Cоntents intrоductiоn chapter I. Life and work of Jonathan Swift

2.1. Analysis of “Robinson Crusoe”
Robinson Crusoe, often called the first English novel, was written by Daniel Defoe and published in 1719. The novel is the tale of one man’s survival on a desert island following a shipwreck. Published in 1719, the book didn’t carry Defoe’s name, and it was offered to the public as a true account of real events, documented by a real man named Crusoe. But readers were immediately sceptical.
In the same year as the novel appeared, a man named Charles Gildon actually published Robinson Crusoe Examin’d and Criticis’d, in which he showed that Crusoe was made up and the events of the novel were fiction. The name ‘Crusoe’, by the way, may have been taken from Timothy Cruso, who had been a classmate of Defoe’s and who had gone on to write guidebooks. 
What follows is a short summary of the main plot of Robinson Crusoe, followed by an analysis of this foundational novel and its key themes.
Robinson Crusoe: summary
The novel, famously, is about how the title character, Robinson Crusoe, becomes marooned on an island off the north-east coast of South America. As a young man, Crusoe had gone to sea in the hope of making his fortune. Crusoe is on a ship bound for Africa, where he plans to buy slaves for his plantations in South America, when the ship is wrecked on an island and Crusoe is the only survivor.
Alone on a desert island, Crusoe manages to survive thanks to his pluck and pragmatism. He keeps himself sane by keeping a diary, manages to build himself a shelter, and finda a way of salvaging useful goods from the wrecked ship, including guns.
Twelve years pass in this way, until one momentous day, Crusoe finds a single human footprint in the sand! But he has to wait another ten years before he discovers the key to the mystery: natives from the nearby islands, who practise cannibalism, have visited the island, and when they next return, Crusoe attacks them, using his musket salvaged from the shipwreck all those years ago. He takes one of the natives captive, and names him Man Friday, because – according to Crusoe’s (probably inaccurate) calendar, that’s the day of the week on which they first meet.
Crusoe teaches Man Friday English and converts him to Christianity. When Crusoe learns that Man Friday’s fellow natives are keeping white prisoners on their neighbouring island, he vows to rescue them. Together, the two of them build a boat. When more natives attack the island with captives, Crusoe and Friday rescue the captives and kill the natives. The two captives they’ve freed are none other than Friday’s own father and a Spanish man.
Crusoe sends them both off to the other island in the newly made boat, telling them to free the other prisoners. Meanwhile, a ship arrives at the island: a mutiny has taken place on board, and the crew throw the captain and his loyal supporters onto the island. Before the ship can leave, Crusoe has teamed up with the captain and his men, and between them they retake the ship from the mutineers, who settle on the island while Crusoe takes the ship home to England.
Robinson Crusoe has been away from England for many years by this stage – he was marooned on his island for over twenty years – and his parents have died. But he has become wealthy, thanks to his plantations in Brazil, so he gets married and settles down. His wife dies a few years later, and Crusoe – along with Friday – once again leaves home.
Robinson Crusoe: analysis
Robinson Crusoe is a novel that is probably more known about than it is read these days, and this leads to a skewed perception of what the book is really about. In the popular imagination, Robinson Crusoe is a romantic adventure tale about a young man who goes to sea to have exciting experiences, before finding himself alone on a desert island and accustoming himself, gradually, to his surroundings, complete with a parrot for his companion.
In reality, this is only partially true (although he does befriend a parrot at one point). But the key to understanding Defoe’s novel is its context: early eighteenth-century mercantilism and Enlightenment values founded on empiricism (i.e. observing what’s really there) rather than some anachronistic Romantic worship of the senses, or ‘man’s communion with his environment’.
The storyline opens with Robinson Crusoe, an English boy, living in York of 17^th century England. As the son of a German merchant, Crusoe is told during his childhood to study law, but his love for the sea does not hold him back from expressing his strong desire to his father about voyages to the far-off lands. His father, instead wanted him to find a secure job for himself. Robinson initially wanted to obey his father but could not resist the temptation of fulfilling his longing. So, despite staunch familial opposition and paternal advice, Robinson leaves for London after boarding a ship in the company of his friend. Although his friend leaves him on the next voyage, Robinson does not budge from his stand despite facing a terrible storm during the journey.
However, he wins some financial success after which he makes another plan for such a journey. He leaves his profits in the care of a nice widow. But, he then becomes a victim of Moorish pirates, as well as abduction and becomes, is enslaved to a ruler in the North African town of Sallee. During a fishing expedition, he along with a slave and sail through the coast of Africa. A kind Portuguese captain picks them up and buys the slave boy from Robinson. He takes him to Brazil where he becomes a plantation owner successfully. He then leaves for West Africa on a slave-gathering expedition to bring slaves for his plantation but faces a storm on the way in which his ship is wrecked on the coast of Trinidad.
When Robinson comes to his senses, he sees that he is the sole survivor of the shipwreck and that he would have to fend for himself. Soon he becomes busy making a shelter for himself and preparing food. He returns to the wreckage to extract some food, gunpowder, and a gun and creates a cross to write his date of arrival; September 1, 1659. Soon he becomes an inmate of a shelter he has prepared, rearing goats he finds there on the island. He also maintains a journal to keep a track of everything he does like cleaning his hut, grazing goats, attempts at making candles, discovering sprouting grain, etc. After a while, on June 1660, he finds himself on the deathbed due to an illness and an angel warns him to repent.
However, while drinking tobacco-steeped rum, he experiences exoneration from his sins as God relieves him from this sickness. Soon he busies himself surveying the area and finds that he is on an Island. He constructs a retreat for himself after he declares himself as to its king. He domesticates some animals, makes things of everyday use, and builds a boat for himself to navigate the sea around the island. When he rows around the Island one day, he nearly dies but is thankfully saved as he hears his parrot calling his name once he reaches the shore. Crusoe enjoys several years in peace with his pets and animals when one day he discovers footprints on the seashore. He first thinks that the footprints are that of the devil’s, but later decides that it must be the cannibals. Finally, he arms himself and creates an underground cellar for himself and his pets to live in safety. He hears gunshots yet does not discover anything except a shipwreck the following day.
When he investigates that shipwreck, he sees footprints of cannibals. This alarms him and he keeps a lookout for the cannibals. He later discovers one victim killed and several cannibals chasing another victim. This victim heads straight toward Crusoe who offers him protection, kills the pursuer, and makes others run for their lives. Robinson being well-armed kills most of the cannibals onshore. The victim Robinson saved, becomes his servant for life whom he names Friday to commemorate that day of his life. They start living together in that part of the island where Robinson has built his hut. He finds Friday to be intelligent and starts teaching him English and the biblical concepts of God, life, and death. He, on his part, explains to him about cannibals and tells him about the Spaniards who survived the shipwreck. After this, both of them build a boat but soon find cannibals with three victims landing on their seashore. They fire at them, making them flee for their lives, leaving four victims behind, one of who happens to be the father of Friday which makes him overjoyed. The four men return to Robinson Crusoe’s dwelling and he welcomes them to join his community permanently.
After some days, Friday announces the arrival of a ship with an alarm. When the boarders come on the island, they discover that they are rebels with some captives, including the captain of the ship, which was was taken in mutiny. They chase the mutineers around the island until they surrender, including their ringleader. They make the men bring the ship at which Robinson becomes much elated, showing them that the island is the English territory and that they cannot run away from justice. Finally, when he returns to his home in 1686, he finds that only two of his sisters are alive and the rest of the family members have breathed their last. After retrieving his money from his widow friend, he learns about his planation of Brazil and sells it to have more money that he donates to the widow and his sisters and turns into a catholic to lead a peaceful life. He gets married and after his wife died, Robinson finally leaves as a trader for the East Indies in 1694. He also revisits his island to see it being ruled well by the Spaniards and that it become a wealthy colony.