“Robinson Crusoe revisited”

Indranil 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]

Crusoe’s ‘Island of Despair’ or The Robinson Crusoe Island

Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’ has several unique features. It is a fictional autobiography of
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 ‘Robinsonade’. The
term was coined by German writer Johann Gottfried Schnabel in 1731.It made 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 advent of 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 "Más a Tierra" fictional ‘Juan
Fernandez’ and passed 4 years of secluded life there.
 Selkirk’s ‘Mas a Tierra’

Let’s 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
Crusoe’s ‘Colony’ 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
one’s curiosity bell and a reading of the next part becomes an utmost urge. Likewise ‘The Further
adventures of Robinson Crusoe’ begins with the captivating sentence—“That 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 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, Of York,
Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the
Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on
Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he
was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates. Written by himself.” The story narrates how a
28 years English navigator lands in an uninhabited island after a ship-wreck in which all his
companions 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. He
passes 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 life starts. 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 cannibal from
the hands of other cannibals. He teaches Friday the basics of ‘man-ness’ and his capacity 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 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 Homer’s
Iliad, he also feels like revisiting his own island and see the ‘yet-to-be-seen’ part of this
mysterious world. And thus the story gets a continuation.

A
pictorial map of Robinson Crusoe Island on the Pacific
 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 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 the isolation motif,
the desperate atmosphere of the desert island are present here. But the charm lies 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.

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. Crusoe’s
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]

Author’s 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, Defoe’s 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 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 Gulliver’s 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.org

ii.www.danial defoe.com

iii.www.sparknotes.com

iv. www.biography.com/people/daniel-defoe

v. www.online-literature.com/defoe

vi. www.bartleby.com

vii.Robinson Crusoe for kids