M.k.BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY
Roll no :- 23
Enrollment no :- 2069108420190042
Email id :- mansiupadhyay06@gmail.com
Department :- M.A. English department
Submitted To :- Prof. Heenabamam. zala
(Head
of English Dept.M. K.
Bhavnagar University)
Paper no :- (2) ( The Neo-classical Literature)
Assignment :- Write a critical note on Robinson
Crusoe.
1) Write
a critical note on Robinson Crusoe
By Daniel Defoe.
INTRODUSTION :-
Daniel
Defoe was born in 1660, in London, and was originally christened Daniel Defoe,
changing his name around the age of thirty-five to sound more aristocratic.
Like his character robinson crusoe, defoe was a thied child. His mother and
father, james and mary defoe, were Presbyterian dissenters. James defoe was a
middle-class wax and candle merchant. As a boy, Daniel witnessed two of the
greatest disasters of the seventeenth century: a recurrence of the plague and
the great fire of London in 1666. These events may have shaped his fascination
with catastrophes and survival in his writing. Defoe attended a respected
school in dorking, where he was an excellent student, but as a Presbyterian, he
was forbidden to attend oxford or Cambridge. He entered a dissenting
institution called morton’s academy and considered becoming a Presbyterian
minister. Though he abandoned this plan, his protestant values are expressed in
robinson crusoe. In 1683, defoe became a traveling hosiery salesman. Visiting Holland,
france, and spain on business, defoe developed a taste for travel that lasted
throughout his life. His fiction reflects this interest; his characters moll
flanders and robinson crusoe both change their lives by voyaging far from their
native England.
Robinson Crusoe :-
“Daniel Defoe achieved literary immortality
when, in April 1719, he published Robinson Crusoe” (Stockton 2321). It dared to
challenge the political, social, and economic status quo of his time. By
depicting the utopian environment in which was created in the absence of
society, Defoe criticizes the political and economic aspect of England’s
society, but is also able to show the narrator’s relationship with nature in a
vivid account of the personal growth and development that took place while
stranded in solitude. Crusoe becomes “the universal representative, the person,
for whom every reader could substitute himself” (Coleridge 2318). “Thus, Defoe
persuades us to see remote islands and the solitude of the human soul. By
believing fixedly in the solidity of the plot and its earthiness, he has
subdued every other element to his design and has roped a whole universe into
harmony”.
A common theme often
portrayed in literature is the individual vs. society. In the beginning of
Robinson Crusoe , the narrator deals with, not society, but his family’s views
on how he was bound to fail in life if his parents’ expectations of him taking
the family business were not met. However, Defoe’s novel was somewhat
autobiographical. “What Defoe wrote was intimately connected with the sort of
life he led, with the friends and enemies he made, and with the interests of
natural to a merchant and a Dissenter”. These similarities are seen throughout
the novel. “My father...gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he
foresaw was my design,” says Crusoe. Like Crusoe, Defoe also rebelled against
his parents. Unlike Crusoe, however, Defoe printed many essays and papers that
rebelled against the government and society, just as Aldous Huxley, author of
Brave New World, did in England by depicting society languishing in social
malaise. It were these writings that eventually got Defoe charged with libel
and imprisoned. In Defoe’s life it was the ministry that his father wanted him
to pursue, but, instead, Defoe chose to become a tradesman. The depth of the
relationship between Crusoe and his parents in the book was specifically not
elaborated upon because his parent’s become symbolic not only of all parents,
but of society. In keeping this ambiguous relationship, Defoe is able to make
Crusoe’s abrupt exodus much more believable and, thus, more humane. The reader,
in turn, supports Crusoe’s decisions even though “his social relationships were
shipwrecked by the rising tide of individualism”. Defoe, too, “shipwrecked financially”
in the economic boom in England in 1962 in what he would go on to say shaped
Robinson Crusoe.
In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe uses
the tale of a shipwrecked soldier to criticize society. Mainly, the story of
Robinson Crusoe is based on a Scottish sailor named Alexander Selkirk who lived
alone of the island of Juan Fernandez for over four years until he was rescued.
In the island setting, Defoe was able to show what is necessary for the
formation of a utopian society. This depiction, however, differentiated from
later writers such as Huxley who’s vision is “regarded as a classic examination
of modern values and utopian thinking”. “(Crusoe) takes a piece of paradise and
makes it a sovereign state. He is king of vale, lord of the country, squire of
the manor”. While politicians argue about the best way to create a “perfect”
society, Defoe says that the only way that it happens in the presence of
everything except people, creating “Catch-22” irony. This was a very
controversial topic in England at the time. Many citizens and people of certain
religions were being persecuted because of their political beliefs. Defoe,
however, believed that religious freedom and political freedom was a right that
every member of society should have, so “his entry into the world of politics
was perhaps inevitable. Defoe was never content to remain for long in the realm
of impersonal thought; he had a dangerous way of applying his mind to persons
and parties”.
In his isolation from the
rest of the world, Crusoe is able to create a utopian society that not only he
depends on for survival, but it is also dependent on him. This “Marx-like”
economic system which was created proved that a utopian environment is possible
to create, though easier having only one “citizen”. There are no other people
to corrupt or destroy the harmony in which Crusoe is living in with nature. “It
was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy this life I now led
was than the wicked, cursed, abominable life I led all the past part of my
days”. As Defoe depicts it, the narrator’s solitary confinement, even though it
was an event that Crusoe viewed as being a punishment from God for his sins in
the beginning, has really caused the narrator to become “enlightened” and has
also made him realize that his new life was by far better than that in England.
“The state of nature which Crusoe has lived, a solitary life on the island,
possessed a purity that cannot be duplicated”, even making Crusoe say, “I cared
not if I was never to remove from the place where I lived” and “I lived
there..perfectly and completely happy, if any such thing as complete happiness
can be formed in a sublunary state”.
“In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe has
hit upon a situation that asks to be worked out. The episodes will arise
naturally from the situation and the situation is such that it can lead
naturally to a complete change in a hero’s outlook, and ultimately to a
solution of all his problems”. The island had an effect on Crusoe that went
deeper than it becoming solely a tool for his survival. It caused Crusoe to
development mentally, physically, and spiritually. “Crusoe begins as a
wanderer, aimless on the sea he does not understand; he ends as a pilgrim
crossing a final mountain to enter the promised land”. It is the confinement of
the island that finally makes Crusoe stop running away from his problems and
face both his fears and reality. Crusoe learns that by working with his
surroundings, rather than loathing in his misfortune, he is able to find and
use everything he needs in order to carry out life. Thus, the island is
symbolic of his growth and could be considered the “healing” that ultimately
brought him to both God and the realization that he could keep himself alive
becoming the epitome of “man’s contest with, and final victory over nature”.
Along with the criticism of
society, Defoe is able to give symbolism to the objects around Crusoe that
support the idea of the creation a utopian environment. The new-grown barley
and corn on the island, which Crusoe calls a “prodigy of Nature”, is really
symbolic of the spiritual and emotional growth that is taking place within
himself. These grains, however, were also a main source of food for Crusoe. The
idea of the island and Crusoe living with each other and giving to one another
in harmony fully supports the idea of a utopian society. It is at this time in
the book that Crusoe realizes that he can be dependent upon himself in order to
survive. This is also the time in which he realizes that his “misfortune” of
becoming stranded on an island is really a blessing for all of his party was
dead.
The island itself has
symbolic significance because it is the physical means which changed Crusoe to
stop wandering. The confinement found on the island is what is mostly
responsible for the growth in which took place within Crusoe. “By acquiring a
sense of place, (he) also established a sense of self”. This, again,
illustrates the dramatic change in character that has taken place within Crusoe
over the course of his “adventure”. Some see this “solitude as the universal
state of man” and in the case of Robinson Crusoe, it was this solitude that
essentially changed his whole psyche and made him less of a wanderer, both
spiritually and physically, for he found faith in God and no longer was able to
aimlessly stray due to the confinement on the island.
Though Crusoe has developed
throughout the novel to except what has become of him, near the end, the reader
sees that loneliness has started to take its toll. This is where Crusoe becomes
the “human representative”. He is able to sustain life by himself, but also
misses the contact that he had in society. It was Aristotle who said the man
“who is unable to live in society, or has no need because he is sufficient for
himself, must be either a beast or a god”. Though Crusoe found his island
sanctuary to Although Crusoe has created this flawless home, humans are social
beings, and need the contact that does not come with living in solitude. The
change that took place on the island, essentially, made Crusoe realize that
even the utopian experience while isolated is not comparable to that of sharing
human emotion and the riddance of loneliness and makes him appreciate it that
much more. The utopia suddenly seems more life-like.
Robinson Crusoe is a “story told
with modesty, seriousness, and with religious application of events” written as
a first person narrative. It is this writing that has caused its unrivaled
popularity..... “no single book in the history of Western literature has
spawned more editions, translations, imitations, continuations, and sequels
than Crusoe”. The tone and point of view in which Defoe uses enables the reader
to experience first-hand the changes that take place within Crusoe while he is
on the island. This gives validity to every word and quote in the novel because
it is actually the narrator’s words. This point of view clearly shows criticism
and feeling without being altered by interpretation. It also has the effect of
“making the narrative itself seem to claim possession of qualities that we
associate with concrete matter rather than with fiction, or the abstract effect
in our minds of a certain arrangement of words”.
In Robinson Crusoe, the
narrator develops to form an optimistic outlook towards an unfortunate
situation, and, thus, creates a utopia for himself both mentally and
physically. By doing this, he, essentially, broke through the mold in which
both British society and his parents had set for him when becoming stranded
with only his thoughts and fears. “Crusoe finds the power to overcome a hostile
world of hunger and sickness, animal and human brutality, even the power to
overcome his most dangerous adversary, himself ”. In doing so, Defoe is really
criticizing the society in which he lived saying that the only truly peaceful
and loving society is that which contains one person, though, as in Robinson
Crusoe, maybe this is not the society in which humans are capable of living in.
Just as Crusoe eventually saw his situation more optimistically, Defoe is
saying that a society which is less critical of itself is one that is closer to
utopia.
THANK YOU
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