Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

First published: 1719, as The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, Written by Himself

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Adventure

Time of plot: 1651-1705

Locale: An island off the coast of South America and the Several Seas

Principal Characters

• Robinson Crusoe, a castaway
• Friday, his faithful servant

The Story

Robinson Crusoe is the son of a middle-class English family. Although his father desires that he go into business and live a quiet life, the young man has such longing for the sea that he finds it impossible to remain at home. He takes his first voyage without his parents’ knowledge. The ship is caught in a great storm, and Crusoe is so violently ill and so greatly afraid that he vows never to leave land again should he be so fortunate as to escape death.

When he lands safely, however, he finds his old longing still unsatisfied, and he engages as a trader, shipping first for the coast of Africa. The ship on which he sails is captured by a Turkish pirate vessel, and he is carried as a prisoner into Sallee, a Moorish port. There he becomes a slave. His life is unbearable, and at the first opportunity he escapes in a small boat. He is then rescued by a Portuguese freighter and carried safely to Brazil, where he buys a small plantation and begins the life of a planter.

When another English planter suggests that they make a voyage to Africa for a cargo of slaves, Crusoe once more gives in to his longing for the sea. This voyage is destined to bring him his greatest adventure of all, for the ship breaks apart on a reef near an island off the coast of South America. Of all the crew and passengers, only Crusoe survives, the waves washing him ashore. He takes stock of his situation and finds that the island seems to be completely uninhabited, with no sign of wild beasts. In an attempt to make his castaway life as comfortable as possible, he constructs a raft and sails it to the broken ship to gather food, ammunition, water, wine, clothing, tools, sailcloth, and lumber.

He sets up a sailcloth tent on the side of a small hill and encircles his refuge with tall, sharp stakes. He enters his shelter by means of a ladder that he draws up after him. Into this area he brings all the goods he has salvaged, being particularly careful with the gunpowder. His next concern is his food supply. Finding little food from the ship that has not been ruined by rats or water, he eats sparingly during his first days on the island. Among the things Crusoe has brought from the ship are a quill and ink, and before long he begins to keep a journal. When he considers the good and evil of his situation, he finds that he has much for which to thank God.

He begins to make his shelter permanent. Behind his tent he finds a small cave, which he enlarges and braces. With crude tools, he makes a table and a chair, some shelves, and a rack for his guns. He spends many months on the work, all the time able to feed himself with wildfowl and other small game. He also finds several springs that keep him supplied with drinking water.

For the next twenty-four years, he spends his life in much the same way as in his first days after the shipwreck. He explores the island and builds what he is pleased to call his summer home on the other side. He is able to grow corn, barley, and rice, carefully saving the new kernels each year until he has enough to plant a small field. He learns to grind these grains to make meal and bakes coarse bread. He catches and tames wild goats to supply his larder and parrots for companionship. He makes better furniture and improves his cave, making it even safer from intruders, whom he still fears, although he has seen no sign of any living thing larger than small game, fowl, and goats. He also has time to read carefully the three Bibles he retrieved from the ship. At a devotional period each morning and night, he never fails to thank God for delivering him from the sea.

In the middle of Crusoe’s twenty-fourth year on the island, an incident occurs that alters his way of living. About a year and a half previously, he had observed some savages who had apparently paddled over from another island. They had come in the night and gorged themselves on some other savages, obviously prisoners. Crusoe had found the bones and the torn flesh the next morning and had since been terrified that the cannibals might return and find him. Finally, a band of savages does return. While they prepare for their gruesome feast, Crusoe shoots some of them and frightens the others away. Able to rescue one of the prisoners, he at last has human companionship. He names the man Friday after the day of his rescue, and Friday becomes his faithful servant and friend.

Over the course of time, Crusoe is able to teach Friday to speak English. Friday tells him that seventeen white men are prisoners on the island from which he had come. Although Friday reports that the men are well treated, Crusoe has a great desire to go to them, thinking that together they might find some way to return to the civilized world. He and Friday build a canoe and prepare to sail to the other island, but before they are ready for their trip, another group of savages comes to their island with more prisoners. Crusoe discovers that one of the prisoners is a white man and manages to save him. He also rescues another savage, an old man who turns out to be Friday’s father; there is great joy at the reunion of father and son. Crusoe cares for the old man and the white man, who is a Spaniard, one of the seventeen of whom Friday had spoken. A hostile tribe has captured Friday’s island, and now the white men are no longer safe.

Crusoe dispatches the Spaniard and Friday’s father to the neighboring island to try to rescue the white men. While waiting for their return, Crusoe sees an English ship one day at anchor near shore. Soon he finds the captain of the ship and two others, who have been set ashore by a mutinous crew. Crusoe, Friday, and the three seamen are able to retake the ship, and Crusoe is at last delivered from the island. He dislikes leaving before the Spaniard and Friday’s father return, and he determines to go back to the island some day and see how they had fared. Five of the mutinous crew choose to remain on the island rather than be returned to England to be hanged. Crusoe and Friday then sail to England. Crusoe returns to his homeland after an absence of thirty-five years, arriving there, a stranger and unknown, in June of 1687.

His adventures, however, are not over. When he visits his old home, he finds that his parents have died, as have all of his family but two sisters and the two children of one of his brothers. Having no reason to remain in England, he goes with Friday to Lisbon to inquire about his plantation. There he learns that friends have saved the income of his estate for him and that he is now worth about five thousand pounds sterling. Satisfied with this accounting, Crusoe and Friday return to England, where Crusoe marries and has three children with his wife.

After his wife dies, Crusoe sails again in 1695 as a private trader on a ship captained by his nephew and bound for the East Indies and China. The ship puts in at his castaway island, where he finds that the Spaniards and the English mutineers have taken native wives from a nearby island; consequently, the population is greatly increased. Crusoe is pleased with his little group and holds a feast for them. He also presents them with gifts from the ship.

After Crusoe has satisfied himself that the island colony is well cared for, he and Friday sail away. On their way to Brazil, savages attack their ship, and Friday is killed. From Brazil, Crusoe travels around the Cape of Good Hope and on to the coast of China. At one port, after the sailors on his ship take part in a massacre, Crusoe lectures them so severely that the crew members force the captain, Crusoe’s nephew, to set him ashore in China, as they can no longer tolerate his preaching. There Crusoe joins a caravan that takes him into Siberia. At last, he reaches England again. Having spent the greater part of fifty-four years away from his homeland, he is finally glad to live out his life there in peace and in preparation for that longer journey from which he will never return.

Bibliography

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