Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe
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Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe is well known in its essentials even to people who have never read it. They know it is the story of a man who is shipwrecked on a deserted island and who has to come to terms with his loneliness, teaching himself how to survive under these conditions, and eventually finding a native on the island who becomes his aide and whom he calls Friday after the day they met. They may be less aware of the social criticism and irony embedded in this story. This story is said by its author to be an allegory. In this regard, the author further notes that by this he means it has been written to counter the prevailing desire to do nothing more than amuse, and yet this book has more in mind precisely by being an allegory. There is an ironic tension in the juxtaposition of this statement about not wishing only to amuse and the novel itself, which seems to many to be only an attempt to amuse. Underlying all of this is the inherent social criticism Defoe has structured into the novel. Defoe's hero, Robinson Crusoe, is faced with a dilemma once he is shipwrecked on the island--he has a desire to maintain himself as a civilized human being and to preserve the civilized ways he has known in England. Crusoe is in many ways a driven man. He never rests once he is on the island, always fighting to maintain a sense of himself as a civilized human being and in the process having to turn to primitive ways to achieve some level of civilization. Defoe was mu
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consent to it (7).
At the same time, it is evident by the end that the young man takes sufficient control of his own destiny through his union with Providence that he learns valuable lessons, achieves more than he would have had he remained at home, and changes his misery into triumph.
At the same time, there is an ironic structure to this novel that recapitulates Christian themes. In going abroad, Crusoe disobeys his father. He must then be punished by means of the shipwreck and his subsequent travails, and he repents and achieves a strength he did not possess before. Crusoe in fact becomes more Christianized himself during his long period of isolation, communing with God and meditating on his life and his attitude. He becomes more attuned to the world around him and especially to the spiritual world as he suffers from an illness and then revels in his recovery:
This was the first time that I could say, in the true Sense of the Words, that I pray'd in all my Life; for now I pray'd with a Sense of my Condition, and with a true Scripture View of Hope founded on the Encouragement of the Word of God; and form this Time, I must say, I began to have Hope that God would hear me (96).
After this profession, Crusoe is easier in hi
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Approximate Word count = 1671
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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