by Alex Storey

Created on: December 17, 2010   Last Updated: December 24, 2010

Robinson Crusoe is a castaway who spends 28 years on a tropical island near Venezuela, probably Tobago. This fictional autobiography has many children’s versions, being such a successful book.

Enslaved by pirates on the way across the Atlantic and rescued in Africa by a Portuguese captain, Robinson goes to Brazil and manages a plantation there.

Bringing slaves from Africa to the Caribbean, Crusoe is shipwrecked and then washed up on the Island of Despair near the mouth of the Orinoco River. He learns to survive raising goats, becomes religious reading the bible and keeps a pet parrot.

Taking a dog and two cats plus tools from the ship with him to his island he does pottery, keeps a calendar, farms, hunts and builds stocks for the winter months.

Robinson Crusoe teaches a native he calls Man Friday - because that is the day of the week they met - to speak English and converts him to Christianity, perhaps an expression of European influence on the Americas!

There are Spanish prisoners on the island held by natives also shipwrecked, they plan to build a boat and sail away. A ship with mutineers on it appears so a deal is struck and they take this boat back to England instead.

Unfortunately, Robinson has no family left and no inheritance when he reaches home, so he takes Man Friday to Lisbon and reclaims the profits of his estate in Brazil.

Taking this money overland to avoid traveling at sea and the perils it may entail they have to fight off a pack of wolves on their way through the Pyrenees.

With no love motive or romance (which seemed essential for successful writing in Daniel Defoe‘s day) this novel was very well received.

Defoe criticizes the Spanish conquest of South America though with Man Friday as the savage and Robinson Crusoe as the 'king' of the colony, he emphasizes imperialism by Europeans.

Man Friday being the servant or slave reinforces that colonial master idea and reflects Prospero and Caliban in William Shakespeare’s, Tempest.

Daniel Defoe was born in 1659 and was among the founders of the original novel. He was a journalist and wrote more than 500 books. Parliament had him arrested and placed in the pillory for his outspoken voice when siding with the king, meaning he spent time in jail.

Shortly after his release the Great Storm of 1703 swept through the UK as our hurricane of 1987 did, destroying everything in its sight.

This hurricane was the inspiration for many works by Daniel Defoe, including the tempest that shipwrecked his protagonist, Robinson Crusoe.

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