Daniel Defoe
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
eBook
( Nov. 27, 2017)
Crusoe sets sail from the Queen's Dock in Hull on a sea voyage in August 1651, against the wishes of his parents, who want him to pursue a career, possibly in law. After a tumultuous journey where his ship is wrecked in a storm, his lust 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 Sale pirates (the Sale 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. Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. This first edition credited the work's fictional protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents. It was published under the considerably longer original title The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner.
Now and then it's good to go back and read a book written three hundred years or so ago. The mind-shift necessary you need to make to enjoy the book keeps your brain limber, cleans the mental attic of the literary clutter that has accumulated- that a book needs to be fast-paced, that the dialogue needs to be witty and revealing, that long descriptions are boring. So you read a book that doesn't meet any of the standards someone has told you a good book should meet and you still enjoy it because somehow you allowed yourself to enter and accept the author's and the book's world. I say this because I think Robinson Crusoe is a book that doesn't quite transcend its time, like say Don Quixote, a book that is both of its time but also magically contemporary. Robinson Crusoe's world is the world of 18th century England, a world where a person's highest achievement is the use of reason to make life more comfortable. Crusoe's challenge is twofold. Externally, he needs to use his reason to survive. Internally, he must use his reason to conquer fear and despair. This account of Robinson Crusoe's internal journey was an unexpected pleasure. It is a journey that we can all identify with - the journey from anger at our hardship to resignation and acceptance to tranquillity and peace to end finally in gratitude for life itself, despite the hardship, which is as good a way as any to define joy. Crusoe is aided in this journey by the Bible he rescued and by prayer, but really the mental transformation is more the result of reason, of the ability of Crusoe to direct his thoughts, through constant practice, in one particular direction and away from another. Defoe's gods are, when all is said and done, reason and will. There were a lot of things about this book that I would "fix" if I were an editor and this came across my desk in 2014. I would throw in some kind of sexual desire or sexual fantasies of some kind of which there are unrealistically none in this book. I would have Defoe admire trees and plants and animals a little more for their beauty and less for their potential use as shelter or food. Of course Friday would be treated as an equal to Crusoe and not as a servant. But this book was written in 1719 and not 2014. It belongs there so when you read it let yourself go, surrender yourself to that time and those thoughts and enjoy and take simply what the book gives.
Now and then it's good to go back and read a book written three hundred years or so ago. The mind-shift necessary you need to make to enjoy the book keeps your brain limber, cleans the mental attic of the literary clutter that has accumulated- that a book needs to be fast-paced, that the dialogue needs to be witty and revealing, that long descriptions are boring. So you read a book that doesn't meet any of the standards someone has told you a good book should meet and you still enjoy it because somehow you allowed yourself to enter and accept the author's and the book's world. I say this because I think Robinson Crusoe is a book that doesn't quite transcend its time, like say Don Quixote, a book that is both of its time but also magically contemporary. Robinson Crusoe's world is the world of 18th century England, a world where a person's highest achievement is the use of reason to make life more comfortable. Crusoe's challenge is twofold. Externally, he needs to use his reason to survive. Internally, he must use his reason to conquer fear and despair. This account of Robinson Crusoe's internal journey was an unexpected pleasure. It is a journey that we can all identify with - the journey from anger at our hardship to resignation and acceptance to tranquillity and peace to end finally in gratitude for life itself, despite the hardship, which is as good a way as any to define joy. Crusoe is aided in this journey by the Bible he rescued and by prayer, but really the mental transformation is more the result of reason, of the ability of Crusoe to direct his thoughts, through constant practice, in one particular direction and away from another. Defoe's gods are, when all is said and done, reason and will. There were a lot of things about this book that I would "fix" if I were an editor and this came across my desk in 2014. I would throw in some kind of sexual desire or sexual fantasies of some kind of which there are unrealistically none in this book. I would have Defoe admire trees and plants and animals a little more for their beauty and less for their potential use as shelter or food. Of course Friday would be treated as an equal to Crusoe and not as a servant. But this book was written in 1719 and not 2014. It belongs there so when you read it let yourself go, surrender yourself to that time and those thoughts and enjoy and take simply what the book gives.
- Pages
- 362
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