Robinson Crusoe

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 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 show more 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 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 show more 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

I'm actually sorry I read this book. I always had good impressions of it, without ever having read it. Now I have, and there's no going back.

I'm not sure just how much the views of Robinson Crusoe reflect those of the general public at the time it was written, but I suspect they match fairly well. And Robinson Crusoe is a arrogant, racist, misogynist idiot.

Think I'm exaggerating? He makes it off the island, but leaves some 'Spaniards' stranded there. On the very last page of the book he sends 'five cows, three of them being big with calf, some sheep, and some hogs' back to the island for the inhabitants, along with 'seven women, being such as I found proper for service, or for wives to such as would take them.'

Early on in the book, he show more is taken by 'Moors' that force him into slavery. When he makes his mistake, he is careful to make sure he takes a fellow captive along to serve as his own slave boy.

The book is rife with stuff like that. When Crusoe rescues a Spanish castaway from cannibals he introduces himself, but when he rescues a native from the same fate, he tells the native his name will be Friday, and Friday is to call him 'Master.' Apparently Friday thinks that's perfect, and goes out of his way to become a perfect slave.

Hell, he ends up on the island as part of a failed attempt to become a Brazillian slave trader!

There's only two beings in the book who have a name - Robinson Crusoe, and Pol, the parrot. His wife and children get a lot less prose than the parrot, and no, you never learn their names either. Everyone else is described and never named, and they all think Crusoe can do no wrong. Apparently only Robinson Crusoe ever saw fit to criticize Robinson Crusoe.

The parts of the book I actually enjoyed were descriptions of how he performed all the tasks required to stay alive, and yet they were always ridiculously easy. Never once does he not find fresh water within minutes of looking for it, and although many things supposedly take months and months to complete, he only ever mentions the first couple of days of his labour at most. He never gets hurt, gets sick only once and shoots all sorts of people without ever getting so much as a scratch.

All of this mess is apparently because he wouldn't listen to his father and ran away. It's appropriate for God to kick him in the teeth repeatedly and kill off everyone around him over and over again until he gets the message. And even then the good Christian's morals wander around like a lifeboat in one of the many storms. About the only decision taken for Christian reasons that stuck was not moving back to Brazil because he wasn't sure about being Roman Catholic!

The best part of this book? The binding fell apart as I read it so it's not worth keeping or selling now I'm done with it.

Maybe I'm missing the point. If it's there, it's not worth digging for. If you haven't read this one, skip it and watch an episode of Gilligan's Island instead. show less

As a child I was introduced to the Ladybird version of the book, so was under the misapprehension that this was a children’s novel. It is not, as it deals with themes such as slavery, cannibalism, piracy and survival. The only other novel by Defoe I had read was Moll Flanders, so I probably should have realised this was not going to be a sanitised novel. In Wilkie Collins novel The Moonstone the old butler whenever he was troubled or needed guidance would seek it in the pages of Robinson Crusoe, rather like a moral oracle. I found this curious, surely for a good victorian the Bible would have been the book to turn to. Finally I now understand why, Crusoe is the story of a man who despite appalling circumstance never gives into despair show more and melancholy, while at the same time remaining resolutely human. Sometimes in novels these great hero’s feel out of reach, like they are set apart, but Crusoe demonstrates that as well as heroism there is also fear and cowardice, humanity and savage violence. While it is certainly a novel about surviving slavery and shipwreck, to leave it at that is to miss its depth, its message of hope that however bad our external circumstances may be we still have the power to make the best of them. show less

Defoe's Robinson Crusoe has been called (by no less than James Joyce) the first English novel. I had the pleasure of reading the 300th Anniversary Edition from Restless Books. It opens with Jamaica Kincaid's "Introduction" which first quotes Joyce (who calls the character Robinson Crusoe the "true symbol of British conquest") and then continues as a satiric letter from Kincaid to Crusoe himself: "Dear Mr. Crusoe. Please stay home." The book lays bare 18th century British attitudes towards colonization; race; slavery; religion; and more, but there are also some subtleties and nuances one wouldn't expect. This edition also comes with a Chronology of Defoe's life, and wonderful black ink drawings (and an artist's statement) by Eko.

I think this is worth reading as a cultural artifact. Crusoe careened around the Atlantic enslaving people, and was then terrified of how he might be treated if he fell into their hands; his profound religious awakening and intimate relationship with an indigenous person (whose name he never asks) did not lead to any change in his views; his highest achievement as a person once enslaved himself was to become the feudal lord of a colony half-populated by more kidnapped and enslaved people. Crusoe is just face-meltingly abhorrent, and by the end I'd convinced myself that it was a satire of the English mindset of the time... Maybe it wasn't then, but it is now.

I liked the parts about danger and setting up systems of food production, though.

I'm reluctant to review this one, because I find it hard to say good things about it, and yet I respect it too much to speak badly of it. Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is often considered the first novel, or at least the first English novel, and while this is debatable there is still a considerable amount of respect to put on this name. The adventure genre, particularly the nautical adventure sub-genre, owes a lot to this story, as do desert island and castaway stories (sometimes called 'Robinsonades'), or any sort of 'going into the wilderness and finding oneself' stories. Its influence is impressive, and while I often use that as easy praise for classics that haven't aged well, I usually find in such classics more enjoyment than they show more are often granted. But that's not the case with Robinson Crusoe. It's a struggle to read.

Partly this struggle is because of the book's age. It has long, interminable sentences that end up covering twenty lines, often repeating something in a roundabout way. This writing style was rather typical of its time, but it's torturous to a modern reader, being closer to a legal document than a story read for pleasure. Many reviewers also pick up on the book's dated colonial attitudes – Christian dominion over 'savages', attitudes to slavery, and so on – but this didn't bother me; or rather, I accepted the book was of its time. It's something that, surprisingly, people need to be reminded of all the time: you can't expect old stories and art, whether ten, twenty, one hundred or three hundred years old, to have progressive 21st-century morals.

But beyond the book's creaks and groans of age, the main disadvantage is that Robinson Crusoe doesn't do the things you would reasonably expect a novel – or any story – to do. The writing style bleeds out anything that we might nowadays call 'tension', and there is little devotion to character or laying the groundworks for plot. The narrative is basically 'this happened, then this happened, then this happened', with each element being introduced when needed rather than sown deep for later harvest. Crusoe has a dog with him on the island for his first twenty-six years, but he doesn't interact with it, and we don't even know its name. When 'the man Friday' arrives, it is mentioned only in passing that Crusoe teaches him English (pg. 235); when Crusoe brings Friday to European civilisation at the end of the novel, there's no words devoted to how he adapts. Most importantly, Crusoe doesn't even survive on the island by the skin of his teeth; he seems to have it easy, to be honest, with "the biggest magazine [i.e. supplies]... that ever was laid up, I believe, for one man" (pg. 67). Food, material, tools and shelter are in abundance, and Crusoe has none of the trials we would expect him to have as a castaway. To that famous question 'what one thing would you take with you to a desert island?', Crusoe answers: 'one of everything'. Much of the reader's interest drifts away.

This ease undercuts something prominent in the novel which is already hard to swallow for a modern reader: that of Crusoe's trials bringing him closer to God. It's hard to be invested in Crusoe's pleas to God when he's landed in a veritable Eden, a life he recognises as happier than "the wicked, cursed, abominable life I led all the past part of my days" (pg. 127). He spends a long time on his island, of course (more than thirty years), but the trials aren't as raw as the reader would need them to be to really contemplate his plight. Nor does it help that the discussion of God and religion (a substantial portion of the book, prospective readers be advised) is not especially deep, being your typical ecclesiastical talk of Providence and bounty and God's grace and so on. The book is didactic and instructional rather than adventurous and compelling. Defoe seems to mean for us to ponder Job – "I am singled out and separated, as it were, from all the world, to be miserable" (pg. 78) – but this only reinforces the conclusion that the book has aged to such an extent that it can now only be studied rather than enjoyed. show less