Robinson Crusoe Revisited

7/27/2019 Robinson Crusoe Revisited

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Robinson Crusoe revisitedIndranil Sarkar

After the death of his wife, Robinson Crusoe is overcome by the old

wanderlust, and sets out with his faithful companion Friday to see his

island once again. Thus begins a journey which lasts ten years and nine

months, in which Crusoe travels over the world, along the way facing

dangers and discoveries in Madagascar, China, and Siberia : Further

adventures of Robinson Crusoe. [1619]

Crusoes Island of Despair or The Robinson Crusoe Island

Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe has several unique features. It is a fictional autobiographyof its author. It is acclaimed as the first novel in English. It belongs to the genre called

Picturesque novel. Robinson Crusoe (1719) was published when Defoe was 60.It possesses

the biggest title for any literary work and also it gave birth to a new literary genre called


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Robinsonade. The term was coined by German writer Johann Gottfried Schnabel in 1731.Itmade him famous once for all. The book brought him the reputation as a writer which all his

earlier 500 books, pamphlets, articles and treatises could not.

Initially the adventure story of Robinson Crusoe was popular among the middle-class

people and considered as a piece of juvenile literature. But the idea changed with the adventof Colonial and Post-colonial studies. The modern critics have been detecting so much of

colonial, post-colonial and even postmodern ingredients in it and naturally the book has been

shifted from the hands of teen-age readers to the aged scholars of the universities; from the

fuming tea-cups in the street corner tea-stalls to the solemn class rooms of highest academics.

It has been translated in almost all the major languages of the world and the story has got a

mythological dimension i.e. it is known to almost all the countries of the world. Defoe

conceived the idea of his adventure story from the real life incident of Alexander Selkirk, a

Scottish navigator who was cast away in an uninhabited island named "Ms a Tierra"

fictional Juan Fernandez and passed 4 years ofsecluded life there.


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Selkirks Mas a Tierra

Lets have a re-read of the book with a mixed mind of an adolescent dreamer and an aged

literary critic. However, our main objective here is to read the sequel of Robinson Crusoe

titled Farther adventures of Robinson Crusoe that Defoe wrote in the same year (1619) to

satisfy the curiosity of his readers regarding the island he left away. This is because the

manner in which Crusoe left his island is quite dramatic and every reader feels an urge to

know the afterword happenings of CrusoesColony and the people he settled there. Readers

want to know whether they could carry on the ethics that Crusoe created or became the food

for the cannibals etc.

Robinson Crusoe ends with, "... and so ends the first part of my story."The very sentence

rings ones curiosity bell and a reading of the next part becomes an utmost urge. Likewise

The Further adventures of Robinson Crusoe begins with the captivating sentenceThat

homely proverb, used on so many occasions in England, viz. "That what is bred in the bone

will not go out of the flesh," was never more verified than in the story of my Life. Any one

would think that after thirty-five years' affliction, and a variety of unhappy circumstances,

which few men, if any, ever went through before, and after near seven years of peace and

enjoyment in the fullness of all things; grown old, and when, if ever, it might be allowed me

to have had experience of every state of middle life, and to know which was most adopted to

make a man completely happy; I say--- -that develops a strong curiosity to know the


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unknown stories of both Crusoe and his Island. And this curiosity prompts us to read the

story in a single breath.

But, in order not to miss the pleasure, one must have a re-read of Robinson Crusoe in the

original first. Because there are frequent and numerable references of it in the second book.

Robinson Crusoe possesses one of the biggest literary titles that have ever been conceived

by any author. It was published in 1719 with a catchpenny title of sixty-nine words. The full

title of the book is:The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, OfYork, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island onthe Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast onShore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how hewas at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates. Written by himself. The story narrates how a28 years English navigator lands in an uninhabited island after a ship-wreck in which all hiscompanions perished and how he makes the uninhabited island a green and gorgeous human

habitation singlehandedly by dint of constant work, farsightedness and faith on God. Hepasses a span of another 28 years in that island and then manages an English ship to take him

back to England.

When he detects himself alive in a lonely island, his first thought was the Mercy of God to

him because all his companions were dead. Immediately his survival instinct dictates him to

save himself from the unseen and unknown enemies. And thus a new and struggling lifestarts. He realizes that from that moment he has to do everything for himself just for

survival. With his ingenuity and hard labour he solves one problem after another and

ultimately finds that he has everything out of nothing that a man requires to live.

In course of time he gets a human companion when he saved the life of Friday, a cannibalfrom the hands of other cannibals. He teaches Friday the basics of man-ness and hiscapacity to struggle magnifies. He gets more corn, more goats and more strength. He makes

earthen-pots, wooden tables and two canoes to fish in the seas. He feels like a monarch in his

Island of Despair having supreme authority over everything. In a word, he heads from a

barbarous to a civilized life in that remote and isolated island. But, noticeably, he never

shows restrain to his fortune and labours as usual, knowing well that a minute of idleness

may cause his doom. Finally, after long 28 years, he gets the opportunity to sail back to his


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motherland. At the time of leaving his affectionate Country, he allows to settles the English

and the Spanish sailors that he saved. However, he takes Friday with him as a companion.

Returning England, he settles at Bedford. He marries and begets three children till the death

of his wife. But the settled city life cannot satisfy his yearning for the seas. Like Ulysses in

Homers Iliad, he also feels like revisiting his own island and see the yet-to-be-seen part ofthis mysterious world. And thus the story gets a continuation.

A pictorial map of Robinson Crusoe Island on the Pacific


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Crusoe gets Friday

Crusoe makes an elaborate plan for his return voyage. He accumulates all possible provisions

for a long journey. At the beginning of 1693, he makes his nephew the commander of his ship.

About the beginning of January 1694, Crusoe and Friday leave Ireland. Then they make it to

Crusoe's Island and find that the Spaniards were making troubles for a long time. Soon

Crusoe along with Friday fight back the Spaniards and re-establishes his control over them.

On the way to the mainland once again from Crusoe's Island, the boat gets attacked by the

cannibals. Crusoe wins but Friday dies due to 3 arrow shots.

This tragic incident was really very shocking to Crusoe. He buries Friday in the ocean, and

in the same evening sets sail for Brazil. They stay for a long period there and then went

directly over to the Cape of Good Hope.

They landed on Madagascar and put into a trouble. Their nine men were pursued by three

hundred natives, because one of the mariners had carried off a young native girl among the

trees. The natives hanged this person, so the crew massacred 32 persons and burned the


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houses of the native town. Crusoe became marooned because of opposing all these and

ultimately settled at the Bay of Bengal for a long time. Finally, he bought a ship which was

later turned out to be stolen. Therefore they went to the river of Cambodia and Cochin-

China or the bay of Tonquin, until they came to the latitude of 22 degrees and 30 minutes,

and anchored at the island of Formosa (Taiwan). Then they arrived to the coast of China.

They visited Nanking near the river of Kilam, and sailed southwards to a port called

Quenching. An Old Portuguese pilot suggested them to go to Ningbo by the mouth of a

river. This Ningbo was a canal that passed through the heart of that vast empire of China,

crossed all the rivers and some hills by the help of sluices and gates, and went up to Peking,

being near 270 leagues long. After crossing this barrier at the beginning of February they set

out from Peking. Then they travelled through the following places: Changu, Naum (or

Naun, a fortified city), Argun (a) on the Chinese-Russian border (April 13, 1703).

Then(from September 1703 to the beginning of June 1704) they went through Nertzinskoi,

Plotbus, touched a lake called Schaks Ozer, Jerawena, the river Udda, Yeniseysk, and

Tobolsk.They arrived into Europe around the source of the river Wirtska, south of the river

Petrou, to a village called Kermazinskoy near Soloy Kamskoy (Solikamsk). They passed a

little river called Kirtza, near Ozomoys (or Gzomoys), came to Veuslima on the river

Wirtzogda, running into the Dwina, then they stayed in Lawrenskoy (July 3-7, 1704). Finally

Crusoe arrived at the White Sea port town Archangel or Archangelsk on August 18, sailed

into Hamburg (September 18), and Hague. He finally arrived at London on 10 January 1705,having been gone from England ten years and nine months.To speak the truth, the second part is not as enchanting as the first part. Here, most of the

ingredients that turned the first novel into a huge success and a classical masterpiece are

missing. None of the ingredients like the man versus nature motif, the loneliness and theisolation motif, the desperate atmosphere of the desert islandare present here. But the charmlies elsewhere. Defoe compensates the deficiency by providing a few new and interesting

themes---such as the nostalgic longing of the castaway to go back to his desert island, the

social criticism on colonialism (Crusoe opposes the brutal marines and therefore is being left

behind, cast away by his own men the colonizers). And last, but not least, Defoe introduces

many more exotic locations, unknown to the common British reader Madagascar, China,

Siberia with their elaborate geographic and scenic beauty.


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And all these things ultimately changed the very genre of the novel. It has elevated its

position from a juvenile-dream story to a thought-provoking intellectual and academic text.

The journalistic record of facts, rituals, flora and fauna in the places he travelled has been

proved as sources of postmodern studies of culture and ethnicity of the respective places.

Crusoes inclusion of a detail map of the places he passed through provides provision for a

Geocritical interpretation of the space or the spatial of the novel from a postmodern plane.

And, in this way the erstwhile light hearted adventure-story has become an authentic source

for serious and thought provoking modern and postmodern discourses.

[Source: www.wikipedia.org]

Authors Bio. Daniel Defoe was out and out an outstanding intellectual. He was born in 1660 in

London, England. In his youth, he became a trader and performed several business ventures abroad.

But almost all his attempts failed and brought bankruptcy and aggressive creditors. He then turned to

literary activities and got a little favour of the lady luck. Then he got involved in the political

activities of the time and within a short time proved himself a prolific political pamphleteer. But, for

his political pamphlet True born English gentleman, he was put to pillory. This Pillory-episode was

again a unique and unprecedented one. People spread flowers and shouted in his praise in stead of

customary activities of spitting and pelting brickbats and rotten eggs to the victim. And from this

unique pillory-incident (There is no second incident like this) onward, Defoes popularity started

increasing and he established himself as a prolific writer. Late in life, at the age of sixty, he turned his

pen to fiction and wrote Robinson Crusoe just to earn money. But the book came out to be one of the
http://www.wikipedia.org/http://www.wikipedia.org/


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most widely read and influential novels of all time. Defoe wrote more than 500 literary pieces of

outstanding merit before his death in 1731.

The End Note: Robinson Crusoe is most probably the most popular story in the world. It has

been translated in Dutch, Hebrew, Armenian, Bengali, Persian, and even Eskimo, to name a

few. It is sometimes seen as a children's book like Gullivers Travels. But the two sequels that

Defoe wrote to his magnum opus are not so popular. The second was named Farther

adventures of Robinson Crusoe, published in 1619 and the third was a collection of

intellectual discourses and essays titled Serious Reflections during the Life and Surprising

Adventures of Robinson Crusoe having no sea-tale at all, published in 1621. [Source: Daniel

Defoe website]

Links, References & acknowledgements:i.www.wikipedia.orgii.www.danial defoe.comiii.www.sparknotes.comiv. www.biography.com/people/daniel-defoev. www.online-literature.com/defoevi. www.bartleby.comvii.Robinson Crusoe for kids
http://www.biography.com/people/daniel-defoehttp://www.online-literature.com/defoehttp://www.bartleby.com/http://www.bartleby.com/http://www.online-literature.com/defoehttp://www.biography.com/people/daniel-defoe

Robinson Crusoe Revisited

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