Reading review
The plot will be summarized in the first part and in the flowing part I will illustrate the most impressive points to me in this book: Crusoe’s ambition, the relation between Crusoe and Friday, and the role of religion in the whole book.
【Plot Summary】：
Robinson Crusoe, who lived eight and twenty Years, all alone in an uninhabited Island on the Coast of America. Having been cast on shore by shipwreck, wherein all the men perished but himself. With an account how he was at last as strangely delivered by pirates.
As the novel’s narrator, Crusoe describes how, as a headstrong young man, he ignored his family’s advice and left his comfortable middle-class home in England to go to sea. His first experience on a ship nearly kills him, but he perseveres, and a voyage to Guinea “made me both a Sailor and a Merchant,” Crusoe explains. Now several hundred pounds richer, he sails again for Africa but is captured by pirates and sold into slavery. He escapes and ends up in Brazil, where he acquires a plantation and prospers. Ambitious for more wealth, Crusoe makes a deal with merchants and other plantation owners to sail to Guinea, buy slaves, and return with them to Brazil. But he encounters a storm in the Caribbean, and his ship is nearly destroyed. Crusoe is the only survivor, washed up onto a desolate shore. He salvages what he can from the wreck and establishes a life on the island that consists of spiritual reflection and practical measures to survive. He carefully documents in a journal everything he does and experiences.
After many years, Crusoe discovers a human footprint, and he eventually encounters a group of native peoples—the “Savages” as he calls them—who bring captives to the island so as to kill and eat them. One of the group’s captives escapes, and Crusoe shoots those who pursue him, effectively freeing the captive. As Crusoe describes one of his earliest interactions with the man, just hours after his escape:
“At last he lays his head flat upon the ground, close to my foot, and sets my other foot upon his head, as he had done before; and after this, made all the signs to me of subjection, servitude, and submission imaginable, to let me know, how he would serve me as long as he lived; I understood him in many things, and let him know, I was very well pleased with him; In a little time I began to speak to him, and teach him to speak to me; and first, I made him know his name should be Friday, which was the day I saved his life; I called him so for the memory of the time; I likewise taught him to say master, and then let him know, that was to be my name.”
Crusoe gradually turns “my Man Friday” into an English-speaking Christian. “Never Man had a more faithful, loving, sincere Servant, than Friday was to me,” Crusoe explains. Various encounters with local peoples and Europeans ensue. After almost three decades on the island, Crusoe departs (with Friday and a group of pirates) for England. Crusoe settles there for a time after selling his plantation in Brazil, but, as he explains, “I could not resist the strong inclination I had to see my island.” He eventually returns and learns what happened after the Spanish took control of it.
The novel is both an amazing story and a sober wide-ranging reflection on ambition, self-reliance, civilization, the relation between human and nature and the role of religion in human’s dealing with the world.
【Impressive Points】
Crusoe’s Ambition
Crusoe was born in a comfortable middle-class family in England, whose father is a rich merchant and promises him with great business. But Crusoe does not care his father’s business at home.
“In this of life, however, I remained some time, uncertain what measures to take and what course of life to lead. An irresistible reluctance continued to going home; and as I stayed awhile, the remembrance of the distress I had been in wore off; and as that abated, the little motion I had in my desires to return wore off with it, till at last I quite laid aside the thoughts of it and looked out for a voyage.”
Crusoe wants to go away to sea from a young age and he tells his father of his wishes. Crusoe's father cannot understand why his son wants to leave the comfortable life that he has in England so he refuses to give approval to the young man's plans and warns his son that going away to sea will lead to nothing but misery. Robinson Crusoe's mother also makes it plain that she does not approve of his plan to go to sea.
But Crusoe himself is determined to go to sea and starts his voyage with his friend. While traveling by ship from Brazil to Africa, Crusoe is caught up in a terrible storm. All the other people who had been on board the ship drown. Crusoe finds himself a castaway on an uninhabited island in the Caribbean and lives on the island for twenty-eight years. He spends most of that time living entirely on his own. Fortunately, Crusoe is able to salvage many useful items from his wrecked ship. With difficulty, he is also able to make several other items that are useful to him. Crusoe is able to grow crops and eventually manages to domesticate some of the wild goats that live on the island, thus supplying himself with a constant source of nourishment. He pursues his dream bravely and makes himself a successful hero.
Crusoe’s Sense of Superiority
No one is perfect and we should a character dialectically. Though Crusoe is so ambitious and independent, he is arrogant in terms of culture and ethnicity. He becomes shipwrecked while traveling to Africa to get slaves and he appears to consider himself, as a white European Christian man, to be superior to the darker skinned peoples of the world who follow other religions. He is also very wary of Catholics. The indigenous people of the Americas are routinely referred to in Robinson Crusoe as “savages”. The kindly Friday is referred to as a “savage” even after Crusoe has “civilized” him. It seems that Crusoe sets himself up as Friday’s teacher and does not consider that he has anything to learn from Friday, a native of the part of the world in which he finds himself. This is not entirely true. Crusoe asks Friday many questions about his homeland. It is also explicitly stated that Friday knows better than Crusoe which tree is the best for making into a large canoe. Although the relationship between Crusoe and Friday is not that of master and slave, it is that of master and servant and certainly not one of equals.
The Role of Religion
Religion plays a pretty important role in this novel. There are so many cases can be used to prove it and I just take one of them. Once Robinson Crusoe has become sick with a fever and he has a bad dream in which a man with a spear descending from Heaven. The man says to Crusoe, “Seeing all these things have not brought thee to repentance, now thou shalt die.” After that, Crusoe's thoughts begin to turn to God. He feels that he might be being punished for his past sins. He calls on God for help. For the first time in his life, he asks God to bless his food. He also tries to read the Bible. He reads the words, “Call on Me in the day of trouble and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.” Before he goes to bed, Crusoe sincerely prays for the first time in his life. Crusoe wakes up feeling much better, continues to use tobacco as medicine and decides to read the Bible everyday. He realizes that, although he has not been delivered from captivity on his island prison, he has been delivered from his sickness and delivered from sin. He sincerely gives thanks to God, from which we can see his faith for Christianity is rather important in his adventure and can help deliver him from illness and wrongness.
We can say Defoe is great and pretty sensitive to the historical change, especially the colonial expansion of capitalism. And his characters are portrayed perfectly and quite typical of that era. I admire the main character Crusoe’s spirits of adventure but also disfavor his manner of dealing with religion, culture and ethnicity.
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