Having finished it, I'm shocked Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe has been recommended reading for children and students over the years. The internal reflections are dull and the cannibalism and murders make it way too violent for young readers. If the book started with his shipwreck and focussed purely on his labours, then it would be one hell of an adventure. Alas, we have this story instead and I didn't enjoy it.

Thanks to Veronica for the buddy read and the encouragement to get through this. It's now off my list, woohoo! (I'm publishing this review on a Friday in tribute to an exploited and overlooked character). show less

This book is not only a tedious slog through minutiae, it's a tedious slog through the same minutiae repeatedly. Crusoe reports how he crashes on an island; then, he tells you that he started keeping a journal a few weeks later, so there's no entry for crashing on the island, but if there was it would be like this hypothetical example; then he gives you his journal... which opens with him crashing on the island! Dude, it was barely interesting the first time, much less the final and show more contradictory one. Even less interesting is Crusoe's need to explain goat-raising and wall-building. If this journal had been someone's blog, I'd've unfriended that guy so fast. (It doesn't help that Defoe is unable to sustain the fiction of a journal, as it is frequently written in the past tense from an obviously post-island perspective.) Once things finally start happening in the final third with the arrival of Friday and the cannibals, they don't really get any better, as Crusoe is one of those awesome-at-everything-forever protagonists who never has to actually work for his victories, mostly because apparently everyone else in the world is a mentally stunted coward.

Also: I know Defoe was inventing the novel and all, but would it have killed him to use chapter breaks? show less

Daniel Defoe is a fascinating writer. He can write a marvelous melodrama and then create a novel that reads as if it is non-fiction. This fictional documentation of the great plague of 1665 in England is quite remarkable. Apparently some historians think it is better than actual documentation in its ability to convey the progression and social repercussions of this horrifying black death. He carefully lays out the slow unraveling of the societal fabric. He seems to say that fear and show more suffering result in chaos and irrational behavior. The desire to survive drives people to behave in ways they would not otherwise even consider or believe themselves capable of. I have to say that the power of this book seems, unfortunately, as relevant now as ever. With an Aids epidemic, Ebola epidemic, and threats of biological warfare in our lives, it is a pretty scary insight into the likely chain of events should some form of massive biological threat present itself. This was not a fun read, but very thought provoking. show less

Journal of the Plague Year is a careful reconstruction of catastrophe rather than a direct witness account, and that distinction shapes the entire reading experience. Defoe, writing decades after the event and drawing on research rather than memory, produces something more structured and interpretive than the immediacy found in contemporary accounts like The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Where Pepys records what he sees, often unevenly and without narrative shaping, Defoe’s narrator, H.F., show more organizes the plague into a coherent moral and social story.

That coherence is both the book’s strength and its limitation.

On the one hand, the novel offers a detailed picture of how people thought and behaved during the plague: the tension between flight and containment, the spread of rumor, the strain placed on civic systems, and the improvisational nature of survival. It reads as deeply researched and attentive to the mechanics of crisis, making it valuable as a kind of social document.

On the other hand, the interpretive layer is impossible to ignore. H.F.’s repeated insistence that survival signals divine favor becomes increasingly frustrating. The logic feels less like observation and more like justification. Survival in the text often correlates not with righteousness, but with means: the ability to leave, to isolate, to endure. The theological framing, while historically appropriate, narrows the analysis by attributing outcomes to providence rather than to material conditions.

This tension highlights a larger issue: Defoe imposes meaning on events that, in reality, would have felt chaotic and unresolved. The plague becomes not just a disaster, but a moral system, and that system reflects the biases of the narrator.

Despite this, there are moments where the book cuts through its own structure. The story of the three brothers stands out as a vivid and human episode, suggesting a more flexible, less doctrinaire understanding of survival and chance. Similarly, the closing reflections provide a sense of containment and retrospective order, even if that order is shaped by H.F.’s assumptions.

In the end, Journal of the Plague Year is best read not as a transparent window into 1665, but as a layered text: part history, part narrative, part moral argument. It is well written, thoughtful, and often compelling, but its insistence on theological interpretation can feel at odds with the more material realities it inadvertently reveals. show less