Thoughts on Robinson Crusoe

I have lately had more time to read than usual and decided to pick up the classic Robinson Crusoe. It has worked its way into society and has quite a reputation but I, like many, had never actually read it. The book both surprised and, frankly, disappointed me so I decided to write down some thoughts about it.

My most major surprise about the book is how overtly Christian and didactic it is. I was expecting a survival adventure story, which it is, but it is just as much—if not moreso—a story to instruct. Barely a chapter goes by without some kind of instruction to the reader from Crusoe's own (fictional) life. Overall I do agree with most of the instruction, so it was not an unpleasant surprise. Sure, it has the religious tone of the time, bordering on severe, but really not bad coming from Defoe, apparently a Puritan. And, unlike some books of the time, the Christianity seems to be genuinely of the heart. Many, many books of the time include Christian language and doctrine but smack of dry, formal religion—not the Christianity of the New Testament!

In the same vein, Defoe includes some truly interesting thoughts in the book. The most thought-provoking to me regarded when it is appropriate to take a human life. Attempting to avoid spoilers, I was pretty surprised with Crusoe's eventual reluctance to act as a judge (or even "the sword of judgment") when confronted with sins of non-Christians at one point in the book—a pretty far cry from some European "Christians" who seemed to believe their true religion gave them license to murder and pillage the heathen Native Americans. At the same time, I found Defoe too forceful about some of his Christian interpretations. For example, Crusoe asserts that "secret hints and notices of danger which are sometimes given [us]" must be from benevolent spirits or God Himself—completely omitting the possibility of intuition. Likewise, he gives his rather unlikely survival on the island as evidence that God "does not leave His creatures so absolutely destitute, but that, in the worst circumstances, they have always something to be thankful for." But does every island castaway survive? I think not. Perhaps Defoe is right about these, but he needs to do more than just posit his beliefs.

More disappointing to me, however, was the prose. The plot is reasonably enjoyable but the writing itself is leaden and ponderous. What a pity that an unlikely story of surviving as a castaway is a chore to read! But I grant that Defoe was one of the first major English novelists so perhaps the craft was not yet well-developed. It is perplexing, though, that Milton and Shakespeare wrote such magnificent poetry while the prose decades and centuries later was so pedantic.

All in all, I have respect for the book, but I think it is sadly beyond its time. It has some appreciable qualities but they are too obscured in peculiarities of Defoe's time for modern readers to enjoy. I don't regret reading it, but I would not generally recommend it either.