Customer Reviews

Robinson Crusoe (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (B&N Classics)

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The name "Robinson Crusoe" readily conjures up images of a sad castaway on a desert island, who after years of solitude comes up a man's footprint in the sand. But in reading Daniel Defoe's novel of 1719, I was surprised how different the work is from its common stereotype. Not until about 50 pages in does Crusoe end up a castaway, having before hand some misadventures as a young sailor. Instead of washing up on his island with just the clothes on his back, he in fact is able to get a great many useful tools and implements from his still intact wreck. And the man's footprint, instead of being the sign of another Crusoe subsequently encounters, is just a sign that some cannibals from the mainland visit the island on occassion.

All in all ROBINSON CRUSOE is an entertaining novel, one with much adventure and intrigue. One gets a lot of pleasure from reading of how Crusoe turns the basic furnishings of the island to his own use, having by the end of his confinement there such things as cheese, three houses, two canoes, and pottery. ROBINSON CRUSOE is also an interesting portrait of the times, for it was much influenced by popular attitudes of the early 1700s. Crusoe occasionally voices his dislike of the Spaniards, their atrocities in the Americas, and their Roman Catholic religion. But Defoe is hardly more charitable to the Native Americans, whose ignorance and godless depravity Crusoe deplores constantly.

To criticize a 300 year-old classic might be a silly exercise, but I doubt many readers will find this novel an elegantly crafted work. It's repetitive, for one. How many times do we need to read that Crusoe is reluctant to kill the maneaters? And the writer didn't seem to know when to stop, for after Crusoe's return to civilization we get an unnecessary battle with wolves in the woods of France. No wonder that the novel has so often circulated in abridgement.

I read this book in the Penguin Popular Classics edition, ISBN 0140623154, which I would recommend if you just want some reading material without making a permanent addition to your library. It is printed on poor quality paper, but is priced quite low. It has no notes or commentary, but you really don't need them. Indeed, I'm surprised how smoothly readable ROBINSON CRUSOE is considering that it was written in the English of 300 years ago (even later works like TRISTRAM SHANDY present more of a challenge), and I'd even recommend it to a young person wanting just a fun adventure story.

This is one of my favorite books. I like the way the story begins like the surf. Successive waves lap the pages as the story is told and then retold. I like the prominence of Providence. I like the admonition of virtue. I like the layers of irony found in a story whose fictional protagonist warns the reader of the vices which landed him in the calamitous situations of the story that interested the reader enough to read the story in the first place. Perhaps someday keeping the commandments will be as compelling a story as breaking them is.

It is nice that the rest of the Crusoe "trilogy" is getting a little easier to find... I haven't read the third, pseudopigraphical one yet.
2. The Farther Adventures Of Robinson Crusoe: Being The Second And Last Part Of His Life, And Of The Strange, Surprising Account Of His Travels Round Three Parts Of The Globe
3. Robinson Crusoe; Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, With His Vision of the Angelic World

I found also that the island I was in was barren and, as I saw good reason to believe, uninhabited, except by wild beasts, of whom, however, I saw none, yet I saw abundance of fowls, but knew not their kinds, neither when I killed them could I tell what was fit for food, and what not; at my coming back, I shot at a great bin which I saw sitting upon a tree on the side of a great wood. I believe it was the first gun that had been fired there since the creation of the world; I had no sooner fired but from all the parts of the wood there arose an innumerable number of fowls of many sorts, making a confused screaming, and crying every one according to his usual note; but not one of them of any kind that I knew. As for the creature I killed, I took it to be kind of a hawk, its colour more than common; its flesh was carrion and fit for nothing. - Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

Daniel Defoe points out the problem with western world values. They shoot first and ask questions later. Only what western leaders destroy cannot always be renewed. The worse part of it is that people of the west never learn from their mistakes, they destroy time and time again. Let us take our current war on Libya. The west is bombing Libyan soldiers in order to help rebels. They do not know who the rebels are. Sometimes western bombers do not even know which soldiers are fighting for the rebels. The west does not know what the rebels have planned for Libya, but it does not matter, they will keep bombing and sort out the particulars later. Eastern leaders either join in the madness or allow the leaders of the west to operate without restriction. Is it any wonder why nature itself is reacting?