SEMINAR 6

DANIEL DEFOE ROBINSON CRUSOE

ASSIGNMENTS
1. Read the novel ROBINSON CRUSOE by DANIEL DEFOE.
2. Recount the biography and literary career of DANIEL DEFOE. Make the timeline of DEFOE’S
life and works.
Daniel Defoe was born in London on September 13, 1660. As a young man he studied to become a
Presbyterian minister, but he abandoned the clergy in favor of making his fortune as a merchant. The
business allowed Defoe to travel widely and he enjoyed some success initially, although it was never
consistent. By 1692 the business faltered badly, and he declared bankruptcy.

Fortunately, along with his interest in business, Defoe had a lifelong interest in politics and religion. This
interest led him to become a political writer, journalist, and pamphleteer. He published his first political
pamphlet in 1683, and his output over his lifetime was prodigious. Politics and religion were closely
connected topics during Defoe's heyday, and he tackled these subjects fearlessly. On more than one
occasion his writing caused sufficient controversy to land him in jail. The bulk of his political writing
appeared in his journal, the Review, which he single-handedly wrote and published from 1704 to 1713.
The Review started its life as a weekly, but eventually Defoe published the periodical three times a week.
Defoe's interests in religion, politics, and trade come together seamlessly in Robinson Crusoe (1719). The
novel explores these themes in implicit and explicit ways. Defoe is considered the father of the English
novel because Robinson Crusoe was the first novel written in English to use the prose narrative form
throughout—a fact that explains the episodic, recursive structure of the novel, as well as the odd gaps and
omissions at the end. The boundaries between nonfiction and fiction were blurry during this period, and
Defoe draws on the conventions of travel literature, memoirs, and conversion narratives. Defoe and his
contemporaries would have been shocked, for example, at the controversy surrounding James Frey's
heavily fictionalized memoir A Million Little Pieces because such narrative liberties were routinely used in
purportedly "true" accounts. Defoe's choice to move back and forth between a straightforward narration of
events and Crusoe's journal entries (some of which go backward to cover episodes he has already narrated)
is another marker of how genre conventions for the novel had not yet solidified. Nonetheless, the novel
earned him immediate and international fame. He published two sequels to Robinson Crusoe, but neither
achieved the popularity of his first novel. Other works that cemented his reputation as a novelist are Moll
Flanders and A Journal of the Plague Year, both published in 1722.
Defoe married Mary Tuffley in 1684, and the couple had eight children, two of whom died before
adulthood. They remained married until Defoe's death in London on April 24, 1731.

3. The true story of Alexander Selkirk, popularized in various narratives during the eighteenth
century, is generally held to be the major source for ROBINSON CRUSOE. Discuss the
similarities and differences between the novel and the true story. In what ways does Defoe
improve on the original tale?
Robinson Crusoe reflects its author's interests and experiences. It was written in the midst of ongoing English
conflicts between Protestantism and Catholicism, and Robinson Crusoe's religious journey addresses various
aspects of these conflicts. His encounters with sailors of different nationalities and natives of different continents are
flavored with political intrigue and Defoe's experiences in trade.
However, the most direct influence and inspiration for Robinson Crusoe is the story of Scottish sailor Alexander
Selkirk. A shoemaker's son from the town of Fife, Selkirk ran away to sea as a young man, just as Crusoe runs away
from his family. However, unlike Crusoe, Selkirk also reportedly engaged in a fistfight with his father and two
brothers. He also left at least one alleged wife behind in Scotland. He became a privateer, or legalized pirate, and
spent several years raiding Spanish ships off the Pacific coast of South America on behalf of the English
government. During a conflict with the captain of his ship in 1704 off the coast of Chile, Selkirk demanded to be left
on a nearby island. The captain obliged, and Selkirk stayed there for over four years. When he returned to England
in 1709, his story became well known.
The island Selkirk likely occupied is in the Juan Fernandez archipelago, roughly 400 miles off the western coast of
Chile. The second largest island in the cluster is named Isla Alejandro Selkirk (also known as Isla Más Afuera) for
Selkirk. The largest island, known as Isla Más a Tierra, is now sometimes called Isla Robinson Crusoe. However,
Crusoe comes to understand from Friday that his island is near the island of Trinidad, in the Caribbean Sea. Isla
Robinson Crusoe (and the location of Selkirk's island) is off the coast of Chile, in the South Pacific.

4. Provide the analysis of the major themes in ROBINSON CRUSOE.

 Adventure: Life as a Perilous Journey 
 Importance of Religion  Freedom and Slavery

 Crusoe relies on God to take care of him and
also fears God's punishment for abandoning
his family and for his lack of faith and
gratitude on past occasions. He finds his
quality of life improves as his faith in God
becomes stronger, and this motivates him to
continue. He begins to believe that God has
placed him on the earth for a reason, and he
initially thinks that because he alone (of all the
crew and passengers on the two ships) has
survived shipwrecks that God must therefore
have some purpose for him. Later in Chapter
18, as he tries to encourage the English captain
to take action to recover his ship, Crusoe asks,
"And where, sir ... is your belief of my being
preserved here on purpose to save your life?"
 One of the more provocative chapters in the
text (Chapter 15) has Crusoe teaching this
faith to Friday, who is a quick study, and soon
seems to become as devoted a Christian as
Crusoe. But Friday also asks questions that
Crusoe finds difficult to answer. Friday asks,
"Why God no kill the devil, so make him no
more do wicked?" Crusoe stumbles over the
answer but continues his teaching. In the end
he realizes that in teaching Christianity to
Friday, he has become a better and more
understanding Christian himself. However, at
the end of the novel he decides against
resettling in Brazil, in part because he does
not wish to live among Catholics.
5. Provide a character sketch of Robinson.
While he is no flashy hero or grand epic adventurer, Robinson Crusoe displays character traits
that have won him the approval of generations of readers. His perseverance in spending months
making a canoe, and in practicing pottery making until he gets it right, is praiseworthy.
 Colonialism and Capitalism
 Self-Reliance
Robinson Crusoe is at its core a story of adventure, and
true to its nature the hero must rely upon his wits and
courage to survive. Throughout the novel readers see
this theme in action. Robinson Crusoe chooses the
right moment to escape from his slave master and
thinks quickly to push the Moor accompanying him
on the boat overboard. He demonstrates self-reliance
in building his plantation in Brazil. And most clearly
and indefatigably, he uses his self-reliance to survive
on the island. Defoe goes to extraordinary lengths to
tell how Crusoe sorts through the goods on the
wrecked ship to find just what he needs to survive
and how he builds his rafts to bring it all ashore. It
describes how he builds his castle for both comfort
and defense. Crusoe has few materials available to
him, but he manages to use what he does have in
creative ways to build a comfortable and safe home
on the island.
 Loneliness vs. Solitude
 Additionally, his resourcefulness in building a home, dairy, grape arbor, country house, and goat
stable from practically nothing is clearly remarkable. The Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseau applauded Crusoe’s do-it-yourself independence, and in his book on
education, Emile, he recommends that children be taught to imitate Crusoe’s hands-on approach
to life. Crusoe’s business instincts are just as considerable as his survival instincts: he manages to
make a fortune in Brazil despite a twenty-eight-year absence and even leaves his island with a
nice collection of gold. Moreover, Crusoe is never interested in portraying himself as a hero in his
own narration. He does not boast of his courage in quelling the mutiny, and he is always ready to
admit unheroic feelings of fear or panic, as when he finds the footprint on the beach. Crusoe
prefers to depict himself as an ordinary sensible man, never as an exceptional hero.
But Crusoe’s admirable qualities must be weighed against the flaws in his character. Crusoe seems
incapable of deep feelings, as shown by his cold account of leaving his family—he worries about the
religious consequences of disobeying his father, but never displays any emotion about leaving.
Though he is generous toward people, as when he gives gifts to his sisters and the captain, Crusoe
reveals very little tender or sincere affection in his dealings with them. When Crusoe tells us that he
has gotten married and that his wife has died all within the same sentence, his indifference to her
seems almost cruel. Moreover, as an individual personality, Crusoe is rather dull. His precise and
deadpan style of narration works well for recounting the process of canoe building, but it tends to
drain the excitement from events that should be thrilling. Action-packed scenes like the conquest of
the cannibals become quite humdrum when Crusoe narrates them, giving us a detailed inventory of
the cannibals in list form, for example. His insistence on dating events makes sense to a point, but it
ultimately ends up seeming obsessive and irrelevant when he tells us the date on which he grinds his
tools but neglects to tell us the date of a very important event like meeting Friday. Perhaps his
impulse to record facts carefully is not a survival skill, but an irritating sign of his neurosis.

Finally, while not boasting of heroism, Crusoe is nonetheless very interested in possessions, power,
and prestige. When he first calls himself king of the island it seems jocund, but when he describes the
Spaniard as his subject we must take his royal delusion seriously, since it seems he really does
consider himself king. His teaching Friday to call him “Master,” even before teaching him the words
for “yes” or “no,” seems obnoxious even under the racist standards of the day, as if Crusoe needs to
hear the ego-boosting word spoken as soon as possible. Overall, Crusoe’s virtues tend to be private:
his industry, resourcefulness, and solitary courage make him an exemplary individual. But his vices
are social, and his urge to subjugate others is highly objectionable. In bringing both sides together
into one complex character, Defoe gives us a fascinating glimpse into the successes, failures, and
contradictions of modern man.

6. ROBINSON CRUSOE has been called an adventure tale, a moral allegory, a handbook for
survival, and an economics textbook. In what ways does each label fit the novel? Which label
do you prefer? Why?

LITERATURE
 1. Jay Parini. British Writers. Retrospective Supplement I. - Charles Scribner’s Sons – 2002 – pp.
63-77
2. John Richetti. Daniel Defoe. A Critical Biography. - Blackwell Publishing Ltd – 2005
3. Virginia Woolf. The Common Reader. First Series. - eBooks@Adelaide – 2010.
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91c/chapter9.html
4. Virginia Woolf. The Common Reader. Second Series. - eBooks@Adelaide – 2010.
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91c2/chapter4.html
5. N. Gordeeva. The English literature. – К., Форум – 2000.

USEFUL WEBSITES
1. http://www.shmoop.com
2. http://www.sparknotes.com
3. http://www.gradesaver.com
4. http://www.cliffsnotes.com