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Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe
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Robinson Crusoe[a] (/ˈkruːsoʊ/ KROO-soh) is an English adventure novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. It is often credited as marking the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre, and has been described as the first novel, or at least the first English novel – although these labels are disputed.[2][3]

Key Information

Written with a combination of epistolary, confessional, and didactic forms, the book follows the title character (born Robinson Kreutznaer) after he is cast away and spends 28 years on a remote tropical desert island near the coasts of Venezuela and Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. The story has been thought to be based on the life of Alexander Selkirk,[4] a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on a Pacific island called "Más a Tierra" (now part of Chile) which was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966.[5]: 23–24 [6] Pedro Serrano is another real-life castaway whose story might have inspired the novel.[7][8]

The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and that the book was a non-fiction travelogue.[9] Despite its simple narrative style, Robinson Crusoe was well received in the literary world.

Before the end of 1719, the book had already run through four editions, and it has gone on to become one of the most widely published books in history, spawning so many imitations, not only in literature but also in film, television, and radio, that its name is used to define a genre, the Robinsonade.[10]

Plot summary

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Pictorial map of Crusoe's island, the "Island of Despair", showing incidents from the book

Robinson Crusoe (the family name coming from the German name "Kreutznaer") sets sail from Kingston upon Hull, England, on a sea voyage in August 1651, against the wishes of his parents, who wanted him to pursue a career in law. After a tumultuous journey where his ship is wrecked in a storm, his desire for the sea remains so strong that he sets out to sea again. This journey, too, ends in disaster, as the ship is taken over by Salé pirates (the Salé Rovers) and Crusoe is enslaved by a Moor. Two years later, he escapes in a boat with a boy named Xury; a captain of a Portuguese ship off the west coast of Africa rescues him. The ship is en route to Brazil. Crusoe sells Xury to the captain. With the captain's help, Crusoe procures a plantation in Brazil.

Years later, Crusoe joins an expedition to purchase slaves from Africa but the ship gets blown off course in a storm about forty miles out to sea and runs aground on the sandbar of an island off the Venezuelan coast (which he calls the Island of Despair) near the mouth of the Orinoco River on 30 September 1659.[1]: Chapter 23  The crew lowers the jolly boat, but it gets swamped by a tidal wave, drowning the crew, but leaving Crusoe the sole human survivor. He observes the latitude as 9 degrees and 22 minutes north. He sees penguins and seals on this island. Aside from Crusoe, the captain's dog and two cats survive the shipwreck. Overcoming his despair, he fetches arms, tools and other supplies from the ship before the next storm breaks it apart. He builds a fenced-in habitat near a cave which he excavates. By making marks in a wooden cross, he creates a calendar post to keep track of his time on the island. Over the years, by using tools salvaged from the ship, and some which he makes himself, he hunts animals, grows barley and rice, dries grapes to make raisins, learns to make pottery and traps and raises goats. He also adopts a small parrot. He reads the Bible and becomes religious, thanking God for his fate in which nothing is missing but human society. He also builds two boats: a large dugout canoe that he intends to use to sail to the mainland, but ends up being too large and too far from water to launch, and a smaller boat that he uses to explore the coast of the island.

More years pass and Crusoe discovers cannibals, who occasionally visit the island to kill and eat prisoners. Alarmed at this, he conserves the ammunition he'd used for hunting (running low at that point) for defence and fortifies his home in case the cannibals discover his presence on the island. He plans to kill them for committing an abomination, but later realizes he has no right to do so, as the cannibals do not knowingly commit a crime. One day, Crusoe finds that a Spanish galleon has run aground on the island during a storm, but his hopes for rescue are dashed when he discovers that the crew abandoned the ship. Nevertheless, the abandoned galleon's untouched supplies of food and ammunition, along with the ship's dog, add to Crusoe's reserves. Every night, he dreams of obtaining one or two servants by freeing some prisoners; during the cannibals' next visit to the island, when a prisoner escapes, Crusoe helps him, naming his new companion "Friday" after the day of the week he appeared. Crusoe teaches Friday the English language and converts him to Christianity.

Crusoe soon learns from Friday that the crew from the shipwrecked galleon he'd found had escaped to the mainland and are now living with Friday's tribe. Seeing renewed hope for rescue and with Friday's help, Crusoe builds another, but smaller, dugout canoe for a renewed plan to sail to the mainland. After more cannibals arrive to partake in a feast, Crusoe and Friday kill most of them and save two prisoners. One is Friday's father and the other is a Spaniard, who informs Crusoe about the other Spaniards shipwrecked on the mainland. A plan is devised wherein the Spaniard would return to the mainland with Friday's father and bring back the others, build a ship, and sail to a Spanish port.

Before the Spaniards return, an English ship appears; the sailors have staged a mutiny against their captain and intend to leave him and those still loyal to him on the island. Crusoe and the ship's captain strike a deal in which Crusoe helps the captain and the loyal sailors retake the ship. With their ringleader executed by the captain, the mutineers take up Crusoe's offer to remain on the island rather than being returned to England as prisoners to be hanged. Before embarking for England, Crusoe shows the mutineers how he survived on the island and states that the Spaniards will be coming.

The route taken by Robinson Crusoe over the Pyrenees mountains in chapters 19 and 20 of Defoe's novel, as envisaged by Joseph Ribas [fr]

Crusoe leaves the island on 19 December 1686 and arrives in England on 11 June 1687. He learns that his family believed him dead; as a result, he was left nothing in his father's will. Crusoe departs for Lisbon to reclaim the profits of his estate in Brazil, which has granted him much wealth. In conclusion, he transports his wealth overland to England from Portugal to avoid travelling by sea. Friday accompanies him and, en route, they endure one last adventure together as they fight off famished wolves while crossing the Pyrenees.[11]

Characters

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  • Robinson Crusoe: The narrator of the novel, who gets shipwrecked.
  • Friday: A native Caribbean whom Crusoe saves from cannibalism, and subsequently names "Friday". He becomes a servant and friend to Crusoe.
  • Xury: Servant to Crusoe after they escape slavery from the Captain of the Rover together. He is later given to the Portuguese Sea Captain as an indentured servant.
  • The Widow: Friend to Crusoe who looks over his assets while he is away.
  • Portuguese Sea Captain: Rescues Crusoe after he escapes from slavery. Later helps him with his money and plantation.
  • The Spaniard: A man rescued by Crusoe and Friday from the cannibals who later helps them escape the island.
  • Friday's father: rescued by Crusoe and Friday at the same time as the Spaniard.
  • Robinson Crusoe's father: A merchant named Kreutznaer.
  • Captain of the Rover: Moorish pirate of Sallee who captures and enslaves Crusoe.
  • Traitorous crew members: members of a mutinied ship who appear towards the end of novel
  • The Savages: Cannibals that come to Crusoe's Island and who represent a threat to Crusoe's religious and moral convictions as well as his own safety.

Sources and real-life castaways

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See also: Castaway § Real occurrences
Statue of Robinson Crusoe at Alexander Selkirk's birthplace of Lower Largo in Scotland, by Thomas Stuart Burnett
Book on Alexander Selkirk

There were many stories of real-life castaways in Defoe's time. Most famously, Defoe's suspected inspiration for Robinson Crusoe is thought to be Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, who spent four years on the uninhabited island of Más a Tierra (renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966)[5]: 23–24  in the Juan Fernández Islands off the Chilean coast. Selkirk was rescued in 1709 by Woodes Rogers during a British expedition that led to the publication of Selkirk's adventures in both A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World and A Cruising Voyage Around the World in 1712. According to Tim Severin, "Daniel Defoe, a secretive man, neither confirmed nor denied that Selkirk was the model for the hero of his book. Apparently written in six months or less, Robinson Crusoe was a publishing phenomenon."[12]

According to Andrew Lambert, author of Crusoe's Island, it is a "false premise" to suppose that Defoe's novel was inspired by the experiences of a single person such as Selkirk, because the story is "a complex compound of all the other buccaneer survival stories."[13] However, Robinson Crusoe is far from a copy of Rogers' account: Becky Little argues three events that distinguish the two stories:

  1. Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked while Selkirk decided to leave his ship, thus marooning himself;
  2. The island that Crusoe was shipwrecked on had already been inhabited, unlike the solitary nature of Selkirk's adventures.
  3. The last and most crucial difference between the two stories is that Selkirk was a privateer, looting and raiding coastal cities during the War of Spanish Succession.

"The economic and dynamic thrust of the book is completely alien to what the buccaneers are doing," Lambert says. "The buccaneers just want to capture some loot and come home and drink it all, and Crusoe isn't doing that at all. He's an economic imperialist: He's creating a world of trade and profit."[13]

Other possible sources for the narrative include Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, and Spanish sixteenth-century sailor Pedro Serrano. Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan is a twelfth-century philosophical novel also set on a desert island, and translated from Arabic into Latin and English a number of times in the half-century preceding Defoe's novel.[14][15][16][17]

Pedro Luis Serrano was a Spanish sailor who was marooned for seven or eight years on a small desert island after shipwrecking in the 1520s on a small island in the Caribbean off the coast of Nicaragua. He had no access to fresh water and lived off the blood and flesh of sea turtles and birds. He was quite a celebrity when he returned to Europe; before dying, he recorded the hardships suffered in documents that show the endless anguish and suffering, the product of absolute abandonment to his fate, now held in the General Archive of the Indies, in Seville.[citation needed] It is quite possible that Defoe heard his story in one of his visits to Spain before becoming a writer.[18]

Yet another source for Defoe's novel may have been the Robert Knox account of his abduction by the King of Ceylon Rajasinha II of Kandy in 1659 in An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon.[19][20]

Severin (2002)[5] unravels a much wider range of potential sources of inspiration, and concludes by identifying castaway surgeon Henry Pitman as the most likely:

An employee of the Duke of Monmouth, Pitman played a part in the Monmouth Rebellion. His short book about his desperate escape from a Caribbean penal colony, followed by his shipwrecking and subsequent desert island misadventures, was published by John Taylor of Paternoster Row, London, whose son William Taylor later published Defoe's novel.

Severin argues that since Pitman appears to have lived in the lodgings above the father's publishing house and that Defoe himself was a mercer in the area at the time, Defoe may have met Pitman in person and learned of his experiences first-hand, or possibly through submission of a draft.[5] Severin also discusses another publicized case of a marooned man named only as Will, of the Miskito people of Central America, who may have led to the depiction of Friday.[21]

Secord (1963)[22] analyses the composition of Robinson Crusoe and gives a list of possible sources of the story, rejecting the common theory that the story of Selkirk is Defoe's only source.

Reception and sequels

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Plaque in Queen's Gardens, Hull, showing him on his island

The book was published on 25 April 1719. Before the end of the year, this first volume had run through four editions.

By the end of the nineteenth century, no book in the history of Western literature had more editions, spin-offs, and translations (even into languages such as Inuktitut, Coptic, and Maltese) than Robinson Crusoe, with more than 700 such alternative versions, including children's versions with pictures and no text.[23]

The term "Robinsonade" was coined to describe the genre of stories similar to Robinson Crusoe.

Defoe went on to write a lesser-known sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719). It was intended to be the last part of his stories, according to the original title page of the sequel's first edition, but a third book was published (1720), Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With his Vision of the Angelick World.

Interpretations of the novel

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Crusoe standing over Friday after he frees him from the cannibals, illustration by Carl Offterdinger

"He is the true prototype of the British colonist. ... The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity."

Irish novelist James Joyce[24]

The novel has been subject to numerous analyses and interpretations since its publication. In a sense, Crusoe attempts to replicate his society on the island. This is achieved through the use of European technology, agriculture and even a rudimentary political hierarchy. Several times in the novel Crusoe refers to himself as the "king" of the island, while the captain describes him as the "governor" to the mutineers. At the very end of the novel the island is referred to as a "colony". The idealized master-servant relationship Defoe depicts between Crusoe and Friday can also be seen in terms of cultural assimilation, with Crusoe representing the "enlightened" European while Friday is the "savage" who can only be redeemed from his cultural manners through assimilation into Crusoe's culture. Nonetheless, Defoe used Friday to criticize the Spanish colonization of the Americas.[25]

According to J.P. Hunter, Robinson is not a hero but an everyman. He begins as a wanderer, aimless on a sea he does not understand, and ends as a pilgrim, crossing a final mountain to enter the promised land. The book tells the story of how Robinson becomes closer to God, not through listening to sermons in a church but through spending time alone amongst nature with only a Bible to read.

Conversely, cultural critic and literary scholar Michael Gurnow views the novel from a Rousseauian perspective: The central character's movement from a primitive state to a more civilized one is interpreted as Crusoe's denial of humanity's state of nature.[26]

Robinson Crusoe is filled with religious aspects. Defoe was a Puritan moralist and normally worked in the guide tradition, writing books on how to be a good Puritan Christian, such as The New Family Instructor (1727) and Religious Courtship (1722). While Robinson Crusoe is far more than a guide, it shares many of the themes and theological and moral points of view.

"Crusoe" may have been taken from Timothy Cruso, a classmate of Defoe's who had written guide books, including God the Guide of Youth (1695), before dying at an early age – just eight years before Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe. Cruso would have been remembered by contemporaries and the association with guide books is clear. It has even been speculated that God the Guide of Youth inspired Robinson Crusoe because of a number of passages in that work that are closely tied to the novel.[27] A leitmotif of the novel is the Christian notion of providence, penitence, and redemption.[28] Crusoe comes to repent of the follies of his youth. Defoe also foregrounds this theme by arranging highly significant events in the novel to occur on Crusoe's birthday. The denouement culminates not only in Crusoe's deliverance from the island, but his spiritual deliverance, his acceptance of Christian doctrine, and in his intuition of his own salvation.

When confronted with the cannibals, Crusoe wrestles with the problem of cultural relativism. Despite his disgust, he feels unjustified in holding the natives morally responsible for a practice so deeply ingrained in their culture. Nevertheless, he retains his belief in an absolute standard of morality; he regards cannibalism as a "national crime" and forbids Friday from practising it.

Economics and civilization

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Main article: Robinson Crusoe economy

In classical, neoclassical and Austrian economics, Crusoe is regularly used to illustrate the theory of production and choice in the absence of trade, money, and prices.[29] Crusoe must allocate effort between production and leisure and must choose between alternative production possibilities to meet his needs. The arrival of Friday is then used to illustrate the possibility of trade and the gains that result.

One day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand.

Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, 1719

The work has been variously read as an allegory for the development of civilization; as a manifesto of economic individualism; and as an expression of European colonial desires. Significantly, it also shows the importance of repentance and illustrates the strength of Defoe's religious convictions. Critic M.E. Novak supports the connection between the religious and economic themes within Robinson Crusoe, citing Defoe's religious ideology as the influence for his portrayal of Crusoe's economic ideals, and his support of the individual. Novak cites Ian Watt's extensive research[30] which explores the impact that several Romantic Era novels had against economic individualism, and the reversal of those ideals that takes place within Robinson Crusoe.[31]

In Tess Lewis's review, "The heroes we deserve", of Ian Watt's article, she furthers Watt's argument with a development on Defoe's intention as an author, "to use individualism to signify nonconformity in religion and the admirable qualities of self-reliance".[32]: 678  This further supports the belief that Defoe used aspects of spiritual autobiography to introduce the benefits of individualism to a not entirely convinced religious community.[32] J. Paul Hunter has written extensively on the subject of Robinson Crusoe as apparent spiritual autobiography, tracing the influence of Defoe's Puritan ideology through Crusoe's narrative, and his acknowledgement of human imperfection in pursuit of meaningful spiritual engagements – the cycle of "repentance [and] deliverance".[33]

This spiritual pattern and its episodic nature, as well as the re-discovery of earlier female novelists, have kept Robinson Crusoe from being classified as a novel, let alone the first novel written in English – despite the blurbs on some book covers. Early critics, such as Robert Louis Stevenson, admired it, saying that the footprint scene in Crusoe was one of the four greatest in English literature and most unforgettable; more prosaically, Wesley Vernon has seen the origins of forensic podiatry in this episode.[34] It has inspired a new genre, the Robinsonade, as works such as Johann David Wyss' The Swiss Family Robinson (1812) adapt its premise and has provoked modern postcolonial responses, including J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986) and Michel Tournier's Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique (in English, Friday, or, The Other Island) (1967). Two sequels followed: Defoe's The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) and his Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe (1720). Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726) is in part a parody of Defoe's adventure novel.

Legacy

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Influence on language

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The book proved to be so popular that the names of the two main protagonists, Crusoe and Friday, have entered the language. During World War II, people who decided to stay and hide in the ruins of the German-occupied city of Warsaw for a period of three winter months, from October to January 1945, when they were rescued by the Red Army, were later called Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw (Robinsonowie warszawscy).[35] Robinson Crusoe usually referred to his servant as "my man Friday", from which the term "Man Friday" (or "Girl Friday") originated.

Influence on literature

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Robinson Crusoe marked the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre.[36] Its success led to many imitators; and castaway novels, written by Ambrose Evans, Penelope Aubin, and others, became quite popular in Europe in the 18th and early 19th centuries.[37] Most of these have fallen into obscurity, but some became established, including The Swiss Family Robinson, which borrowed Crusoe's first name for its title.

Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, published seven years after Robinson Crusoe, may be read as a systematic rebuttal of Defoe's optimistic account of human capability. In The Unthinkable Swift: The Spontaneous Philosophy of a Church of England Man, Warren Montag argues that Swift was concerned about refuting the notion that the individual precedes society, as Defoe's novel seems to suggest. In Treasure Island, author Robert Louis Stevenson parodies[citation needed] Crusoe with the character of Ben Gunn, a friendly castaway who was marooned for many years, has a wild appearance, dresses entirely in goat skin, and constantly talks about providence.

Widely translated, the novel swiftly became influential beyond Britain. In Jean-Jacques Rousseau's treatise on education, Emile, or on Education, the one book the protagonist is allowed to read before the age of twelve is Robinson Crusoe. Rousseau wants Emile to identify with Crusoe so he can rely upon himself for all of his needs. In Rousseau's view, Emile needs to imitate Crusoe's experience, allowing necessity to determine what is to be learned and accomplished. This is one of the main themes of Rousseau's educational model.[citation needed] Two adaptations of Robinson Crusoe, published in a single volume and translated into Icelandic from Danish, were among the first secular literature ever printed in Iceland.[38]

Robinson Crusoe bookstore on İstiklal Avenue, Istanbul

In The Tale of Little Pig Robinson, Beatrix Potter directs the reader to Robinson Crusoe for a detailed description of the island (the land of the Bong tree) to which her eponymous hero moves. In Wilkie Collins' most popular novel, The Moonstone, one of the chief characters and narrators, Gabriel Betteredge, has faith in all that Robinson Crusoe says and uses the book for a sort of divination. He considers The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe the finest book ever written, reads it over and over again, and considers a man but poorly read if he had happened not to read the book.

French novelist Michel Tournier published Friday, or, The Other Island (French Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique) in 1967. His novel explores themes including civilization versus nature, the psychology of solitude, as well as death and sexuality in a retelling of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe story. Tournier's Robinson chooses to remain on the island, rejecting civilization when offered the chance to escape 28 years after being shipwrecked. Likewise, in 1963, J. M. G. Le Clézio, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, published the novel Le Proces-Verbal. The book's epigraph is a quote from Robinson Crusoe, and like Crusoe, the novel's protagonist Adam Pollo suffers long periods of loneliness.

"Crusoe in England", a 183 line poem by Elizabeth Bishop, imagines Crusoe near the end of his life, recalling his time of exile with a mixture of bemusement and regret.

J. M. Coetzee's 1986 novel Foe recounts the tale of Robinson Crusoe from the perspective of a woman named Susan Barton.

Other stories that share similar themes to Robinson Crusoe include William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954),[39][40] J. G. Ballard's Concrete Island (1974),[41] and Andy Weir's The Martian (2011).[42]

Inverted Crusoeism

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The term "inverted Crusoeism" was coined by J. G. Ballard. The paradigm of Robinson Crusoe has been a recurring topic in Ballard's work.[43] Whereas the original Robinson Crusoe became a castaway against his own will, Ballard's protagonists often choose to maroon themselves; hence inverted Crusoeism (e.g., Concrete Island). The concept provides a reason as to why people would deliberately maroon themselves on a remote island; in Ballard's work, becoming a castaway is as much a healing and empowering process as an entrapping one, enabling people to discover a more meaningful and vital existence.

Comic strip adaptations

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The story was also illustrated and published in comic book form by Classics Illustrated in 1943 and 1957. The much improved 1957 version was inked / penciled by Sam Citron, who is most well known for his contributions to the earlier issues of Superman.[44] British illustrator Reginald Ben Davis drew a female version of the story titled Jill Crusoe, Castaway (1950–1959).[45]

Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker attributes the genre of desert island cartoons, which began appearing in the publication in the 1930s, to the popularity of Robinson Crusoe.[46]

Stage adaptations

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A pantomime version of Robinson Crusoe was staged at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1796, with Joseph Grimaldi as Pierrot in the harlequinade. The piece was produced again in 1798, this time starring Grimaldi as Clown. In 1815, Grimaldi played Friday in another version of Robinson Crusoe.[47]

Jacques Offenbach wrote an opéra comique called Robinson Crusoé, which was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 23 November 1867. This was based on the British pantomime version rather than the novel itself. The libretto was by Eugène Cormon and Hector-Jonathan Crémieux.

There have been a number of other stage adaptations, including those by Isaac Pocock, Jim Helsinger and Steve Shaw and a musical by Victor Prince.

Film adaptations

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The first film adaptation was produced and directed by Georges Méliès in 1902.

There is a 1927 silent film titled Robinson Crusoe. The Soviet 3D film Robinson Crusoe was produced in 1947.

One of the first adaptations still available dates from 1932 titled Mr. Robinson Crusoe. This film was produced by Douglas Fairbanks Sr and directed by Eddie Sutherland. Set in Tahiti, the film depicts Steve Drexel, the main character, trying to survive on a desert island for almost a year. This film was not very successful.

Luis Buñuel directed Adventures of Robinson Crusoe starring Dan O'Herlihy, released in 1954. Luis Buñuel filmed an account which at first viewing appeared to be a rather simple straightforward telling of Robinson Crusoe. A big stand out with this film is that Buñuel breaks the previous films' traditions of having Friday as a slave and Crusoe as the master. The two manage to become actually friends and they operate essentially as equals.

In 1966, Walt Disney later comedicized the novel with Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N., featuring Dick Van Dyke. In this version, Friday became a beautiful woman, but named 'Wednesday' instead.

Variations on the theme include the 1954 Miss Robin Crusoe, with a female castaway, played by Amanda Blake, and a female Friday, and in 1965 we get the film adaptation Robinson Crusoe on Mars, starring Paul Mantee, with an alien Friday portrayed by Victor Lundin and an added character played by Adam West. Byron Haskins manages to underscore Crusoe's removal and field of the red planet that we call mars. Our main character meets a Friday-esque character but makes no effort to try and understand his language. Like the book, in this film, Friday is trying to escape from cruel masters. This movie has lots of appeal to fans of adventures stories and the film has a distinctive visual style that adds to its character.

In 1968, American writer/director Ralph C. Bluemke made a family-friendly version of the story titled Robby, in which the main characters were portrayed as children. It starred Warren Raum as Robby (Robinson Crusoe) and Ryp Siani as Friday (who were the director's first choices for the roles).[48] Bluemke originally conceived the idea while working at a bank in 1960.[49] Given the nature and location of the script, Bluemke knew from the beginning that the film would require a certain amount of nudity in order to give it a sense of realism and authenticity. At the time, he was under the impression that the nudity depicted in the film would be condoned as natural and innocent, given the backdrop of the story, and given that the actors involved were prepubescent boys.[50] The film failed to secure a wide distribution deal, in part because prospective distributors were wary about the extensive nudity featured in the film. Undaunted, the producers raised enough capital to release the film themselves, acting as their own distributor. It had limited screenings on Broadway in New York City on August 14, 1968.[51]

Peter O'Toole and Richard Roundtree co-starred in a 1975 film Man Friday which sardonically portrayed Crusoe as incapable of seeing his dark-skinned companion as anything but an inferior creature, while Friday is more enlightened and sympathetic. In 1988, Aidan Quinn portrayed Robinson Crusoe in the film Crusoe. A 1997 movie entitled Robinson Crusoe starred Pierce Brosnan and received limited commercial success. The 2000 film Cast Away, with Tom Hanks as a FedEx employee stranded on an island for many years, also borrows much from the Robinson Crusoe story.

In 1981, Czechoslovakian director and animator Stanislav Látal made a version of the story under the name Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a Sailor from York combining traditional and stop-motion animation. The movie was coproduced by regional West Germany broadcaster Südwestfunk Baden-Baden.[citation needed]

Animated adaptations

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In 1988, an animated cartoon for children called Classic Adventure Stories Robinson Crusoe was released. Crusoe's early sea travels are simplified, as his ship outruns the Salé Rovers pirates but then gets wrecked in a storm.[52]

And then in 1995 the BBC first aired the series Robinson Sucroe until 1998, with The Children's Channel and Pop repeating it.

Radio adaptations

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Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe was adapted as a two-part play for BBC radio. Dramatised by Steve Chambers and directed by Marion Nancarrow, and starring Roy Marsden and Tom Bevan, it was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 1998. It was subsequently rebroadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra in February 2023.

TV adaptations

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In 1964, a French film production crew made a 13-part serial of The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. It starred Robert Hoffmann. The black-and-white series was dubbed into English and German. In the UK, the BBC broadcast it on numerous occasions between 1965 and 1977.

The 2008–2009 Crusoe TV series was a 13-part show created by Stephen Gallagher.

Two 2000s reality television series, Expedition Robinson and Survivor, have their contestants try to survive on an isolated location, usually an island. The concept is influenced by Robinson Crusoe.

Editions

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  • The life and strange surprizing adventures of Robinson Crusoe: of York, mariner: who lived twenty eight years all alone in an un-inhabited island on the coast of America, near the mouth of the great river of Oroonoque; ... Written by himself., Early English Books Online, 1719. Defoe, Daniel (January 2007). "1719 text". Oxford Text Archive. hdl:20.500.14106/K061280.000.
  • Robinson Crusoe, Oneworld Classics 2008. ISBN 978-1-84749-012-4
  • Robinson Crusoe, Penguin Classics 2003. ISBN 978-0-14-143982-2
  • Robinson Crusoe, Oxford World's Classics 2007. ISBN 978-0-19-283342-6
  • Robinson Crusoe, Bantam Classics
  • Defoe, Daniel Robinson Crusoe, edited by Michael Shinagel (New York: Norton, 1994), ISBN 978-0393964523. Includes a selection of critical essays.
  • Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. Dover Publications, 1998.
  • Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. Signet Classic 1961 with afterword by Harvey Swados
  • Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Rand McNally & Company. The Windermere Series 1916. No ISBN. Includes 7 illustrations by Milo Winter

See also

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In real life

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Novels

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Television and films

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Footnotes

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References

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Additional references

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Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Robinson Crusoe

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is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in April 1719 as The Life and Strange Surprizing 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. The narrative, presented as a fictional autobiography, follows the protagonist's seafaring escapades, shipwreck on a remote tropical island, 28 years of solitary survival through ingenuity and resourcefulness, encounters with cannibals and a rescued native named Friday, and eventual rescue amid mutineers. Defoe drew inspiration from the real-life ordeal of Scottish mariner , who was marooned on Isla Juan Fernández for over four years from 1704 to 1709 after a dispute with his captain during privateering voyages. Selkirk's accounts of sustaining himself with goats, building shelters, and reading the influenced Defoe's depiction of Crusoe's self-reliant Protestant individualism and providential survival, though the novel expands far beyond historical fidelity into allegory for colonial enterprise and human mastery over nature. The work achieved immediate commercial success, with multiple editions printed shortly after release, and has since become a cornerstone of English literature, often credited with pioneering the form through its realistic first-person and detailed economic . Its themes of isolation, ingenuity, and empire-building have shaped , castaway tropes in , and philosophical debates on , though later critiques highlight its Eurocentric portrayal of and justification of . A sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, followed later in 1719, extending the protagonist's travels.

Background and Publication

Historical Context and Defoe's Life

, born around 1660 in to James Foe, a prosperous tallow chandler of Flemish descent, grew up in a Presbyterian family amid the religious and political upheavals following the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. As a in an era dominated by the , Defoe's nonconformist upbringing exposed him to the Test Acts, which barred non-Anglicans from public office and fueled sectarian tensions that persisted into the early . Educated at the dissenting academy in under Reverend Charles Morton, he was initially groomed for the Presbyterian ministry but instead pursued commerce, reflecting the era's emphasis on individual enterprise amid expanding trade networks. By 1683, Defoe had established himself as a dealing in commodities like wine, , and , though his ventures culminated in bankruptcy in 1692 with debts exceeding £17,000, a failure compounded by the speculative risks inherent in England's mercantilist economy. Defoe's political engagements aligned with the Glorious Revolution's aftermath, supporting William III against James II and participating in the failed of , which underscored the volatile Jacobite threats to Protestant succession. His prolific pamphleteering, including The True-Born Englishman (1701), defended nonconformists and critiqued national prejudices, but his satirical The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters (1702) led to his arrest in May 1703 for , resulting in a sentence of indefinite imprisonment in , a fine, and three days in the on July 29–31, 1703. Released through political patronage under Robert Harley, Defoe transitioned to , editing The Review from 1704 to 1713, where he served as a , navigating the shifting Whig-Tory dynamics in the lead-up to the Hanoverian accession in 1714. In the context of early 18th-century , marked by colonial expansion, the South Sea Company's ventures, and the rise of , Defoe's experiences with trade failures, survival through writing, and Dissenter resilience informed The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, published on April 25, 1719. At approximately age 59, Defoe drew on real accounts and his own providential —rooted in Puritan —to craft a embodying the era's themes of amid global and economic , against a backdrop where Britain's imperial ambitions clashed with domestic religious and financial instabilities. His later works continued this fusion of moral realism and commercial realism, though he died in relative obscurity on April 24, 1731, after years of unremitting productivity exceeding 500 publications.

Publication History

The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of , of , Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by , wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by , the full of the first volume, was published on April 25, 1719, by William Taylor at the Ship in Paternoster Row, . The appeared without Defoe's name on the , presented as a genuine edited by the supposed author, to enhance its . Taylor, a bookseller specializing in and narratives, printed an initial run that sold out within days, leading to a second edition by May 1719 and a third by the end of the year. The book's rapid popularity prompted Defoe to issue a sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; Being the Second and Last Part of his Life, on August 20, 1719, again by Taylor, which also achieved strong sales but received mixed critical reception compared to the original. A third volume, Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With his Vision of the Angelick World, followed in 1720, shifting toward moral and religious essays framed as Crusoe's reflections, though it sold less vigorously. Defoe's persisted across these volumes, with later editions attributing authorship to him based on stylistic analysis and his known output. By 1722, collected editions of the first two parts appeared, and the work entered multiple languages soon after, with French and Dutch translations by 1720. The 's commercial success, estimated at over 1,000 copies sold in the first four months of the initial volume, established it as one of the earliest bestsellers in English literature, influencing the development of the form. Unauthorized abridgments and adaptations proliferated by the , reflecting its widespread appeal despite Defoe's lack of direct control over derivative works.

Real-Life Inspirations and Sources

The principal real-life inspiration for the character and experiences of was , a Scottish marooned on the of Más a Tierra (now renamed ) in the Juan Fernández archipelago from September 1704 to February 1709. Born in 1676 in , , , Selkirk sailed as sailing master on the under captain Thomas Stradling during a privateering voyage commanded overall by , targeting Spanish ships in the Pacific. At Juan Fernández, distrusting the vessel's condition after damage from storms and battles—including the loss of their Welfare—Selkirk demanded to be set ashore with his possessions, including weapons, clothing, bedding, navigational instruments, a , and other books, rather than risk further voyage. Selkirk sustained himself over four years and four months by hunting and domesticating feral goats introduced by earlier Spanish sailors, harvesting wild cabbage and turnips, with handmade lines, and extracting from wood using a and gun flint; he constructed two huts from pimento trees and goatskins for and , and fashioned a goatskin for rain protection. He fashioned a from wood to track time, prayed regularly using salvaged religious texts, and tamed cats that had accompanied him ashore to control rats infesting his belongings. His rescue occurred when the privateering squadron of , aboard the Duke and Duchess, arrived at the island on 2 1709; Selkirk, initially mistaken for a Spaniard due to his bearded, tanned appearance and Spanish-speaking parrots, signaled them with smoke and was retrieved after initial hesitation, having lost proficiency in English. Rogers documented Selkirk's ordeal in detail within his 1712 publication A Cruising Voyage Round the World: First to the South-Seas, Thence to the East-Indies, and Homewards, by the , which chronicled the expedition's circumnavigation from 1708 to 1711 and included Selkirk's account as an appendix, emphasizing his ingenuity, such as crafting tools from barrel hoops and goat horns for musket repair. , an avid reader of contemporary voyage literature and journalist familiar with maritime narratives, accessed this firsthand relation, incorporating core elements like prolonged solitary , resource extraction from , , and spiritual introspection into The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (), though expanding the timeline to 28 years and adding fictional origins and later human encounters. Parallels include both protagonists' construction of fortifications against potential cannibals (Selkirk against imagined threats, Crusoe explicitly), signal fires for rescue, and post-island celebrity in , where Selkirk sold his survival tale and Rogers promoted South Sea trade interests. While Selkirk's narrative provided the foundational framework—widely recognized since the novel's publication for its empirical survival techniques amid isolation—Defoe amalgamated it with other documented stories, such as those from shipwrecks involving and cocoa cultivation, diverging from the Pacific's specific and to suit broader economic and moral allegories. Earlier precedents like the 16th-century Spanish sailor Pedro Serrano's endurance on a influenced general motifs of human resilience against elemental forces, but lacked the detailed, published English-language account Rogers provided from Selkirk's direct . Defoe's synthesis reflects causal realities of 18th-century seafaring perils, where privateering, scurvy-avoiding landfalls, and opportunistic were common, as evidenced by Rogers' expedition logs prioritizing navigational and provisioning data over embellishment.

Narrative and Content

Plot Summary

The narrative unfolds as the purported memoir of , an Englishman born in during the mid-17th century to a merchant father of German descent. Despite his father's exhortation to embrace a stable middle-class existence rather than risk the uncertainties of seafaring or idleness, Crusoe, driven by an irrepressible , departs home around age 19 to board a ship from Hull bound for . A ferocious ravages the vessel, stranding Crusoe in Yarmouth after rescue, where he momentarily renounces maritime pursuits. Undeterred, Crusoe ventures forth again, only to be seized by Moorish pirates off Sallee, enduring over two years of enslavement before escaping with a young slave named Xury. A captain rescues them, conveying Crusoe to , where he establishes a thriving and accumulates considerable wealth by 1658. Seeking laborers, Crusoe embarks on a slave-trading expedition to in late 1659, but a violent hurricane on September 30 sinks the ship near the Venezuelan coast, rendering him the lone survivor on an proximate to the River's delta. For 28 years, Crusoe methodically salvages provisions and arms from the wreck, erects a secure habitation within a cave, forages and cultivates barley and rice, tames goats for sustenance, and fabricates rudimentary implements, thereby achieving self-sufficiency amid isolation. Afflicted by fever in his second year, he discovers a salvaged Bible, prompting introspective repentance and a deepened faith in providence as the architect of his deliverance. In year 24, a solitary footprint in the sand arouses terror of intruders; subsequent observations reveal cannibalistic rituals by visiting savages, culminating in Crusoe's rescue of a victim he christens Friday, instructing him in English and Protestant Christianity, with Friday pledging servitude. Further encounters yield the salvation of Friday's father and five Spanish survivors from cannibal feasts. In year 28, mutineers from an English vessel strand their captain ashore; Crusoe, , and allies orchestrate the mutineers' defeat, restoring the ship to its lawful commander. Departing the island on December 19, 1686, Crusoe returns to , ascertains the deaths of his parents and brothers, liquidates his Brazilian holdings for substantial gain, weds, sires offspring, and later dispatches aid to his island compatriots.

Key Characters and Development

Robinson Crusoe functions as the novel's and first-person narrator, a middle-class Englishman born around 1632 who rejects his father's counsel for a sedentary life in favor of maritime ventures starting at age 19 in 1651. His early disobedience leads to capture by Moorish , escape with the aid of a named Xury, settlement in , and ultimately a in 1659 that strands him on a island for 28 years. Through isolation, Crusoe cultivates by salvaging debris to build , tools, and fortifications; domesticating ; and farming and from scavenged grains, demonstrating practical ingenuity in overcoming environmental challenges. This ordeal fosters his moral and spiritual growth, as initial despair gives way to reflection on providence, culminating in a religious awakening where he interprets his as divine favor contingent on and industrious labor. In his 24th year on the island, Crusoe witnesses ashore and rescues one victim, a 26-year-old native he dubs for the day of the event, thereby halting Friday's prior participation in ritual . , depicted as physically robust and intellectually quick, rapidly acquires English, abandons his indigenous beliefs for Crusoe's Protestant , and assumes duties as hunter, interpreter, and servant, evidencing a transformation from tribal savage to devoted subordinate under Crusoe's tutelage. Their dynamic evolves Crusoe from solitary autocrat to mentor, with Friday's loyalty—exemplified in defending against subsequent and —reinforcing Crusoe's authority while providing companionship that tempers his isolation without eroding his self-sufficiency. Supporting figures like Xury, a fiercely devoted Moorish sold into temporary servitude during Crusoe's North African escape, underscore themes of hierarchical allegiance but lack extended development. Similarly, the Portuguese captain, who recovers Crusoe's Brazilian assets post-rescue, embodies reliable and social reciprocity, aiding Crusoe's financial restoration without dominating the narrative. These peripheral characters primarily illuminate Crusoe's resourcefulness in alliances rather than undergoing profound arcs themselves.

Core Themes from First Principles

Survival, Labor, and Self-Reliance

Following his on September 30, 1659, Robinson Crusoe secures immediate by salvaging essential provisions and tools from the vessel over multiple trips, including firearms, , shot, , and stores sufficient for initial sustenance. He constructs a fortified using salvaged sails and timber, reinforced with a of stakes to protect against environmental threats and potential , demonstrating early prioritization of secure through manual labor. Expanding this, Crusoe excavates a behind the tent for storage, laboring over 18 days to enlarge it, and later builds additional walls and a ladder system, underscoring how iterative physical effort transforms raw materials into habitable structures. Crusoe's agricultural endeavors begin with accidental discovery of and grains in salvaged chicken feed bags, which he sows in enclosed plots protected by hedges, yielding initial harvests of two bushels of and two-and-a-half bushels of after multiple plantings. He domesticates by capturing and nursing young kids in pens, building a herd from three to over forty within years, providing milk for and cheese alongside , thus establishing a renewable protein source via and fencing labor. These efforts reflect causal mechanisms where human intervention—fencing against predators, seasonal sowing, and —converts untamed nature into predictable productivity, averting through sustained toil rather than reliance on chance. In tool-making and processing, Crusoe experiments extensively, firing clay to produce durable pots after numerous failures and crafting a wooden for grinding corn into meal, enabling production from harvested grains. He hews planks from trees over laborious days—taking 42 days for a single board due to primitive tools—and constructs furniture like tables and chairs from ship planks using an axe and . Such innovations, including basket-weaving for storage and goat-skin clothing, highlight born of trial-and-error ingenuity, where prior maritime combines with island resources to replicate civilized comforts. Crusoe's narrative posits labor as the foundational principle for , observing that diligent application turns isolation into abundance, as evidenced by his from despairing to self-sufficient "" with surplus stores after 28 years. This portrayal aligns with empirical outcomes of individual effort creating from unowned , as Crusoe claims through improvement, fostering contentment independent of . While attributing success partly to providence, the detailed chronicle emphasizes causal realism: stems from persistent, skilled labor exploiting a fertile environment and salvaged capital, not mystical intervention alone.

Economic Production and Property Rights

In Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), the establishes an isolated centered on individual labor as the primary , converting unclaimed natural resources into necessities for and eventual . Stranded on an after a on September 30, 1659, Crusoe initially salvages iron tools, firearms, , clothing, and food from the vessel over 11 days, stockpiling approximately 560 pounds of and 150 pounds of shot. He then applies labor to domesticate the environment: planting salvaged and to yield crops by the second year, taming and breeding for a sustainable herd numbering over 20 by his 24th year on the island, and clay pots, baskets, and wooden furniture through trial-and-error experimentation. These activities form a solitary production process, where Crusoe's output expands from bare subsistence—initially one of —to surplus storage in constructed caves and shelves, demonstrating via reinvested labor. Crusoe's operates without exchange or markets, relying on personal ingenuity to overcome ; he innovates a bread-making process from after multiple failed attempts, constructs a for resource transport despite initial failures, and builds a enclosing 10 acres of land over two years using stakes and cables. This progression underscores causal realism in production: labor directed by foresight yields compounded returns, as tools fashioned from salvaged metal enable further efficiencies, such as plows implied in expansion. Economists have modeled this as a "Robinson Crusoe ," a theoretical construct for analyzing individual production functions, in consumption versus , and technological frontiers in isolation, highlighting how deferred —stockpiling grain against —sustains long-term viability. Property rights emerge as a foundational element, with Crusoe claiming dominion over the island through labor investment rather than inheritance or conquest. He explicitly views the land as "all mine" after enclosing and cultivating it, paralleling John Locke's labor theory of acquisition in (1689), which posits that individuals own their bodies and thus the products of their labor when mixed with unowned commons, provided sufficient resources remain for others. Defoe illustrates this by having Crusoe measure, fence, and plant specific plots—such as three acres for —transforming wild terrain into private holdings, a process Locke described as subduing the earth to remove it from common stock. This Lockean framework justifies Crusoe's exclusive use and defense of his enclosures against potential intruders, as seen in his preparations for armed resistance, emphasizing as a causal outcome of productive effort securing against or . The arrival of Friday in 1660 introduces rudimentary social production, where Crusoe imposes hierarchical property relations: Friday becomes a servant bound by contract-like oaths, enabling division of labor that elevates output, with Crusoe specializing in tool-making and planning while Friday handles hunting and gathering. interprets this dynamic as emblematic of economic , where Crusoe's prioritization of accumulation—evident in his ledger-keeping of provisions and goats—reflects bourgeois values of rational over communal ties, fostering prosperity through owned . Such depictions prefigure classical , illustrating how property rights incentivize labor's transformation of nature into value, absent which idleness or dissipation would prevail, as Crusoe reflects on his pre-island prodigality.

Religious Conversion and Moral Realism

In Robinson Crusoe, the protagonist's unfolds as a gradual recognition of guiding his afflictions and deliverances, transforming his initial nominal into a fervent reliance on biblical principles. Prior to his shipwreck on September 30, 1659, Crusoe disregards his father's counsel to pursue a stable life, interpreting his subsequent misfortunes as punishments for this disobedience, which he later frames as rebellion against God's ordained path. This sets the stage for his spiritual reckoning, where empirical survival challenges compel introspection rather than abstract . The pivotal moment occurs during a severe fever in his first year on the island, around June 1659, when Crusoe, delirious and isolated, cries out in : "Lord, look upon me! , pity me! , have mercy upon me! I have been a , and a rebel against my Father; but now I ." Turning to his for the first time earnestly, he finds solace in , such as "Call on Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee," attributing his recovery not to chance but to God's intervention. This episode marks his repentance for past sins, including ingratitude for prior providential escapes from storms and enslavement, establishing a causal link between moral failing and suffering, remedied only through submission to divine will. Subsequent events reinforce this conversion, as Crusoe interprets phenomena like the savage's footprint discovered in his fifteenth year as divine warnings, prompting further prayer and acknowledgment that "the infinitely wise and good providence of God has determined" his isolated station to foster dependence on Him. He views his island existence as "Providence’s chequer-work," a pattern of trials and mercies revealing objective moral order: obedience yields provision, while presumption invites peril. This framework underscores moral realism, positing ethical truths as grounded in God's unyielding laws, evident in real-world outcomes—flourishing through labor aligned with providence, versus self-inflicted ruin from defiance—rather than subjective rationalizations. Crusoe's culminates in evangelizing Friday, rescued in his twenty-seventh year, by contrasting the cannibal's tribal Benamuckee with the Christian as the true Creator whose mercy forgives repentant sinners. embraces this, rejecting his father's and affirming 's supremacy, even querying why the tempts if is omnipotent, to which Crusoe replies that evil spirits operate under divine permission to test . Crusoe grants "liberty of conscience" among his diverse companions but prioritizes Protestant tenets, teaching scripture to instill moral accountability—cannibalism as violating 's prohibition, not mere custom. This interaction exemplifies moral realism's application: universal ethical norms, derived from revelation, override , with conversion yielding 's loyalty and Crusoe's reinforced sense of providential duty.

Interpretations and Debates

Individualism and Proto-Capitalism

Robinson Crusoe exemplifies through its protagonist's solitary mastery of an , where and arise solely from personal ingenuity, labor, and rational planning, unassisted by or external . Crusoe's methodical of , cultivation of crops, and of animals demonstrate a self-reliant agency that transforms natural into abundance, reflecting the novel's emphasis on the individual's capacity to impose order on chaos via disciplined effort. This portrayal aligns with early modern Protestant values, where personal providence and industriousness affirm the autonomous self against fate or communal dependence. The narrative's proto-capitalist elements emerge in Crusoe's economic practices, which mirror emerging bourgeois accumulation: he inventories resources, calculates yields from labor (such as harvests yielding 260 bushels from a single planting by his third year), and expands production through tools and enclosures, treating the island as improved by his toil. Defoe depicts labor not as mere subsistence but as value-creating activity, with Crusoe's and reinvestment—evident in his basket-weaving and husbandry—foreshadowing and the Lockean principle that mixing labor with unowned land establishes ownership rights. Upon Friday's arrival, Crusoe introduces hierarchical division of labor, teaching skills for mutual gain while retaining mastery, illustrating proto-capitalist exchange over primitive equality. Critics like interpret these dynamics as foundational to the novel's form, linking Crusoe's "economic " to the psychological realism of capitalism's rise, where private experience drives progress independent of traditional heroic or aristocratic models. Such readings, grounded in Defoe's mercantile background and the publication amid Britain's expanding trade, position the work as an ideological endorsement of self-interested production over feudal or collectivist alternatives, though later Marxist analyses, like those highlighting primitive accumulation, critique it as masking exploitation's origins. Empirically, Crusoe's ledger-keeping and surplus validate causal efficacy of individual initiative in generating wealth, predating formal economic models yet anticipating them.

Colonial Encounters: Empirical Realities and Outcomes

In Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, the protagonist's encounter with the native exemplifies a fictional colonial dynamic, where Crusoe rescues him from cannibals on his island on December 30, 1659, names him, teaches him English and , and establishes a master-servant relationship that proves mutually beneficial for survival and eventual escape. , portrayed as a member of a cannibalistic tribe, adopts European tools, agriculture, and monotheism, contributing to the fortification of the island and the defeat of subsequent invaders, including other cannibals and mutineers. This depiction draws parallels to historical European interactions with indigenous groups like the Caribs, whom early explorers such as identified as cannibals based on direct observations and reports, a claim bolstered by 2020 archaeological evidence from cut and scraped human skulls indicating ritualistic practices. European accounts from the 15th to 18th centuries consistently distinguished Caribs as anthropophagous warriors who raided settlements, consuming captives in rituals tied to warfare and status, though some modern scholars debate the extent without dismissing the primary evidence. Empirically, initial colonial encounters in the 17th- and 18th-century and involved episodic violence, raiding, and cultural exchanges, but the dominant outcome was a catastrophic demographic among indigenous populations, with estimates indicating a 90% decline in the first two centuries post-contact primarily due to introduced diseases like to which natives lacked immunity. This depopulation, more than deliberate extermination, cleared many islands for European settlement and African slave importation, transforming economies from subsistence to export-oriented plantations. In British Caribbean colonies during the , such as and , colonial encounters yielded economic booms through sugar production, with slave labor driving wealth accumulation that funded British industrialization, though at the cost of high mortality among enslaved Africans and residual indigenous groups. Socially, surviving natives and mixed populations experienced coerced integration, with some adopting European technologies, , and legal systems, leading to hybrid societies; quantitative studies of islands show that longer colonial duration and higher European settlement correlated with elevated and reduced by the , attributable to transplanted institutions like property rights and . These outcomes reflect causal factors including disease vectors, labor demands, and institutional transfers, rather than uniform benevolence or malice, with pre-contact tribal conflicts and practices like Carib underscoring that indigenous societies were not static idylls.

Criticisms of Racism, Imperialism, and Rebuttals

Postcolonial scholars have criticized Robinson Crusoe for embedding racial hierarchies and imperial domination in its portrayal of Crusoe's relationship with Friday, the Caribbean native rescued from cannibals. Crusoe's act of naming Friday, teaching him English and Christianity, and establishing him as a servant is interpreted as symbolizing European colonial mastery over indigenous peoples, reinforcing notions of white superiority and the civilizing mission as a pretext for exploitation. This reading frames Crusoe's self-proclaimed sovereignty over the uninhabited island and his economic organization of labor as a microcosm of capitalist imperialism, where accumulation and property rights justify subjugation. Marxist analyses further link the narrative to Britain's slave trade and colonial expansion, viewing Crusoe's earlier participation in slaving voyages and his command over Friday as endorsing class division, racial exploitation, and alienation inherent in imperial commerce. Such interpretations often draw from mid-20th-century postcolonial theory, which emphasizes Manichean binaries of colonizer versus colonized, yet these frameworks, prevalent in academia, tend to prioritize ideological critiques over the novel's historical context amid ongoing European explorations and encounters with cannibalistic practices documented in travel accounts. Defenders rebut that the text does not glorify state but depicts Crusoe's isolation as providential punishment for his prior sins, including slave trading, leading to reflection and conversion rather than unchecked . Friday's willing adoption of Crusoe's tools, , and —coupled with his role in Crusoe from mutineers—illustrates mutual dependence and voluntary exchange, not coerced subjugation; Friday remains loyal post-rescue and rejects returning to his tribe, suggesting agency and benefit from the arrangement. Critics' charges of overlook empirical realities of the era, such as Defoe's dissenting Protestant background and the novel's basis in Alexander Selkirk's 1704-1709 , where survival demanded practical hierarchies absent natives; added elements like address real threats like intertribal reported in the , framing Crusoe's intervention as rescue rather than predation. Some readings recast the work as an early anti-slavery narrative, noting Crusoe's eventual renunciation of ownership over and emphasis on Christian equality, countering exploitation themes by highlighting spiritual redemption over material dominance. These rebuttals underscore that anachronistic impositions from modern lenses distort the text's focus on individual and , where colonial motifs serve allegorical purposes rather than prescriptive ideology.

Contemporary Reception

was published on 25 by William Taylor in , with an initial print run of 1,000 copies. The work achieved immediate commercial success, as the first edition sold out rapidly, prompting a second edition just 17 days after release and additional printings thereafter. By the end of , at least four editions had appeared, reflecting strong demand among readers drawn to its adventure narrative, practical details, and themes of providence and . Popular reception was enthusiastic and widespread, particularly among the middle classes, who found in Crusoe's story a relatable model of industriousness and moral fortitude amid isolation. Many contemporaries accepted the account as factual, influenced by the preface attributing authorship to Crusoe himself and the novel's realistic, first-person prose that mimicked travelogues and journals of the era. This perception amplified its appeal as an instructive rather than mere entertainment, with avid readers reportedly wearing out copies through repeated use. The swift release of Defoe's sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, in August 1719, further evidenced the public's voracious interest. Initial critical commentary, though sparse given the emerging status of the novel form, generally praised the work's didactic value in illustrating divine intervention and human agency. Periodicals and early notices highlighted its moral lessons on , labor, and reliance on , aligning with Protestant emphases of the time. A 1790 biographer of Defoe later described the reception as "immediate and universal," underscoring the book's rapid permeation of cultural discourse without significant detractors in its debut year. Such responses privileged the narrative's empirical tone and causal portrayal of survival as outcomes of rational action and , rather than scrutinizing its fictional elements.

Defoe's Sequels and Expansions

Following the immense success of The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe in 1719, which saw multiple reprints within months, published The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; Being the Second and Last Part of His Life, and Strange Surprizing Adventures later that same year, in August. This extends the narrative in first-person adventure form, with Crusoe, now settled in with a and children, driven by restlessness to revisit his original after ten years, where he finds the European settlers he had left— and —have established a functioning amid conflicts with indigenous cannibals. From there, Crusoe embarks on a global voyage, traveling to , the , (witnessing its internal strife), the , (including observations of imperial bureaucracy and commerce), and , before returning home; the work emphasizes themes of exploration, colonial settlement, and providential survival, though it lacks the introspective depth of the original and concludes Crusoe's wanderings definitively. In 1720, Defoe issued Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With His Vision of the Angelick World, the third volume, which shifts from narrative fiction to a series of didactic essays framed as Crusoe's autobiographical on providence, , , and human frailty. Structured around three "visions"—including an angelic revelation critiquing societal vices like and tyranny—the text uses Crusoe's island solitude as an for spiritual isolation and moral reckoning, defending the preceding volumes' veracity against critics who dismissed them as mere by asserting their basis in real events and cautionary truths. Defoe employs the Crusoe persona to expound Puritan-influenced doctrines, such as the necessity of individual conscience over institutional and the causal link between disobedience and calamity, positioning the work as an expansion that extracts ethical lessons from rather than advancing plot. These sequels served Defoe's commercial and ideological aims, leveraging the first book's popularity—estimated at over 1,000 copies sold weekly initially—to disseminate his views on , , and divine order, though the later volumes received less acclaim for diluting the original's with overt moralizing. No further direct Crusoe narratives followed from Defoe, marking these as his principal expansions of the saga.

Long-Term Legacy

Influence on Economics and Political Economy

Robinson Crusoe (1719) has served as a paradigmatic model in economic analysis, known as the "Robinson Crusoe economy," which simplifies complex systems to a single isolated agent facing scarcity, making choices between labor, production, and leisure to illustrate core principles like and production possibilities frontiers. This framework, predating formal neoclassical models, allows examination of individual rationality without social interactions, as Crusoe allocates time to gather resources, build tools, and cultivate crops, trading off immediate consumption against future yields. Economists employ it to demonstrate self-sufficiency's limits and the incentives for , such as Crusoe's of techniques to multiply output from limited inputs like grain seeds yielding exponential harvests over years. In , the novel exemplifies emergent property rights, with Crusoe asserting dominion over the through labor and , marking land and goods as his own to prevent waste and enable accumulation, a process echoing Lockean labor theory where unowned resources become private via improvement. This self-proclaimed , enforced initially by personal effort and later by improvised laws, underscores causal links between secure and productive , as Crusoe's stems from treating the island as exclusive domain rather than prone to depletion. Such themes influenced liberal thinkers, portraying as foundational to wealth creation amid mercantilist-era constraints on and mobility. Karl Marx, in Capital Volume I (1867), invoked Crusoe to critique bourgeois economics, depicting his solitary production—tracking labor inputs for barley, goats, and baskets—as a transparent instance of value derived solely from labor time, unmediated by market exchange or "fetishism" where social relations masquerade as object properties. Marx contrasted this with capitalist obfuscation but acknowledged Crusoe's accounting as a baseline for understanding surplus extraction, though he viewed the narrative as idealizing primitive accumulation by eliding violence in real enclosures. Earlier, French economist Frédéric Bastiat (1840s) drew on the tale to advocate free trade, likening Crusoe's shipwrecked gold regaining utility only through societal reintegration to arguments against protectionism. Austrian economists later repurposed the model to highlight and , with Crusoe's deferral of consumption for capital goods like enclosures prefiguring Hayekian , where individual foresight drives progress absent central planning. These interpretations emphasize empirical patterns in the text—Crusoe's risk-taking, inventory , and —over ideological overlays, revealing the novel's enduring in dissecting incentives causal to economic outcomes, from subsistence to surplus generation.

Literary Impact and Robinsonade Genre

Robinson Crusoe, published on 25 April 1719, exerted significant influence on the development of the by pioneering formal realism through detailed, first-person of everyday experiences and individual agency. This approach, emphasizing a common protagonist's plausible adventures grounded in empirical observation, shifted literature toward over romance, paving the way for later novelists like and who built upon its narrative techniques. The novel's success—selling thousands of copies rapidly—demonstrated demand for prose fiction depicting solitary self-improvement and resourcefulness, influencing the genre's commercial viability. The Robinsonade genre arose directly from Robinson Crusoe's popularity, comprising imitative works focused on protagonists marooned on isolated islands, surviving through ingenuity and labor while often establishing rudimentary societies. German author Gottfried Schnabel coined the term "" in the preface to his 1731 novel Die Insel Felsenburg, the first of four volumes serializing utopian island tales that adapted Defoe's survival motif to communal and moral frameworks. Early examples proliferated in the 1720s and 1730s across Europe, including Robert Paltock's The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1751), which extended the isolation theme to aerial discoveries, and Johann Rudolf Wyss's (1812), emphasizing family over . Over centuries, the Robinsonade evolved to critique or subvert its origins, incorporating themes of colonialism's failures or human depravity; William Golding's (1954) inverted Crusoe's triumphant self-reliance into societal collapse among stranded boys. This genre's persistence in literature underscores Robinson Crusoe's role in birthing adventure-survival narratives, with echoes in modern works like J.M. Coetzee's Foe (1986), which reexamines Defoe's story through metafictional lenses questioning narrative authority. Despite variations, core elements—resource extraction, tool-making, and mastery of nature—reflect the original's causal emphasis on human adaptation via practical reason.

Adaptations Across Media

The novel Robinson Crusoe has inspired numerous stage adaptations since its 1719 publication, often in the form of pantomimes and melodramas that emphasized spectacle and moral lessons for audiences. In Britain, it became a staple of pantomime traditions, with versions like the 1883 toy theater production featuring elaborate scenes of ocean storms and island survival, performed in miniature theaters for domestic audiences. French dramatist René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt adapted it for Parisian stages prior to 1867, influencing later operatic treatments by incorporating sensational elements of and exotic encounters. A prominent musical adaptation is Jacques Offenbach's Robinson Crusoé, an in three acts with by Eugène Cormon and Hector-Jonathan Crémieux, which premiered on 23 January 1867 at the in . Loosely drawing from Defoe's narrative, it depicts Robinson's adventures with comic exaggeration, including resistance to marriage and island exile, amid Offenbach's characteristic buoyant melodies and of bourgeois life; the work ran for initial success but faded from regular repertoires until revivals in the . Film adaptations began with silent era shorts, including a 1902 version directed by that condensed the shipwreck and survival motifs into early cinematic effects. The 1954 Mexican-French production The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, directed by and starring as Crusoe, adheres closely to the novel's first-person isolation and ingenuity while infusing subtle psychological tension, earning acclaim for O'Herlihy's performance and Buñuel's stark visuals on a budgeted $250,000 production. Later films include the 1997 American adaptation starring , which expands on interpersonal dynamics with , grossing over $7 million at the despite mixed reviews for deviating from the source's introspective tone. Sci-fi variants like (1964) transpose the survival theme to extraterrestrial settings, reflecting Cold War-era technological optimism with Paul Mantee's portrayal of resourcefulness amid alien isolation. Television series include the French-German The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a 13-episode live-action production aimed at children, featuring as Crusoe and emphasizing educational over the novel's spiritual reflections. The 2008 NBC series Crusoe, starring , modernizes the story with action-oriented plots and romantic subplots, airing 13 episodes before cancellation due to low ratings. Radio dramatizations abound, such as BBC 4's full-cast adaptation starring , which aired in the early 2000s and captures the novel's episodic structure through of storms and solitude. These adaptations across media often prioritize and visual spectacle, sometimes altering the original's emphasis on providence and to suit contemporary sensibilities.

Cultural and Idiomatic Persistence

The phrase "man Friday," denoting a loyal and efficient or servant, originates from the character , the Caribbean native rescued and converted by Crusoe in Defoe's 1719 novel. This term entered English usage soon after the book's publication, reflecting the narrative's depiction of as Crusoe's devoted companion who learns English, adopts , and aids in survival efforts. By the 19th century, it had become a standard , appearing in and to describe reliable aides, and persists in modern dictionaries as a for a right-hand man. An extension, "girl Friday," emerged in the early for female equivalents, first attested in around 1908, though it draws directly from the same literary source without altering the original's hierarchical dynamic. The novel's archetype of solitary has embedded "Robinson Crusoe" into idiomatic expressions for isolation or , such as living "like Robinson Crusoe" to evoke a 's resourcefulness amid adversity. This usage dates to at least the and endures in contexts like describing hermitic lifestyles or economic models of isolated agents, underscoring the story's causal emphasis on individual agency over communal dependence. Unlike transient fads, these phrases maintain empirical traction due to the novel's grounding in real accounts, such as Alexander Selkirk's 1704 ordeal, which Defoe consulted, ensuring their resonance with verifiable human experiences of survival. Cultural persistence extends to symbolic invocations in discourse on , with the cited in 20th- and 21st-century writings on and as a of proto-capitalist ingenuity, free from institutional biases that later critiques might impose. For instance, the term appears in business literature to frame self-made success, attributing no unsubstantiated moral overlays but adhering to the text's focus on practical mastery of environment through labor and foresight. This contrasts with ephemeral trends, rooted instead in the novel's unvarnished portrayal of human adaptation, which empirical history—via records and colonial logs—validates as realistic rather than idealized.

Textual and Scholarly Developments

Major Editions and Translations

The first edition of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of , of , Mariner appeared on 25 1719, printed for W. Taylor at the Ship in Paternoster Row, . Presented as the of its , with no attribution to until later printings, the volume comprised 364 pages in duodecimo format and sold for one . Its immediate success prompted a second edition within a month, a third shortly after, and a fourth by year's end, reflecting strong demand amid limited protections. Authorized sequels extended the narrative: The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe followed in August 1719, detailing further travels, while Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe emerged in 1720 as a volume of moral essays framed through the character's experiences. Early reprints included pirate editions and abridgments, such as chapbooks that popularized simplified versions for broader audiences. Over three centuries, more than 1,500 distinct editions have been issued, encompassing illustrated formats like those in the Novelist's Magazine and modern critical texts such as the Editions, which restore original phrasing and provide scholarly apparatus. Translations began almost immediately, with versions in French, German, and Dutch appearing within the first year of publication, facilitating continental dissemination via intermediaries like French adaptations that later influenced Iberian languages. The first German edition dates to 1720 in Zurich, underscoring early European appeal. Subsequent renderings expanded globally: Hebrew translations emerged from 1784 onward, including a full version in 1823–1824 by David Zamośź; Arabic in 1861 by Buṭrus al-Bustānī; and Chinese in the late Qing Dynasty by Shen Zufen. These efforts, often adapted for cultural or didactic purposes, contributed to the novel's status as one of history's most widely rendered works in non-English tongues.

Recent Scholarship and Tercentenary Reflections

The tercentenary of Robinson Crusoe's in , observed in , spurred renewed academic interest in its cultural endurance, with scholars examining the novel's role in shaping narratives of , , and . Publications such as Robinson Crusoe after 300 Years analyzed the text's ongoing influence across , , and mythology, highlighting how Defoe's embodies empirical and providential realism amid isolation. Conferences and special journal issues, including those in postcolonial and studies, revisited the work's adaptations, noting its inspiration for over 700 "Robinsonades" since the . Post-2010 has increasingly applied postcolonial frameworks, critiquing Crusoe's island mastery as a for colonial domination and the subjugation of non-European "others," such as , whom Crusoe renames and converts. These readings, prevalent in academic institutions, often prioritize deconstructive lenses that emphasize power imbalances, yet they frequently overlook the novel's first-person emphasis on causal —Crusoe's systematic accounting of tools, , and labor as means of —elements rooted in Defoe's dissenting Protestant and empirical rather than overt . Such interpretations reflect broader trends in , where systemic preferences for critiquing Western agency may undervalue the text's demonstration of individual productivity preceding organized . Beyond , recent analyses have explored Crusoe's spiritual dimensions, portraying the protagonist's solitude as a catalyst for introspective reckoning with providence and moral autonomy, akin to empirical self-examination in isolation. Economic readings, echoing Karl Marx's earlier use of Crusoe to model primitive accumulation but extending to critiques of "character masks" in colonial trade, underscore the novel's portrayal of labor value creation on unclaimed land. Studies of illustrated editions from – reveal transnational reading practices, with early adaptations disseminating Crusoe's visual iconography across and influencing global perceptions of self-sufficiency. These diverse threads affirm the novel's versatility, though tercentenary reflections caution against reductive politicization, advocating for readings grounded in Defoe's original fusion of adventure, , and .

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