Robinson Crusoe: Analysis of Setting
"Robinson Crusoe: Analysis of Setting" explores the various locations that shape the narrative of Daniel Defoe's novel, focusing on their significance in Crusoe's journey. The story begins in England, during Oliver Cromwell's Puritan Revolution, where Crusoe, disillusioned by the prospect of a monotonous life, departs for adventure. His travels lead him to Sallee, a Moroccan port where he is captured by pirates, marking the start of his tumultuous experience as a slave. After his rescue, Crusoe finds himself in Brazil, where he establishes a profitable plantation, yet remains unfulfilled, prompting him to seek greater fortune in West Africa.
However, fate intervenes, and he is shipwrecked on a deserted island off the northern coast of South America. Over the next twenty-eight years, this island becomes both a place of survival and personal transformation for Crusoe. He constructs a home and learns to live off the land, ultimately returning to the values he initially rejected. The setting of the island serves as a catalyst for his redemption and spiritual revival, echoing themes of repentance found in Puritan literature. By the end of the novel, Crusoe's time on the island allows him to rise above his middle-class origins and reunite with his faith, illustrating the profound impact of setting on character development and thematic evolution.
Robinson Crusoe: Analysis of Setting
First published: 1719, as The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Adventure
Time of work: 1651-1705
Asterisk denotes entries on real places.
Places Discussed
*England
*England. Home of Robinson Crusoe. When the novel opens, England is being ruled by Oliver Cromwell during the Puritan Revolution, and the middle class to which the young Crusoe belongs is expanding rapidly. To Crusoe, England promises a future of hard, monotonous work and strict Puritanism, so he takes passage on a ship looking for adventure elsewhere. Years later, he returns to England, made prosperous by his long years of work and struggle, and embraces the faith of his father.
*Sallee
*Sallee (sahl-LAY; now known as Salé). North African seaport in what is now known as Morocco that is the base of pirates who attack Crusoe’s ship and make him a slave. After two years in captivity in Sallee, Crusoe is rescued by a Portuguese captain, who advises him to return to England. However, Crusoe, still young and defiant, ignores the advice by continuing his travels.
*Brazil
*Brazil. Portuguese colony to which the Portuguese captain takes Crusoe. There, Crusoe sets up a sugar and tobacco plantation. After a few years, the plantation begins to show a profit, but Crusoe remains restless. Intent on making a fortune, and in need of labor, he leads a slaving expedition to West Africa. Shipwrecked before he reaches Africa, he is marooned on an uninhabited island.
Crusoe’s island
Crusoe’s island. Island on which Crusoe is marooned by himself, located somewhere off the northern coast of South America. With only the clothes on his back and odds and ends he salvages from the wrecked ship, Crusoe spends the next twenty-eight years of his life on the island. During his stay, Crusoe works diligently, building not only a serviceable home, but also almost every convenience to which he was accustomed in England. He thereby ironically ends up following the very Puritan dictates that he originally left England to escape.
On the island, Crusoe develops a sense of wholehearted inventiveness, precisely in keeping with Puritan dictates and, most important, returns to the Protestant religion he spurned by going to sea. With the help of his slave Friday, whom he rescues from cannibalism after twenty-four years completely alone, he builds a home, grows his food, makes clothes from animal skins, keeps animals, and builds a boat. By the end of the novel, when he is rescued and returned safely to England, he has amassed a fortune and becomes a gentleman. Thus, the island provides a means for him to move up the social ladder and climb out of his middle-class beginnings.
Although Crusoe spurns his father’s Protestant religion by going to sea, the deserted island is instrumental in his return to his father’s faith. As in the Bible’s prodigal son narrative and many Puritan-conversion narratives of Defoe’s era, Crusoe is lost in the wilderness but returns after a period of intense suffering, becomes repentant, and finds forgiveness.
Bibliography
Damrosch, Leopold, Jr. God’s Plot and Man’s Stories. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Damrosch devotes a chapter to Robinson Crusoe, which he reads largely within the context of Puritan doctrine. The result is a first-rate and highly recommended discussion of the work.
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. Edited by Michael Shinagel. New York: W. W. Norton, 1994. The perfect beginner’s guide to Defoe’s great novel. In addition to an authoritative text of Robinson Crusoe, Shinagel provides selections from twentieth century criticism, a bibliography, and a set of very useful contextual materials.
McKeon, Michael. The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. A large and challenging work, which includes a readable and rewarding chapter on Robinson Crusoe.
Rogers, Pat. Robinson Crusoe. London: Allen and Unwin, 1979. A rich source book for the study of Defoe’s most famous work. Provides, among many other useful materials, a brief account of Defoe’s life, chapters entitled “Travel, Trade, and Empire” and “Religion and Allegory,” a full bibliography, and two appendices containing pre-Robinson Crusoe accounts of Alexander Selkirk (the castaway who inspired Defoe’s fictional character).
Watt, Ian. Myths of Modern Individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Ian Watt studies the origins and literary uses of Don Quixote, Don Juan, Faust, and Robinson Crusoe as pervasive myths of the modern individualist world.
Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964. First published in 1957, Watt’s study remains, in spite of numerous challenges, one of the key works in the field of early English fiction. He devotes a long and fascinating chapter to Robinson Crusoe.