Cоntents intrоductiоn chapter I. Life and work of Jonathan Swift

CHAPTER II. Synopsis and Analysis of “Robinson Crusoe”
2.1. The history of the writing of "Robinson Crusoe"
In Robinson Crusoe Defoe wished to reveal the transformative powers of endurance, fortitude and energy. He wanted to invent a character broadened by his island experience and not lessened by it. And the adventure turned out even more extensive than Defoe might have originally hoped. Over the years, Robinson Crusoe has meant many things to many readers, not only an intriguing tale of island exile but an economic fable on utility theory, a religious conversion story, a treatise on Providence, a colonial primer, a self-help manual. Some have even read Robinson Crusoe as an allegorical autobiography.
For years Defoe had been interested in the coastal ports and colonies of South America. He had pitched proposals for South Sea trade and settlement in various regions (including the Orinoco basin that harboured Crusoe's island) to King William III in 1698 and to a parliamentary commission in 1712. His interest was in extracting raw materials and settling colonies with the help of a native labour force, even though his views on slavery and indentured service were softened by his lifelong political belief in liberty and tolerance. Crusoe's interactions with the rescued native Friday on his island exhibit both Defoe's sense of supremacy and his sense of humanity, a tricky and sometimes unsettling mix.
Robinson Crusoe, in full 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. With an Account how he was at last as Strangely Deliver’d by Pyrates. Written by Himself., novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in London in 1719. Defoe’s first long work of fiction, it introduced two of the most-enduring characters in English literature: Robinson Crusoe and Friday.
Crusoe is the novel’s narrator. He describes how, as a headstrong young man, he ignored his family’s advice and left his comfortable middle-class home in England to go to sea. His first experience on a ship nearly kills him, but he perseveres, and a voyage to Guinea “made me both a Sailor and a Merchant,” Crusoe explains. Now several hundred pounds richer, he sails again for Africa but is captured by pirates and sold into slavery. He escapes and ends up in Brazil, where he acquires a plantation and prospers. Ambitious for more wealth, Crusoe makes a deal with merchants and other plantation owners to sail to Guinea, buy slaves, and return with them to Brazil. But he encounters a storm in the Caribbean, and his ship is nearly destroyed. Crusoe is the only survivor, washed up onto a desolate shore. He salvages what he can from the wreck and establishes a life on the island that consists of spiritual reflection and practical measures to survive. He carefully documents in a journal everything he does and experiences.
After many years, Crusoe discovers a human footprint, and he eventually encounters a group of native peoples—the “Savages,” as he calls them—who bring captives to the island so as to kill and eat them. One of the group’s captives escapes, and Crusoe shoots those who pursue him, effectively freeing the captive. As Crusoe describes one of his earliest interactions with the man, just hours after his escape: Crusoe gradually turns “my Man Friday” into an English-speaking Christian. “Never Man had a more faithful, loving, sincere Servant, than Friday was to me,” Crusoe explains. Various encounters with local peoples and Europeans ensue. After almost three decades on the island, Crusoe departs (with Friday and a group of pirates) for England. Crusoe settles there for a time after selling his plantation in Brazil, but, as he explains, “I could not resist the strong Inclination I had to see my Island.” He eventually returns and learns what happened after the Spanish took control of it.
Defoe probably based part of Robinson Crusoe on the real-life experiences of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who at his own request was put ashore on an uninhabited island in 1704 after a quarrel with his captain and stayed there until 1709. But Defoe took his novel far beyond Selkirk’s story by blending the traditions of Puritan spiritual autobiography with an insistent scrutiny of the nature of human beings as social creatures. He also deployed components of travel literature and adventure stories, both of which boosted the novel’s popularity. From this mixture emerged Defoe’s major accomplishment in Robinson Crusoe: the invention of a modern myth. The novel is both a gripping tale and a sober wide-ranging reflection on ambition, self-reliance, civilization, and power.
Robinson Crusoe was a popular success in Britain, and it went through multiple editions in the months after its first publication. Translations were quickly published on the European continent, and Defoe wrote a sequel (The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe) that was also published in 1719. Defoe’s book immediately spurred imitations, called Robinsonades, and he himself used it as a springboard for more fiction. (For a discussion of Robinson Crusoe in the context of Defoe’s writing career, see Daniel Defoe: Later life and works.) Robinson Crusoe would crop up in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile (1762) and in Karl Marx’s Das Kapital (1867). The novel The Swiss Family Robinson (translated into English in 1814) and the films His Girl Friday (1940), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), and Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) are just a few of the works that riff—some directly, some obliquely—on Defoe’s novel and its main characters.
Some critics have debated Robinson Crusoe’s status as a novel per se: its structure is highly episodic, and Defoe’s uneven narrative pacing and niggling errors—a goat that is male, for example, later becomes female as circumstances demand—suggest that he may not have planned or executed the work as a single unified whole. In many ways, however, its heterogeneity—the fact that it draws together features of the genres of romance, memoir, fable, allegory, and others—argues that novel is the only label large enough to describe it. Robinson Crusoe is best understood as standing alongside novels such as Tristram Shandy and Infinite Jest, all of which expand the novel’s possibilities by blurring its boundaries.
Daniel Defoe’s fictional work The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is published. The book, about a shipwrecked sailor who spends 28 years on a deserted island, is based on the experiences of shipwreck victims and of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who spent four years on a small island off the coast of South America in the early 1700s.
Like his hero Crusoe, Daniel Defoe was an ordinary, middle-class Englishman, not an educated member of the nobility like most writers at the time. Defoe established himself as a small merchant but went bankrupt in 1692 and turned to political pamphleteering to support himself. A pamphlet he published in 1702 satirizing members of the High Church led to his arrest and trial for seditious libel in 1703. He appealed to powerful politician Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, who had him freed from Newgate prison and who hired him as a political writer and spy to support his own views. To this end, Defoe set up the Review, which he edited and wrote from 1704 to 1713. It wasn’t until he was nearly 60 that he began writing fiction. His other works include Moll Flanders (1722) and Roxana (1724). He died in London in 1731, one day before the 12th anniversary of Robinson Crusoe’s publication.
Robinson Crusoe^[a] (/ˈkruːsoʊ/) is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents.^[2]
Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is presented as an autobiography of the title character (whose birth name is Robinson Kreutznaer) – a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical desert island near the coasts of Venezuela and Trinidad, roughly resembling Tobago,^[3][4] encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. The story has been thought to be based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, 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}
Despite its simple narrative style, Robinson Crusoe was well received in the literary world and is often credited as marking the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre. It is generally seen as a contender for the first English novel.^[6] 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.
Robinson Crusoe (the family name corrupted from the German name "Kreutznaer") sets sail from Kingston upon Hull 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 is shipwrecked in a storm about forty miles out to sea on 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} He observes the latitude as 9 degrees and 22 minutes north. He sees penguins and seals on this island. Only he, the captain's dog, and two cats survive the shipwreck. Overcoming his despair, he fetches arms, tools and other supplies from the ship before it breaks apart and sinks. He builds a fenced-in habitat near a cave which he excavates. By making marks in a wooden cross, he creates a calendar. By using tools salvaged from the ship, and some which he makes himself, he hunts, grows barley and rice, dries grapes to make raisins, learns to make pottery 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.
More years pass and Crusoe discovers cannibals, who occasionally visit the island to kill and eat prisoners. 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. He dreams of obtaining one or two servants by freeing some prisoners; when a prisoner escapes, Crusoe helps him, naming his new companion "Friday" after the day of the week he appeared. Crusoe teaches Friday English and converts him to Christianity.
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 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; mutineers have commandeered the vessel and intend to maroon their captain 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 be marooned 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 there will be more men coming.
The route taken by Robinson Crusoe over the Pyrenees mountains in chapters 19 & 20 of Defoe's novel, as envisaged by Joseph Ribas
Crusoe leaves the island 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.^[7]

1. 
   Christianity: The theme of Christianity is significant in the course of the novel through the physical journey of Robinson Crusoe to the island that is also a representation of his spiritual journey to become a good Christian. His initial disregard of the religious beliefs confirms this proposition that he considers his life faithless due to the warning of his father about God has not blessed him. His dream about his non-repenting attitude and his study of the Bible on the island confirms this assumption that Robinson has turned to Christianity and is engaged in its propagation. Also, it gives him a way out from his confusion and provides him with some solace during these dark moments on the island. This long and arduous rumination about religion provides him some confirmation about his belief’s miracle in the shape of Friday, his servant, and an English captain. Some other such incidents and happenings, which first seem disastrous for him, later prove blessings only because of his leanings toward Christianity in that he considers them God’s will and care for him.
   
2. 
   Society: Society and social interaction is another major significant theme of the novel in that Robinson Crusoe flees from his family, including trying to escape from his middle-class social relations in England. It is, in a sense, an escape from responsibilities as well as the obligation of adhering to the social framework. However, when he lands on the island, he comes to know about the value of people and social relations and immediately makes Friday his companion to make a sense of the isolated living. His view of prioritizing his own life over that of the social life by leaving toward the sea shows that he is fed up with the society, which he, later, thinks is necessary for the balanced growth of an individual to survive. However, in another sense, it is also appropriate for an individual to be isolated to learn the value of society as Robinson learns it.
   
3. 
   Individuality: The novel shows the theme of individuality through Robinson Crusoe’s desire of leaving English society despite his father’s warnings. When he is shipwrecked and ends up on an island, he learns about his individuality and the difficulties a person faces when they remain away from society. He also learns to live a sustainable life of independence that is free from the stress of everyday preoccupations and tensions. His final return to the English society, however, confirms to him that the individuality of a person can only prosper in a balanced lifestyle in a social setup where he has the will to leave the social fabric and then return to it when he wants. Yet what he values the most is his liberty and freedom that no harassing father or torturing relations could make a person to be loaded with cares and preoccupations.
   
4. 
   Isolation: Isolation is torturing and also enriching from the social and spiritual point of view. Robinson Crusoe, when he faces himself all alone on the island, not only finds himself isolated from the society but also from his family and faith. However, this isolation from society teaches him the value of self-living and self-reliance, patience, and socialization. When he makes Friday his comrade, he also learns that isolation teaches a person to have others at his beck and call, though, it seems quite contradictory to his freedom-loving nature. This isolation and loneliness bring him close to God and Christianity as he starts preaching later in life after his return to England.
   
5. 
   Independent Living: Self-reliance or independent living is another theme that Robinson Crusoe highlights through his life on the island. When he is alone on the island, he builds his own hut, and also domesticates different animals for his benefit, and starts using Friday for himself, though, at the surface level he is imparting his knowledge. His acts of escape from the master and his plantation in Brazil and later its sale and purchase point to his thinking of living an independent life away from the fever and fret of the daily living of the English urban life.
   
6. 
   Civilization: The theme of civilization unfolds when Crusoe is stranded on an island following the shipwreck. He lives in the wild, taking the fittest of survival to his heart. However, he soon starts spreading civilization when he domesticates animals and parrots and teaches the English language and Christianity to Friday. In one sense, this becomes a tool to spread the civilization that Kipling has called a white man’s burden.
   
7. 
   Nature: Nature and the impact of its forces on human beings in setting the course of their lives is another major theme that Crusoe shows through his story. It entails not only human nature but also natural forces. When Crusoe does not pay heed to his father’s advice, it is the rebellion of his nature, but when he faces a shipwreck, it is the wrath of the natural forces. Ultimately, he comes to know that his own nature mixed with the natural forces could balance the life of a person.
   
8. 
   Colonialism: The novel is highly seductive in presenting the theme of colonialism. Robinson Crusoe’s desire to execute his voyages to different lands and his desire to materially profit from his voyages are a reflection of human desire and the English bent of mind. Although the sane voice of his father restrains him for some time, he finally breaks the barrier by setting out to different islands. His idea of having a plantation in Brazil and its final sale is also a sign of the colonial mind to profit from such ventures.
   
9. 
   Morality: The novel also shows the theme of the existence of a moral framework although it is mostly based on English and Christian morals. Robinson Crusoe considers it his moral duty to save Friday to whom he later teaches Christianity and civilization. He saves several others and kills the cannibals chasing them, considering it a morally upright task.
   
10. 
    Self-Reliance: Crusoe presents the theme of self-reliance through his character that he faces the question of his survival in provision and fending off the animals at the island.