I finished re-reading Robinson Crusoe last night. I read it once before, a long time ago, but now I have to study it for my Travellers’ tales unit and figured I should give myself a bit of a refresher. This time around, I actually enjoyed reading it more. Last time I read it, I was doing so because I wanted to be able to say that I’d read Robinson Crusoe, and spent the entire time wanting to get it over with so I could move on to something else. Somehow, in being forced to read it – rather than making myself do it – I was able to submerse myself a little more properly in the story. It’s actually a very interesting read!
Robinson isn’t quite the book most of us think it is. We all know about the central shipwreck story, which is the main part of the book, but most of us probably haven’t heard of all the stuff that comes before and after the castaway bit. My lecturer made an interesting point about these sections: they’re both very factual, showing journeys that sound very realistic, between places that are (and were at the time) quite well known. This embeds the more fantastical part of the story (Robinson Crusoe washed up on an uninhabited, unknown tropical island) in strict realism. This is something we’ve been discussing quite a lot in our lectures and tutes for Travellers’ Tales – the whole intersection between fact and fiction that’s so common to travel writing. The two clearest examples of this that I’ve come across so far are Robinson Crusoe and Utopia.
Something else I found interesting about Robinson is the similarity between some of the more action packed sequences in the novel and modern literary fight-scenes. It seems the people of Defoe’s day had the same love of fictional violence that we do, and enjoyed reading about a good shoot-out just as much as a modern reader. My feelings about this are, of course, mixed, but ultimately I don’t think it’s so bad. Violence is just something that’s been bred into us by thousands of years of evolution, and to my mind the fact that we can satisfy our urge for it in a vicarious manner is a good thing. What are your thoughts on the matter, if I may ask?
The Musings of an Imaginative Mind 