Critical Review of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe

1442 Words3 Pages

Daniel Defoe tells tale of a marooned individual in order to criticize society. By using the Island location, similar to that of Shakespeare's The Tempest, Defoe is able to show his audience exactly what is necessary for the development of a utopian society. In The Tempest, the small society of Prospero's island addresses the aspects of morality, the supernatural and politics in the larger British society. In Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, the island's natural surroundings highlights the subject of man's individual growth, both spiritually and physically. Nature instantly exercises its power and control over man in the tropical storm that leads to the wreckage of Crusoe's ship. "The fury of the sea" (Defoe, 45) thrusts Crusoe to the shores of the uninhabited "Island of Despair" (Defoe, 70). Isolated on the island, Crusoe is challenged to use his creativity in order to survive.

Crusoe accepts the challenge to survive, but not only does he survive, but he also expands and discovers new qualities about himself. In the beginning of his time on the island, Crusoe feels exceedingly secluded. He fears savages and wild beasts on the island, and he stays high up in a tree. Lacking a "weapon to hunt and kill creatures for his sustenance" (Defoe, 47), he is susceptible. Defoe believed that "the nature of man resides in the capacity for improvement in the context of a material world" (Seidel, 59), and this becomes apparent in his novel. The tools that Crusoe possesses from the ship carry out this notion, improving his life on the island dramatically. He progresses quickly, and no longer feels as isolated as he did before on the island. Crusoe uses his tools to build a protective fence and a room inside a cave. He then builds a farm where he raises goats and grows a corn crop. Later, his ambitions take him to the other side of the island where he builds a country home. Also, with the weapons that Crusoe creates, he saves Friday from cannibals, and makes him his servant. Because of his tools, his supply becomes more than sufficient for survival. He comes to learn that if he works with his surroundings instead of wallowing in the fact that he has no longer got what he thinks he needs, he able to find and use everything he needs in order to carry out life.

Show More
Related

  • Robinson Crusoe Is Admirable

    1018 Words  | 3 Pages

    If you were stranded on an island alone, what actions would you take to survive and maintain your sanity? Would your actions be deemed admirable? This predicament faced Robinson Crusoe in the novel appropriately titled, Robinson Crusoe. Set in the mid to late 17th century, Robinson Crusoe, is an epistolary novel following the early life of the main character Robinson Crusoe. What begins as an account of the voyages and business ventures of a rebellious, young man, soon transforms into a twenty-eight year struggle for survival when Crusoe is stranded on a deserted island. While it is unanimously agreed that Crusoe survived his stay on the island, a divergence in opinion occurs when asked whether he was an admirable man by the end of the book. Some readers find his actions and character admirable, while others do not.

    Read More

  • Moral Economy in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Locke’s Second Treatise of Government

    3072 Words  | 7 Pages

    Moral Economy in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. James Joyce on Robinson Crusoe: “.the man alone, on a desert island, constructing a simple and moral economy which becomes the basis of a commonwealth presided over by a benevolent sovereign” (Liu 731). Issues of property and ownership were important during the 18th century both to scholars and the common man. The case of America demonstrates that politicians, such as Thomas Jefferson, were highly influenced by John Locke’s ideas, including those on property and the individual’s right to it.

    Read More

  • The Theme of Loss in Shakespeare's The Tempest

    1985 Words  | 4 Pages

    Shakespeare's play, The Tempest tells the story of a father, Prospero, who must let go of his daughter; who brings his enemies under his power only to release them; and who in turn finally relinquishes his sway over his world - including his power over nature itself. The Tempest contains elements ripe for tragedy: Prospero is a controlling figure bent on taking revenge for the wrongs done to him, and in his fury he has the potential to destroy not only his enemies, but his own humanity and his daughter's future.

    Read More

  • Robinson Crusoe

    1015 Words  | 3 Pages

    From the beginning of some life, people make many choices that affect their personal growth and livelihood, choices like what they should wear and/or what they should do. Even the littlest choices that they make could make a big difference in their lives. In the book, Robinson Crusoe retold by Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, while on the island, made many choices, big and small, that affected his personal growth and contributed to why he survived for so long. On the island he made a lot of smart decisions of what to do in order to stay a live. On his second day he made a choice to go back to the ship to explore what was there. He spent a lot of time building his home when he could have done something more important. He also took a risk and helped out a person that he did not know. These were some of many choices that Robinson Crusoe made throughout his many years on the island.

    Read More

  • The Characters' Metamorphoses In Shakespeare’s Tempest-Universe

    4106 Words  | 9 Pages

    Shakespeare creates in The Tempest an idealized world of imagination, a place of magical rejuvenation like the forests of A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It. Yet the journey is no escape from reality, for the island shows men what they are and what they ought to be. Even its location juxtaposes "real" world with idealized landscape: like Plato's New Atlantis or Thomas More's Utopia, Shakespeare's island is to be found both somewhere and nowhere. (xvii)

    Read More

  • Comparing Daniel Defoe and Robinson Crusoe

    891 Words  | 2 Pages

    Both Daniel Defoe and Robinson Crusoe’s living conditions varied throughout their lives. These gentlemen were both born in England defoe in London, and Crusoe in York. However Defoe was a real human being and actually went through some of the troubles that Crusoe faced. At an early age both Defoe and Crusoe had to rely on their parents for support. They both lived in an average, middle sized home. In the middle of their lives Defoe was living in a small horrid house. At the same time Crusoe was living in an extremely small hut in the middle of nowhere on a deserted island. Later in Defoe’s life he gained his feet, he was no longer struggling, and once again had a very nice, middle classed home. Later in Crusoe’s life he got off of the island, and lived at a plantation for a little bit. He then so...

    Read More

  • Essay on the Setting in Shakespeare's The Tempest

    1056 Words  | 3 Pages

    Shakespeare’s enchanted island in The Tempest is a restorative pastoral setting, a place where ‘no man was his own’ and a place that offers endless possibilities to the people that arrive on it’s shores. Although the actual location of the island is not known, the worlds of Seneca aptly describe it’s significance to the play – it represents the ‘bounds of things, the remotest shores of the world’. On the boundary of reality, the island partakes of both the natural and supernatural both the imaginative and the real. It allows the exploration of both man’s potential and his limitations, his capacity for reform through art and his affinity for political and social realities. It is constructing this opposition between art and reality and in giving Shakespeare’s romance the freedom to explore mankind free from the concerns of everyday life that the setting of The Tempest is crucial to it’s overall dramatic design.

    Read More

  • The Different Views on Slavery by Shakespeare and Defoe

    1466 Words  | 3 Pages

    Moore, John Robert. The Tempest and Robinson Crusoe. The Review of English Studies January 1945, 21(81): 52-56. Print.

    Read More

  • Religion Vs. Self-interest in Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe

    2558 Words  | 6 Pages

    Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. Ed. Thomas Keymer. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print. Oxford World's Classics.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis Of Robinson Crusoe

    1172 Words  | 3 Pages

    As boys grow into men they go through a series of changes, leaving them doubting both themselves and their beliefs. One specific author who explores this is Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe. In this publication, Defoe writes about a man who emerges from a series of catastrophes as a symbol of man’s ability to survive the tests of nature. Because of the many hardships that Defoe encountered throughout his life, writing about a man whose thoughts and internal struggles mirrored his own helps to give the publication a sense of realism. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is a fictional narrative that introduces prose fiction and proposes multiple themes that dabbles on various serious topics, such as religion.

    Read More

  • Visions of Utopia in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe

    1901 Words  | 4 Pages

    "Daniel Defoe achieved literary immortality when, in April 1719, he published Robinson Crusoe" (Stockton 2321). It dared to challenge the political, social, and economic status quo of his time. By depicting the utopian environment in which was created in the absence of society, Defoe criticizes the political and economic aspect of England's society, but is also able to show the narrator's relationship with nature in a vivid account of the personal growth and development that took place while stranded in solitude. Crusoe becomes "the universal representative, the person, for whom every reader could substitute himself" (Coleridge 2318). "Thus, Defoe persuades us to see remote islands and the solitude of the human soul. By believing fixedly in the solidity of the plot and its earthiness, he has subdued every other element to his design and has roped a whole universe into harmony" (Woolf 2303).

    Read More

  • Defoe, Richardson, Fielding and the English Novel

    3394 Words  | 7 Pages

    The roots of the novel extend as far back as the beginning of communication and language because the novel is a compilation of various elements that have evolved over the centuries.  The birth of the English novel, however, can be centered on the work of three writers of the 18th century: Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) and Henry Fielding (1707-1754).  Various critics have deemed both Defoe and Richardson the father of the English novel, and Fielding is never discussed without comparison to Richardson.  The choice of these three authors is not arbitrary; it is based on central elements of the novel that these authors contributed which brought the novel itself into place.  Of course, Defoe, Richardson and Fielding added onto styles of the past and writing styles of the period, including moralistic instruction and picaresque stories.  Using writing of the time and the literary tradition of the past, Defoe first crafted the English novel while Richardson and Fielding completed its inception.

    Read More

  • The Impact of Robinson Crusoe Essays on the Ecology of the Island

    649 Words  | 2 Pages

    Overall, Robinson Crusoe’s ship crashing on the island forever changes the ecology, and biodiversity. Robinson colonized the island by introducing invasive species, European crops, and enclosing areas of the island. This colonization would lead to the islands decent in, wildlife habitation, and biodiversity. Although, these concerns would change the ecosystem on the fictional island they are the signs of colonization, and improvement in the lives of the inlands inhabits.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Colonialism In Robinson Crusoe

    1064 Words  | 3 Pages

    Robinson Crusoe is an excellent adventure story since its publication in 1719; both the novels and the hero have become popular to everyone. The surface of this novel tells only an adventure story, but a conscious reading of the novel shows that colonialism is technically presented underneath the storyline where issue such as race, power identity formation and so on are presented from a colonial perspective. Robinson Crusoe is not just an adventurous fiction, it is a story in which a European man gradually masters his own compulsion and extends his control over a huge, indifferent, and hostile environment. The protagonist of the novel is a typical colonial character. He sets on a distant Caribbean island to establish his own colony, his own civilization and his own culture. Defoe deals with colonialism by portraying a wonderful fictional picture of an adventurous man, who gradually becomes a master over an island and establishes his own colony. In Robinson Crusoe representation of colonialism is clearly reflected through the relationship between the colonized and colonizer, representation of a colonized land and people, and representation of colonialism from the viewpoint of trade, commerce and buildings empire. Robinson Crusoe is known as an allegorical novel. Religiously this novel asserts a kind of “spiritual journey” of the protagonist, economically it is a story for the expansion of the trade and from psychological perspective Robinson Crusoe deals with an alien. But this chapter will try to demonstrate the extent to colonialism which shapes the novel.

    Read More

  • Realism In Robinson Crusoe

    1590 Words  | 4 Pages

    Daniel Defoe has frequently been considered the father of realism in regards to his novel, Robinson Crusoe. In the preface of the novel, the events are described as being “just history of fact” (Defoe and Richetti ). This sets the tone for the story to be presented as factual, while it is in of itself truly fiction. This is the first time that a narrative fictional novel has been written in a way that the story is represented as the truth. Realistic elements and precise details are presented unprecedented; the events that unfold in the novel resonate with readers of the middle-class in such a way that it seems as if the stories could be written about themselves. Defoe did not write his novel for the learned, he wrote it for the large public of tradesmen, apprentices and shopkeepers (Häusermann 439-456).

    Read More

More about Critical Review of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe

Open Document