book review robinson crusoe

'Robinson Crusoe' Review

Daniel Defoe's Classic Novel About Getting Stranded on a Desert Island

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Have you ever wondered what you would do if you washed up on a deserted island? Daniel Defoe dramatizes such an experience in Robinson Crusoe ! Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe was inspired by the story of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who went to sea in 1704.

Selkirk requested that his shipmates put him ashore on Juan Fernandez, where he remained until he was rescued by Woodes Rogers in 1709. Defoe may have interviewed Selkirk. Also, several version of Selkirk's tale were available to him. He then built on the story, adding his imagination, his experiences, and a whole history of other stories to create the novel for which he has become so well-known.

Daniel Defoe

In his lifetime, Defoe published more than 500 books, pamphlets, articles , and poems. Unfortunately, none of his literary endeavors ever brought him much financial success or stability. His occupations ranged from spying and embezzling to soldiering and pamphleteering. He had started out as a merchant, but he soon found himself bankrupt, which led him to choose other occupations. His political passions, his flare for libel, and his inability to stay out of debt also caused him to be imprisoned seven times.

Even if he wasn't financially successful, Defoe managed to make a significant mark on literature . He influenced the development of the English novel, with his journalistic detail and characterization. Some claim that Defoe wrote the first true English novel: and he's often considered to be the father of British journalism.

At the time of its publication, in 1719, Robinson Crusoe was a success. Defoe was 60 when he wrote this first novel; and he would write seven more in the years to come, including Moll Flanders (1722), Captain Singleton (1720), Colonel Jack (1722), and Roxana (1724).

The Story of Robinson Crusoe

It's no wonder the story was such a success... The story is about a man who is stranded on a desert island for 28 years. With the supplies he's able to salvage from the wrecked ship, Robinson Crusoe eventually builds a fort and then creates for himself a kingdom by taming animals, gathering fruit, growing crops, and hunting. The book contains adventure of all sorts: pirates, shipwrecks, cannibals, mutiny, and so much more... Robinson Crusoe's story is also Biblical in many of its themes and discussions. It's the story of the prodigal son, who runs away from home only to find calamity. Elements of the story of Job also appear in the story, when in his illness, Robinson cries out for deliverance: "Lord, be my help, for I am in great distress." Robinson questions God, asking, "Why has God done this to me? What have I done to be thus used?" But he makes peace ​and goes on with his solitary existence.

After more than 20 years on the island, Robinson encounters cannibals , which represent the first human contact he's had since being stranded: "One day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand." Then, he's alone — with only the brief far-off view of a shipwreck — until he rescues Friday from the cannibals.

Robinson finally makes his escape when a ship of mutineers sail to the island. He and his companions help the British captain to take back control of ​the ship. He sets sail for England on December 19, 1686--after spending 28 years, 2 months, and 19 days on the island. He arrives back in England, after being gone for 35 years, and finds that he is a wealthy man.

Loneliness and the Human Experience

Robinson Crusoe is the tale of a lonely human being who manages to survive for years without any human companionship. It's a story about the different ways that men cope with reality when hardship comes, but it's also the tale of a man creating his own reality, rescuing a savage and fashioning his own world out of the untamed wilderness of a desert island.

The tale has influenced many other tales, including The Swiss Family Robinson , Philip Quarll , and Peter Wilkins . Defoe followed up the tale with his own sequel, The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe , but that tale was not met with a much success as the first novel. In any case, the figure of Robinson Crusoe has become an important archetypal figure in literature — Robinson Crusoe was described by Samuel T. Coleridge as "the universal man."

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A Summary and Analysis of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Robinson Crusoe, often called the first English novel, was written by Daniel Defoe and published in 1719. The novel is the tale of one man’s survival on a desert island following a shipwreck. Published in 1719, the book didn’t carry Defoe’s name, and it was offered to the public as a true account of real events, documented by a real man named Crusoe. But readers were immediately sceptical.

In the same year as the novel appeared, a man named Charles Gildon actually published Robinson Crusoe Examin’d and Criticis’d , in which he showed that Crusoe was made up and the events of the novel were fiction. The name ‘Crusoe’, by the way, may have been taken from Timothy Cruso, who had been a classmate of Defoe’s and who had gone on to write guidebooks.  

What follows is a short summary of the main plot of Robinson Crusoe , followed by an analysis of this foundational novel and its key themes.

Robinson Crusoe : summary

The novel, famously, is about how the title character, Robinson Crusoe, becomes marooned on an island off the north-east coast of South America. As a young man, Crusoe had gone to sea in the hope of making his fortune. Crusoe is on a ship bound for Africa, where he plans to buy slaves for his plantations in South America, when the ship is wrecked on an island and Crusoe is the only survivor.

Alone on a desert island, Crusoe manages to survive thanks to his pluck and pragmatism. He keeps himself sane by keeping a diary, manages to build himself a shelter, and finda a way of salvaging useful goods from the wrecked ship, including guns.

Twelve years pass in this way, until one momentous day, Crusoe finds a single human footprint in the sand! But he has to wait another ten years before he discovers the key to the mystery: natives from the nearby islands, who practise cannibalism, have visited the island, and when they next return, Crusoe attacks them, using his musket salvaged from the shipwreck all those years ago.

He takes one of the natives captive, and names him Man Friday, because – according to Crusoe’s (probably inaccurate) calendar, that’s the day of the week on which they first meet.

Crusoe teaches Man Friday English and converts him to Christianity. When Crusoe learns that Man Friday’s fellow natives are keeping white prisoners on their neighbouring island, he vows to rescue them. Together, the two of them build a boat. When more natives attack the island with captives, Crusoe and Friday rescue the captives and kill the natives. The two captives they’ve freed are none other than Friday’s own father and a Spanish man.

Crusoe sends them both off to the other island in the newly made boat, telling them to free the other prisoners. Meanwhile, a ship arrives at the island: a mutiny has taken place on board, and the crew throw the captain and his loyal supporters onto the island.

Before the ship can leave, Crusoe has teamed up with the captain and his men, and between them they retake the ship from the mutineers, who settle on the island while Crusoe takes the ship home to England.

Robinson Crusoe has been away from England for many years by this stage – he was marooned on his island for over twenty years – and his parents have died. But he has become wealthy, thanks to his plantations in Brazil, so he gets married and settles down. His wife dies a few years later, and Crusoe – along with Friday – once again leaves home.

Robinson Crusoe : analysis

Robinson Crusoe is a novel that is probably more known about than it is read these days, and this leads to a skewed perception of what the book is really about. In the popular imagination, Robinson Crusoe is a romantic adventure tale about a young man who goes to sea to have exciting experiences, before finding himself alone on a desert island and accustoming himself, gradually, to his surroundings, complete with a parrot for his companion.

In reality, this is only partially true (although he does befriend a parrot at one point). But the key to understanding Defoe’s novel is its context: early eighteenth-century mercantilism and Enlightenment values founded on empiricism (i.e. observing what’s really there) rather than some anachronistic Romantic worship of the senses, or ‘man’s communion with his environment’.

And talking of his environment, Crusoe spends the whole novel trying to build a boat so he can escape his island, and leaves when the first ship comes along. While he’s there, he bends the island’s natural resources to his own ends, rather than acclimatising to his alien surroundings.

In this respect, he’s not so different from a British person on holiday in Alicante, who thinks speaking English very loudly at the Spanish waiter will do the job very nicely rather than attempting to converse in Spanish.

This tells us a great deal about Robinson Crusoe the man but also Robinson Crusoe the novel. It was written at a time when Britain was beginning to expand its colonial sights, and it would shortly become the richest and most powerful country on earth, thanks to its imperial expeditions in the Caribbean, Africa, and parts of Asia, notably India.

Crusoe embodies this pioneering mercantile spirit: he is obsessed with money (he even picks up coins on his island and keeps them, even though he cannot spend them), and takes great pleasure in the physical objects, such as the guns and powder, which he rescues from the wreck. Man Friday is, in the last analysis, his own private servant.

But was Robinson Crusoe the first such ‘Robinsonade’? Not really. This, from Martin Wainwright: ‘There is a tale for our troubled times about a man on a desert island, who keeps goats, builds a shelter and finally discovers footprints in the sand. But it is not called Robinson Crusoe. It was written by a wise old Muslim from Andalusia and is the third most translated text from Arabic after the Koran and the Arabian Nights.’

That book is The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan , known as the first Arabic novel (just as Robinson Crusoe is often cited as the first English novel), written in the twelfth century by a Moorish philosopher living in Spain.

Yes, Robinson Crusoe wasn’t the first fictional narrative to take place on a desert island, although it has proved the most influential among English writers.

Although Defoe is widely believed to have been influenced by the real-life experiences of the Scottish man Alexander Selkirk (who spent over four years alone on a Pacific island, living on fish, berries, and wild goats), one important textual influence that has been proposed is Hai Ebn Yokdhan’s book.

Severin cites the case of a man named Henry Pitman, who wrote a short book recounting his adventures in the Caribbean (not the Pacific, which is where Selkirk was marooned) following his escape from a penal colony and his subsequent shipwrecking and survival on a desert island.

Pitman appears to have lived in the same area of London as Defoe, and Defoe may have met Pitman in person and learned of his experiences first-hand. It is also revealing that both men had taken part in the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 (in the wake of which, at Judge Jeffreys’ infamous ‘Bloody Assizes’, Defoe was lucky not to be sentenced to death).

2 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe”

Ummm.. who was “the wise old muslim”? What was the book? Another precursor is Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines, pub;ished a few years earlier. https://www.cbeditions.com/GoodMorningMrCrusoe.html for another intreresting history and meditation on RC.

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Three hundred years later, does ‘Robinson Crusoe’ hold up as a classic?

On April 25, 1719 — precisely 300 years ago — the London publisher William Taylor issued what has since become one of the most famous books in the world. Its original title page read “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner,” beneath which ran the explanatory subtitle: “Who lived Eight and Twenty Years all alone on an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the men perished but himself. With an Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates.” Then at the bottom of the page the key words, “Written by Himself.”

Despite appearances, “Robinson Crusoe” wasn’t really a thrilling survivalist memoir, but rather a clever imitation of one (though it did draw on the real-life case of Alexander Selkirk, similarly marooned for four years). Its actual author, Daniel Defoe, was a small-time businessman and a full-time Grub Street hack.

Over the course of his life Defoe (1660-1732) worked as a journalist, a wine and hosiery merchant, a manager of a brickworks and a secret government agent. He filed for bankruptcy twice and once endured three days in the pillory for seditious libel. In his last decade, he also wrote a handful of groundbreaking novels, including the racy “Moll Flanders” and “A Journal of the Plague Year,” the latter an exceptionally realistic, albeit fictive, description of London’s bubonic plague epidemic of 1665-1666.

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“Robinson Crusoe,” though, remains something truly special: It belongs in that small category of classics — others are “The Odyssey” and “Don Quixote” — that we feel we’ve read even if we haven’t. Retellings for children and illustrations, like those by N.C. Wyeth, have made its key scenes universally recognizable. Stranded on a desert island, Crusoe strips his wrecked ship of everything useful, builds a fortified cave-retreat, acquires goats and a pet parrot, plants barley and corn, learns to fashion clothes out of animal skins. The most dramatic moment of all occurs without preamble or fanfare:

“It happened one Day about Noon going towards my Boat, I was exceedingly surpriz’d with the Print of a Man’s naked Foot on the Shore, which was very plain to be seen in the Sand; I stood like one Thunder-struck, or as I had seen an Apparition; I listen’d, I look’d round me, I could hear nothing, nor see any Thing; I went up to a rising Ground to look farther; I went up the Shore and down the Shore, but it was all one, I could see no other Impression but that one.”

Much later, Crusoe discovers an orgiastic cannibal feast and helps rescue a captive to whom he gives the name Friday. Later still, mutineers land on the island, but Crusoe and Friday, through force of arms and subterfuge, restore command to the ship’s rightful captain. Many editions of the novel then close with these abrupt words:

“In this vessel, after a long voyage, I arrived in England this 11th of June, in the year 1687, having been thirty and five years absent.”

Note that number, 35. Crusoe’s 28 years on the island account for only one long episode in an action-packed life. Before his shipwreck, the young Crusoe survived several sea disasters, two years’ enslavement by the “Moors,” a daring escape in a small boat down the coast of Africa and an Atlantic crossing to Brazil. After he acquired a plantation there, he tells us that “the first thing I did, I bought me a Negro Slave, and an European servant also.” Later, at the time of the shipwreck, Crusoe was actually sailing to Africa to purchase additional slaves for a consortium of Brazilian landowners. Sad to say, Defoe’s gentlemanly hero typically perceives other races — and classes — as chattel, brutes or grown-up children, though Friday’s humanity and quick intelligence eventually cause him to wonder about his ingrained prejudices.

In fact, Crusoe’s full biography transforms the novel into quite a problematic text. Unabridged editions don’t end with his departure from the island but go on to relate Crusoe’s efforts to reclaim his plantation and the profits owed to him, as well as his eventual marriage in England. “The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe”— a sequel published in the fall of 1719 — describes later travels, starting with a return to the island.

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Anyone who reads “Robinson Crusoe” as an adult will note Defoe’s penchant for paragraph-long sentences that are somehow perfectly clear. Minute particulars do much to create the narrative’s seeming veracity: After a harrowing account of his own near drowning, Crusoe searches the shore for his shipmates but finds only “three of their hats, one Cap, and two Shoes that were not Fellows.”

As many scholars have noted, Defoe’s castaway isn’t a back-to-nature primitivist, but rather an enterprising capitalist, eager to transform raw nature into useful goods while keeping careful inventories of what he owns, makes and reaps. He regularly likens himself to a king, has Friday call him “Master,” and later assumes the title of governor.

Where capitalism flourishes, can the Protestant ethic be far behind? Crusoe’s near-death from fever leads to spiritual awakening and repentance. He recognizes disobedience to his father as his Original Sin, learns to trust in Providence and totes up his blessings on a balance sheet. He views his interior life as a psychomachia, a struggle between “the Dictates of my Fancy” and reason, common sense and various premonitions or “secret Hints” from guardian spirits who inhabit an “invisible World.” Nevertheless, shortly after teaching basic Christianity to Friday, Crusoe — despite some initial reservations — organizes the massacre of 17 “savages.”

A classic is a book that generations have found worth returning to and arguing with. Vividly written, replete with paradoxes and troubling cultural attitudes, revealing a deep strain of supernaturalism beneath its realist surface, “Robinson Crusoe” is just such a classic and far more than a simple adventure story for kids.

Michael Dirda  reviews books each Thursday in Style.

Robinson Crusoe

By Daniel Dafoe

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The 100 best novels: No 2 – Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe comes second in our list of the best novels written in English. Robert McCrum explains the genius of this complex, irresistible novel

Robert McCrum introduces the series

E nglish fiction began with The Pilgrim’s Progress , but nearly 50 turbulent years, including the Glorious Revolution, passed before it made its great leap forward. The author of this literary milestone is a strangely appealing literary hustler of nearly 60 years old originally named Daniel Foe (he added “De” to improve his social standing), a one-time journalist, pamphleteer, jack of all trades and spy . Like Bunyan, he had suffered at the hands of the state (the pillory, followed by prison in 1703). Unlike Bunyan, he was not religious.

His world-famous novel is a complex literary confection. It purports to be a history, written by Crusoe himself, and edited by Daniel Defoe who, in the preface , teasingly writes that he “believes the thing to be a just History of Fact; neither is there any Appearance of Fiction in it”.

So what do we find in this “History” ? Robinson Crusoe has three elements that make it irresistible. First, the narrative voice of the castaway is Defoe’s stroke of genius. It’s exciting, unhurried, conversational and capable of high and low sentiments. It’s also often quasi-journalistic, which suits Defoe’s style. This harmonious mix of tone puts the reader deep into the mind of the castaway and his predicament. His adventures become our adventures and we experience them inside out, viscerally, for ourselves. Readers often become especially entranced by Crusoe’s great journal, the central passage of his enforced sequestration.

And here is Defoe’s second great inspiration. He comes up with a tale, often said to be modelled on the story of the castaway Alexander Selkirk , that, like Bunyan’s, follows an almost biblical pattern of transgression (youthful rebellion), retribution (successive shipwrecks), repentance (the painful lessons of isolation) and finally redemption (Crusoe’s return home). In storytelling terms, this is pure gold.

And third, how can we forget Defoe’s characters? The pioneer novelist understood the importance of attaching memorably concrete images to his narrative and its characters. Friday and his famous footstep in the sand, one of the four great moments in English fiction, according to Robert Louis Stevenson; Crusoe with his parrot and his umbrella: these have become part of English myth. Defoe, like Cervantes, also opts to give his protagonist a sidekick. Friday is to Crusoe what Sancho Panza is to Quixote. Doubles in English literature will regularly recur in this list: Jekyll and Hyde, Holmes and Watson, Jeeves and Wooster.

Which brings me to Defoe’s final quality as a writer. He was the complete professional, dipped in ink. Throughout his life, he produced pamphlets, squibs, narrative verse and ghosted ephemera (he is said to have used almost 200 pen names). He was a man who liked to be paid for what he wrote, lived well and was almost always in debt. He was not a “literary novelist”, and would not have understood the term, but his classic novel is English literature at its finest, and he hit the jackpot with Robinson Crusoe.

By the end of the 19th century, no book in English literary history had enjoyed more editions, spin-offs and translations than Robinson Crusoe, with more than 700 alternative versions, including illustrated children’s versions. The now-forgotten term “Robinsonade” was coined to describe the Crusoe genre, which still flourishes and was recently revived by Hollywood in the Tom Hanks film, Castaway (2000).

Note on the text:

The text was first published in London by W Taylor on 25 April 1719. This first edition credited the work’s fictional protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, and its title was The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner: Written by Himself. It sold well; four months later, it was followed by The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. A year later, riding high on the market, came Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Most readers will only encounter the first edition.

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Review: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

At 19 we all argue with our parents thinking we know better so it is of little surprise that the young Robinson Crusoe back in 1651 ignored the well-meaning advice of his father, and joined a ship heading from Hull to London.

During this voyage, however, fate struck a nasty blow and the weather worsened leaving the ship stranded in waters near Yarmouth. After several days the weather refused to abate and the ship, unfortunately, could not take the constant pounding. Fortunately for many onboard including Crusoe a ship nearby had noticed their distress signal and sent a small boat to rescue them.

For many, after an experience like this, they may reflect and return home with their tail between their legs and admit that perhaps their father was correct. Robinson Crusoe however, had other ideas. When onboard the sinking ship he had prayed to God asking to survive and if he did he would return to the family. Just a few days on dry land though led to other thoughts. It appears he had forgotten how he felt during the awful weather on board and instead of heading home to Hull he decided to join a ship heading for Africa.

The first voyage he embarked on to Africa was a seemingly successful one that saw him returned safely so he decided to remain with the ship. Unfortunately, the captain passed away, and the man taking over was not quite such a good seafarer. During the next journey, the vessel Robinson Crusoe was on was attacked by pirates and while most of the crew perished he was taken and made a slave.

For two years he worked for his master until an opportunity arose to escape which he did successfully and ended up in Brazil where he brought a patch of land to grow sugar cane.

It would appear however that Crusoe is not the brightest of individuals or perhaps cannot see his own failings because after 4 years working on his now quite successful plantation, greed has got the better of him. He has mentioned in passing to others the ability to buy slaves in ‘Guinea’ which is still quite an unknown thing at this time in Brazil. So when the offer of a trip across the seas to procure these slaves comes up Crusoe jumps at the change to join the expedition on the promise that he will gain many for himself.

This time, however, Robinson Crusoe’s luck seems to have run out with the ship sailing directly into a hurricane and pushing them towards the Caribbean islands. With the ship wreaked eleven souls climb abroad the life raft but do not make it to shore. Crusoe seems to be the lone survivor of this tragic wreckage.

“I walk’d about on the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as I may say, wrapt up in my contemplation of my deliverance,..reflecting upon my comrades that were drown’d, and that there should not be one soul sav’d but myself; as for them, I never saw them afterwards, or any sign of them, except three of their hats, one cap, and two shoes.. “(Page 81)

To begin with, his spirits were high. The ship, wrecked just offshore, was within swimming distance so daily Crusoe would swim out to recover as many supplies as possible. He even created a weatherproof shelter and a safe surround to protect himself against predators.  However, after a freak storm the ship was completely washed away and with that Crusoe’s mood changed and it takes all his energy to try and drag himself back out of his depressive state.

“Well, you are in a desolate condition, ’tis true, but pray remember, Where are the rest of you? Did not you come eleven of you into the boat, where are the ten? Why were not they sav’ d and you lost?” (Page 97)

As you progress through the narrative Crusoe’s monologue often reads like manic ramblings of someone going insane which quite possibly would happen if you were stranded all alone with no one else for company. But he also seems to possess the ability to adapt quickly to his surroundings. Of course, we don’t gain the full background to his skills before he embarks on his life as a sailor and explorer but you get the sense that he is from a privileged background and therefore would not normally work with his hands so he seems far more able then you would probably expect – cutting down trees, creating wicker baskets and pots made of clay, making spades and other tools out of very little.

After so long alone, he becomes so comfortable in his surroundings that he lets his guard down. That is, until one day he sees a footprint in the sand he is certain isn’t his. We then have an extended monologue about how he is worried that savages will come onto the island, find and eat him for he was convinced that anyone coming onto the island was, in fact, a cannibal.

He would spend hours, weeks and years thinking about how he could, should he need to, kill as many of them as possible should they discover his hiding place.

“… but all was abortive, nothing could be possible to take effect, unless I was to be there to do it my self; and what could one man do among them, when perhaps there might be twenty or thirty of them together, with their darts, or their bows and arrows, with which they could shoot as true to a mark… “(Page 200)

These thoughts continued for years, both consciously and in his dreams. Then, one day, after 25 years of solitude, while observing a group of savages, Robinson Crusoe saw one of the captives break away, running for his life.

“I was call’d plainly by Providence to save this poor creature’s life ; I immediately run down the ladders with all possible expedition, fetch’d my two guns, for they were both but at the foot of the ladders,… And getting up again, with the same haste, to the top of the hill… “(Page 233)

This is our first introduction to Friday, a character probably just as memorable as Robinson Crusoe in this narrative. Up until this point, it has been one very long, and at times, dragging monologue of how one man comes to survive on an island. Don’t get me wrong, if such a thing could happen, we should all be in awe of the survivor but it did, at times, cause the plot to become a bit of a bore.

For the remaining chapters, we read about how Crusoe taught man Friday how to speak English and complete all the tasks asked of him. We also read about their unlikely saviours and how they finally escape the island after nearly 28 years.

My Thoughts on Robinson Crusoe

I really wanted to enjoy this novel for many reasons. Firstly, the story is meant to be based on the real-life travels and disasters of Alexander Selkirk , a Navy officer who lived as a castaway for four years on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific, and secondly, many literary historians have singled out Robinson Crusoe as the first instance of a realistic English novel.  Finally, I initially picked the novel up to read for the first time in 2019, exactly 300 years since it was published so it was a big milestone for the book.

Unfortunately, the story didn’t quite live up to my expectations. I really wanted to enjoy the narrative, and at times, I loved reading about how someone could live in solitude for so long developing their survival skills but at other times the monologue of Crusoe’s experiences became so monotonous I struggled to continue.  Possibly because of the time in which it was written, it is also heavily laden with religious references which could be extremely off-putting for people. Finally, there is a strong theme of slavery running throughout which was fundamentally difficult to read. Crusoe went from wanting slaves to becoming a slave himself. The element I struggled with however was the fact that after his own treatment he was quick to enslave others again for his benefit.  Surely, after you have been oppressed yourself, the last thing you would want to do would be to treat someone else in a similar manner.

Of course, Defoe’s plot is fictional and therefore he was probably not expecting people 300 years later to pull his narrative apart and look for underlying meanings in the way we often do today.

On the surface, it is a travelogue full of descriptive episodes and exploration of different countries and continents which I know many will enjoy.

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The main content creator at Travelling Book Junkie who loves all things book related. If lost, she can always be found in the nearest bookshop or library and is known for following in the footsteps of famous writers whether that be to a local cafe or to the top of a mountain. She loves to explore countries through the pages of a book before visiting anywhere to further understand their culture and traditions.

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Book of a Lifetime: Robinson Crusoe, By Daniel Defoe

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Over the years, Robinson Crusoe has become my best-loved novel. I feel happy when I see it on a shelf, on a bus, in somebody's hand, even my own, old copy now on the desk, a beautifully illustrated edition inscribed "Peter from Mum 1919". Crusoe was never meant to be a children's book and I didn't begin to understand it until I had written novels. Defoe was nearly 60 when he wrote it, and he wrote at tremendous speed in the midst of his tumultuous life, section by section with a hungry public waiting, as Dickens's readers did. Dickens hated Robinson Crusoe. He said it had never made anyone laugh or cry.

Well, I suppose we know what he meant. Fashion changed. Defoe came to be thought of as a journeyman, the book unsubtle, repetitive and too long. It may have been "the granite rock on which all English fiction is based", but Defoe was thought a primitive. Even in the 1980s, when I was writing Crusoe's Daughter, the head of literature at an Oxford college said to me, "Of course, I would never teach Crusoe."

Next, everybody began to find sinister sides: racism, anti-feminism, the glorification of the oligarch. It has become usual in modern Crusoe novels to demonise the hero and make Man Friday the fairy prince.

But the book, like the Odyssey, has a life of its own. It was frequently adapted "for children" and into plays, films, opera even Crusoe on Ice! There's a beloved children's book, The Dog Crusoe. Each year, he makes a wonderful panto.

Like Odysseus, Crusoe can be ridiculous, but both are brave and enduring. Both are filled with lust - lust for travel and adventure. After 30 years on the island, Crusoe is off again!

Defoe was not well-travelled. He was born in east London and died, running from creditors, in Bunhill Fields. He'd never seen the coast of Sallee or met a cannibal. He lived in shadow the dark alleys that Coetzee describes in Foe. His bust used to stand in Walthamstow Public Library; it is now in a museum. He was a toad of a man who sometimes worked as a back street government spy.

Yet Robinson Crusoe is bathed in sunlight. He is more honest than Odysseus was and straightforward as he is brave. Yet he can be pathetically insecure. After seeing a human footprint in the sand, he hides for two years! He passionately calls on God but seldom thinks about the family he abandoned. Sex does not seem to occur to him except once, when he finds himself fancying Friday and hastily recovers himself. The island where Crusoe is "lord of all he surveys", for all its shining beauty, he hates. There is not a trace of the romantic in Crusoe or in Defoe. When at last he is rescued he says little, sheds simple tears. No, academics cannot teach Crusoe. You can't "teach" a rock anything.

Jane Gardam's 'The People on Privilege Hill' is published by Chatto & Windus

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Dusty Reviews

Pressured to prove his theories or lose funding, Dusty prematurely stepped into the blogosphere and vanished.

Robinson Crusoe (Book Review)

Title:  Robinson Crusoe Author:  Daniel Defoe Publication Date:  April 25, 1719 (book), 2008 (audio) Publisher:  Tantor Audio Narrated By : Simon Vance Recording time : 10 hours, 10 minutes

Robinson Crusoe (the family name corrupted from the German name “Kreutznaer”) sets sail from  Kingston upon Hull  on a sea voyage in August 1651, against the wishes of his parents, who wanted him to pursue a career in law. After a tumultuous journey where his ship is wrecked in a storm, his desire for the sea remains so strong that he sets out to sea again. This journey, too, ends in disaster, as the ship is taken over by  Salé   pirates  (the  Salé Rovers ) and Crusoe is enslaved by a  Moor . Two years later, he escapes in a boat with a boy named Xury; a captain of a Portuguese ship off the west coast of Africa rescues him. The ship is  en route  to  Brazil . Crusoe sells Xury to the captain. With the captain’s help, Crusoe procures a  plantation  in Brazil. In the Years later, Crusoe joins an expedition to  purchase slaves from Africa , but he is shipwrecked in a storm about forty miles out to sea on an island near the  Venezuelan  coast (which he calls the  Island of Despair ) near the mouth of the  Orinoco  river on 30 September 1659. [1] : Chapter 23   He observes the latitude as 9 degrees and 22 minutes north. He sees penguins and  seals  on this island. Only he, the captain’s dog, and two cats survive the shipwreck. Overcoming his despair, he fetches arms, tools and other supplies from the ship before it breaks apart and sinks. He builds a fenced-in habitat near a cave which he excavates. By making marks in a wooden cross, he creates a calendar. By using tools salvaged from the ship, and some which he makes himself, he hunts, grows barley and rice, dries grapes to make raisins, learns to make pottery and raises goats. He also adopts a small parrot. He reads the Bible and becomes religious, thanking God for his fate in which nothing is missing but human society. More years pass and Crusoe discovers  cannibals , who occasionally visit the island to kill and eat prisoners. He plans to kill them for committing an abomination, but later realizes he has no right to do so, as the cannibals do not knowingly commit a crime. He dreams of obtaining one or two servants by freeing some prisoners; when a prisoner escapes, Crusoe helps him, naming his new companion  “Friday”  after the day of the week he appeared. Crusoe teaches Friday English and  converts  him to Christianity. After more cannibals arrive to partake in a feast, Crusoe and Friday kill most of them and save two prisoners. One is Friday’s father and the other is a Spaniard, who informs Crusoe about other Spaniards shipwrecked on the mainland. A plan is devised wherein the Spaniard would return to the mainland with Friday’s father and bring back the others, build a ship, and sail to a Spanish port. Before the Spaniards return, an English ship appears; mutineers have commandeered the vessel and intend to maroon their captain on the island. Crusoe and the ship’s captain strike a deal in which Crusoe helps the captain and the loyal sailors retake the ship. With their ringleader executed by the captain, the mutineers take up Crusoe’s offer to be marooned on the island rather than being returned to England as prisoners to be hanged. Before embarking for England, Crusoe shows the mutineers how he survived on the island and states that there will be more men coming. Crusoe leaves the island 19 December 1686 and arrives in England on 11 June 1687. He learns that his family believed him dead; as a result, he was left nothing in his father’s will. Crusoe departs for Lisbon to reclaim the profits of his estate in Brazil, which has granted him much wealth. In conclusion, he transports his wealth overland to England from Portugal to avoid traveling by sea. Friday accompanies him and,  en route , they endure one last adventure together as they fight off famished wolves while crossing the  Pyrenees .

Robinson Crusoe is considered by some to be the first English novel. Not surprisingly, then, it is among the most influential books in all of literature, leading to numerous imitation castaway novels and stories across the English-speaking world for the two hundred years after its initial publication. The Swiss Family Robinson even borrows Crusoe’s first name.

The original story has endured for three hundred years because it is well-written, entertaining, and thematically timeless. Robinson, the young protagonist, is reckless and adventure-seeking. His comeuppance for his early life choices is to be alone on a deserted island for twenty-eight years, and his day to day efforts just to survive and adapt are well-told and gripping. We get to see him wrestle with his own past, his views on society, violence, and religion, and his thoughts feel relatable. Later, we see him re-learn how to exist within a human community.

Older fiction novels are often not page-turners or bingers. However, after getting through the first few chapters, I found the novel to be so engaging that I finished the audiobook in a day and a half.

Structure :

The novel is written as a travelogue, though one written in hindsight rather than in the moment. It was among the first realistic fiction novels in the English language, and as a result, many people initially believed the novel to be a true account.

In many respects, the novel is thematically the story of a Christian life. We meet Crusoe prior to his true conversion, his time on the island leads to true repentance over his choices, a diligent study of the Bible, and a genuine gratitude and peacefulness over his salvation.

We later see the born again Crusoe struggle with how his faith should impact his choices once he confronts human beings again. He wrestles with the idea of committing violence against local cannibals and he struggles with his choices after Christianizing one of those natives, Friday, after saving him from death by cannibalism.

I enjoyed all of this as he is never portrayed in an unrealistic way. His conversion feels genuine and his struggles, cultural biases, and personality traits and flaws remain in place while he also grows spiritually.

The biggest takeaway, in my opinion, from Defoe’s depiction of Crusoe’s Christianity is that repentance must be first and foremost a part of one’s life, followed closely thereafter by gratefulness. When the protagonist is able to be both repentant and grateful, he finds himself content in his circumstances. When he is not able, he is racked with anxiety and doubts.

Assertion of Dominion :

Robison Crusoe has several skills when he lands on the island, marksmanship in particular, however, he does not possess mastery of most of the skills that he will need to survive for as long as he does. As a result, the novel becomes a depiction of how man learns, adapts, and becomes satisfied with notions of “good enough.” We see this last bit expressed by Crusoe quite often. He describes how long it takes him to develop basic skills in several areas, and he explains also that many of the things he makes are not well done even if they are functional. Nevertheless, as new obstacles come to light, Crusoe continues – with time – to grow in confidence in his ability overcome them. He asserts mastery over his surroundings.

The novel then in its latter chapters contrasts this fumbled but ultimately improved mastery of the island to his relationships with people. Crusoe saves a native from death by cannibalism, he names the man Friday, but he also instinctively declares that the other man is his servant, even teaching Friday to call him “Master.” However, as their story goes along, he begins to treat Friday as an equal. They consult with each other in making decisions. Crusoe gives the other man firearms and teaches him to use them. When he and Friday discuss Christianizing Friday’s tribe, Crusoe admits that he is no better able to do this than Friday himself. Nonetheless though, we never read Crusoe musing over Friday as an equal, per se, though he often expresses admiration and affection for him. As the novel ends on something of setup for sequels, we do not read here whether Crusoe continues to evolve his views.

My Favorite Scene :

My favorite section of the novel is Crusoe’s first discovery of another human footprint, on the beach, and the subsequent total obsession it causes in him. This might be the most relatable sequence in the story. After many years completely alone, how would it really feel to see another human being’s footprint? Crusoe cannot decide whether to be hopeful or frightened, though he ultimately decides on the latter. He spends months, after sighting one footprintin the sand, constructing defenses and all the while chastising himself for how one small thing seems to have stolen his contentment. He muses over how his greatest desire, seeing other people, has become his greatest fear.

It’s a truly great piece of writing.

“It is never too late to be wise.”

“Thus fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself when apparent to the eyes ; and we find the burden of anxiety greater, by much, than the evil which we are anxious about”

“All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”

“This grieved me heartily ; and now I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it.”

“And I add this part here, to hint to whoever shall read it, that whenever they come to a true Sense of things, they will find Deliverance from Sin a much greater Blessing than Deliverance from Affliction.”

CONCLUSION:

Robinson Crusoe is a great book and I encourage everyone to read it. It is a story filled with adventure, danger, self-reliance, and self-examination. It holds up well despite its age and I particularly enjoyed the audiobook performance of Simon Vance who brought all of this to life for me.

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2 thoughts on “ robinson crusoe (book review) ”.

Love this book, thanks for your review!

You’re welcome and thanks for your comment! I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the book. I suppose “classics” usually get that designation for a reason.

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Book Review: Robinson Crusoe

"Robinson Crusoe" is a fictional novel by Daniel Defoe; telling the story of Robinson Crusoe, a young Englishman who becomes stranded on a deserted island after a shipwreck. The novel follows his solitary existence as he learns to survive, building shelter, finding food, and adapting to the challenges of his new environment. Over the years, Crusoe encounters both moments of despair and triumph, offering readers a captivating tale of resilience, self-reliance, and the indomitable human spirit. I was fascinated by this book; if I were to compare it to another book I would say that it is the grown up version of Hatchet (written by Gary Paulsen). I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good adventure novel.

Stray Thoughts

A home for the stray thoughts of an ordinary christian woman.

Book Review: Robinson Crusoe

All I knew about the story was that Crusoe went off to sea in rebellion to his father’s wishes and somehow landed on a deserted island – deserted, he thought, until he had been there alone for some years and then was startled one day to find a single footprint that he knew wasn’t his, and that later he finds a black man whom he names Friday who becomes his servant. I didn’t realize that there were other adventures, both before and after his time on the island. In fact, the original (and very long) title to this book was The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates . Quite a mouthful! These days it’s usually shortened to The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe or just Robinson Crusoe .

Wikipedia says this book, published in 1719, “is often credited as marking the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre,” and Sparknotes comments, “His focus on the actual conditions of everyday life and avoidance of the courtly and the heroic made Defoe a revolutionary in English literature and helped define the new genre of the novel. Stylistically, Defoe was a great innovator. Dispensing with the ornate style associated with the upper classes, Defoe used the simple, direct, fact-based style of the middle classes, which became the new standard for the English novel.”

The story opens with a bit of background of Crusoe’s family. “Being the third son of the family and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts.” His father wanted him to go into law, but Robinson “would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea.” His father earnestly admonished him that he had an opportunity for a comfortable life that had none of the problems of the very poor or very rich, and that he feared that if Robin persisted in his plans, it would come to no good end. Robin listened and waited a year, but in all that time could not make himself settle down to a profession. When he was nineteen, an opportunity arose for him to go out on a friend’s father’s ship, and “I consulted neither father nor mother any more, nor so much as sent them word of it; but leaving them to hear of it as they might, without asking God’s blessing or my father’s, without any consideration of circumstances or consequences,” he went.

His first journey is beset by storms and seasickness; his second journey ends with the ship being overtaken by pirates and his being made a slave.  After a while he escapes with a young boy named Xury, whom he makes his servant. They are rescued by the captain of a Portuguese ship, which takes him to Brazil. He sells Xury to the captain, obtains a plantation, and gets on fairly well for a number of years. Then he goes out to sea again with some others to obtain slaves, and that ship wrecks in a storm and Robinson lands, alone, on the island where he will spend the bulk of his life.

A great part of the story is taken up with his management on the island. He’s greatly afraid at first until he explores enough to find that he is alone and there doesn’t seem to be any kind of dangerous creatures. He fashions a raft and gets as much as he can off the ship before it’s broken to bits. Then he sets about making a shelter and planning how to ration his supplies and supplement them with what he can find on the island.

He calls it the “Island of Despair.” Many times he feels bad about his situation and prays to God for help, but he’s not really repentant yet. He’s like the stony ground in the parable of the sower in which something seems to be growing at first, but as the bedrock beneath has never been broken up, spiritual life doesn’t really take root. It’s not until some time later when he is very sick with ague that he comes to the end of himself and truly repents and turns to God. The book is surprisingly frank and orthodox about spiritual issues (surprising in the sense that a book this close to Biblical truth, and, in fact, somewhat didactic at times spiritually, has been so popular for hundreds of years. I’m glad – just surprised. Even the Sparknotes and Shmoop commentaries handle this aspect with being derogatory). When he gets discouraged, he makes up a list of the bad and the good: I’m alone on a desert island/at least I’m alive; I don’t have clothes/but I’m in a hot climate where I don’t need them, etc., and thus he is encouraged.

As first Robinson is in bare survival mode, but after a while his skills and possessions increase. He knows he must make provision for when his supplies from the ship run out. He throws out some leftover seed from a bag and is surprised when corn and barley grow from what he thought was just dust and feed remains, and he thanks Providence. He finds some birds which are good to eat, as well as turtles (which he cuts open to gather their eggs). He is pretty ingenious: one thing he lacked was any kind of iron. Once when cooking something in an earthenware pot he made, a piece of it broke off in the fire and became hardened. He began to try ways of heating his clay creations to make hardened, watertight vessels. Much of this and the rest of his work was trial and error, and many things took a great deal of time. Much of the middle section of the book is his dealing with these kinds of things and musing to himself.

He learns to be pretty content expect for the lack of companionship and sometimes feels like “my majesty the prince and lord of the whole island.” He even makes different areas to live, calling one his castle and another his “country house.”

But the pivotal moment comes when, after years on the island alone, he unexpectedly finds a man’s footprint in the sand. Further investigation leads to a site where cannibals have had a disgusting feast. Robinson determines to prepare for the next time they come to the island and kill them all, but then he wrestles with his conscience about whether that would be the right thing since they don’t know they are doing wrong. When they do come again, one of their prisoners breaks away. Robinson rescues him, names him Friday (that being the day of the week he found him), and makes him his servant.

This is one area that would offend modern sensibilities: Crusoe’s making Xury and servant and then selling him, and then making Friday a servant. Friday seems happy to be a servant in exchange for his life having been saved, but it seems arrogant and ungracious for one person to enslave another. It was the way of the world then, but Sparknotes makes this interesting analysis from Chapters 24-27 :

The affectionate and loyal bond between Crusoe and Friday is a remarkable feature of this early novel. Indeed, it is striking that this tender friendship is depicted in an age when Europeans were engaged in the large-scale devastation of nonwhite populations across the globe. Even to represent a Native American with the individual characterization that Defoe gives Friday, much less as an individual with admirable traits, was an unprecedented move in English literature. But, in accordance with the Eurocentric attitude of the time, Defoe ensures that Friday is not Crusoe’s equal in the novel. He is clearly a servant and an inferior in rank, power, and respect. Nevertheless, when Crusoe describes his own “singular satisfaction in the fellow himself,” and says, “I began really to love the creature,” his emotional attachment seems sincere, even if we object to Crusoe’s treatment of Friday as a creature rather than a human being.

Robinson begins to teach Friday about God and Christianity, which Friday readily seems to accept.

What happens to Crusoe and Friday, what other visitors come to the island, and their other adventures off the island, I’ll leave for you to discover.

I’m glad to finally know the story of Robinson Crusoe. Have you read it? What did you think?

(Sharing at   Semicolon ‘s Saturday Review of Books)

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I had read it years ago, but have forgotten most parts…. so, I am glad for the refresher.

I have never read the actual book before. I have been wanting to ask you if you have a source for economical audio books. Do you generally purchase them or is there a way to listen to these classics for free? I thoroughly enjoy your books review and want to read nearly all of the books you describe so fittingly!

I use Audible.com for most of the audiobooks I listen to. It’s $14.95 a month, which sounds like a lot, but that gets you one credit a month which buys one book a month. Since I mostly use it for older classics, those run 20-30 or so hours, so I rationalize it by saying that there’s not much else I could do for $14.95 for 20 or so hours. 🙂 Plus they often have sales where one can get other audiobooks for $3-5. I use my credit for the longer books and then pay for the less expensive ones. Plus my oldest son will sometimes buy me a few extra credits for Christmas. 🙂 But Librivox has a good selection for free (librivox.org). Things didn’t run quite as smoothly with them – mainly sometimes a chapter wouldn’t download if I was away from home – which is when I mostly listen, while driving or at the gym. I listened to Our Mutual Friend through them because someone had recommended the narrator they had, and that was the only place her version was available. There were a few frustrations but overall it wasn’t a bad experience for free. I think some libraries provide for downloading audiobooks now, too, but I haven’t tried that.

I haven’t read this one since high school, and, I didn’t appreciate it then but I’m hoping that I would now.

Hello Barbara, I am stopping over from Carole’s Chatter as I saw you’d linked a classic novel too – I linked in Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. I read Robinson Crusoe a few years ago, for The Classics Club, and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed and got from it.

Hi Barbara,

I found your post on Carole’s Chatter and since I read Robinson Crusoe a while ago, I hopped over. I thought the book gave a lot of food for discussion and wrote so in my post (which is not half as long as yours but mine rarely are).

Have a good weekend, Marianne from Let’s Read

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I’m afraid I can relate more to your response after you first reading of Robinson Crusoe than your response after reading it a second time.

I had a really difficult time with it. Not only did it bore me and I hated the archaic writing, but I couldn’t help but despise Crusoe on a number of levels.

I doubt that I will be able to work up the courage to read it a second time, like you did.:)

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ROBINSON CRUSOE

adapted by Dan Johnson & illustrated by Naresh Kumar ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 6, 2010

Johnson and Kumar revisit Daniel Defoe’s classic castaway tale for the PlayStation generation, creating a survival story told through fast-paced action sequences that barely scratches the surface of the original. This graphic adaptation is off-balance: too much show, not enough tell. The narrative pacing is turgid in parts, paring down the original into stilted language with clunky transitions. The interminable preamble doesn’t even shipwreck Crusoe until page 23 of 68. The author also pays little to no attention to the character’s internal life as the sole inhabitant of the island, save for strange eruptions of religiosity that are jarringly out of place in an adaptation that otherwise reads as a superficial thriller. The illustrations are captivating, but the sequence of the panels is frequently muddled. Text includes an introductory biography of Defoe and an endnote on famous shipwrecks throughout history. Passable for young readers fond of action-packed video games but unlikely to inspire interest in the original. (Graphic classic. 10 & up)

Pub Date: July 6, 2010

ISBN: 978-93-80028-20-0

Page Count: 72

Publisher: Campfire

Review Posted Online: June 2, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010

GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS

Share your opinion of this book

ROMEO AND JULIET

From the campfire classics series.

by William Shakespeare & illustrated by Sachin Nagar & adapted by John F. McDonald ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 10, 2011

Using modern language, McDonald spins the well-known tale of the two young, unrequited lovers. Set against Nagar’s at-times...

A bland, uninspired graphic adaptation of the Bard’s renowned love story.

Pub Date: May 10, 2011

ISBN: 978-93-80028-58-3

Page Count: 80

Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011

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HEART OF DARKNESS

by Peter Kuper ; illustrated by Peter Kuper ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 2019

Gorgeous and troubling.

Cartoonist Kuper ( Kafkaesque , 2018, etc.) delivers a graphic-novel adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s literary classic exploring the horror at the center of colonial exploitation.

As a group of sailors floats on the River Thames in 1899, a particularly adventurous member notes that England was once “one of the dark places of the earth,” referring to the land before the arrival of the Romans. This well-connected vagabond then regales his friends with his boyhood obsession with the blank places on maps, which eventually led him to captain a steamboat up a great African river under the employ of a corporate empire dedicated to ripping the riches from foreign land. Marlow’s trip to what was known as the Dark Continent exposes him to the frustrations of bureaucracy, the inhumanity employed by Europeans on the local population, and the insanity plaguing those committed to turning a profit. In his introduction, Kuper outlines his approach to the original book, which featured extensive use of the n-word and worked from a general worldview that European males are the forgers of civilization (even if they suffered a “soul [that] had gone mad” for their efforts), explaining that “by choosing a different point of view to illustrate, otherwise faceless and undefined characters were brought to the fore without altering Conrad’s text.” There is a moment when a scene of indiscriminate shelling reveals the Africans fleeing, and there are some places where the positioning of the Africans within the panel gives them more prominence, but without new text added to fully frame the local people, it’s hard to feel that they have reached equal footing. Still, Kuper’s work admirably deletes the most offensive of Conrad’s language while presenting graphically the struggle of the native population in the face of foreign exploitation. Kuper is a master cartoonist, and his pages and panels are a feast for the eyes.

Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-393-63564-5

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019

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by Peter Kuper ; illustrated by Peter Kuper

by Peter Kuper

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In ‘Clear,’ a Planned Eviction Leads to Two Men’s Life-Changing Connection

In Carys Davies’s latest novel, a financially struggling pastor is dispatched to a remote island to evict its lone resident.

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By Sarah Moss

Sarah Moss’s books include “The Fell,” “Summerwater” and “Ghost Wall.” Her memoir, “My Good Bright Wolf,” will be published in October. She lives in Ireland, where she teaches creative writing at University College Dublin.

CLEAR , by Carys Davies

Carys Davies’s work is often interested in imagining the worldview of characters whose cultures and languages are destroyed by colonialism. It’s a daring and necessary undertaking: When language itself is extinguished and culture allowed to disappear, we cannot mourn except through imagination. Davies’s books — which include the novels “The Mission House” and “West” — attend to individual characters and brief events but the stakes are high.

In her new novel, “Clear,” the lost language is Norn, spoken on the Shetland Islands for several centuries. The islands were subject to the Clearances in the 19th century, when landlords violently evicted whole communities from Scottish land.

Davies’s imagined Norn speaker is Ivar, the last person left of a small island community after his father and brothers died at sea, and his mother, sister and neighbors died or departed for better lives on more populated isles. Before their numbers diminished, the islanders paid rent to their landlord by bartering hand-knitting, feathers, seaweed and farm labor, tending to the island’s livestock. But now that Ivar is alone, he can’t pay. For years the collection agent has not visited, but the novel opens with the end of this era. The wealthy family that owns the island has decided that the land must be cleared, and so their agent employs a penurious pastor, John Ferguson, to travel to the land and evict Ivar.

John is ambivalent about the job, though relieved to be earning a good sum for the assignment. Like so many foot soldiers of empire, he can see the ethical problems of his task but he needs the money. He has left the established church over a matter of principle and needs to finance a breakaway group, and he has also recently married Mary, a lively and curious woman whom he wants to support. Mary approves of his religious calling but is dubious about this moneymaking mission.

John arrives on the island, and, exploring on his first morning there, falls off a cliff. The story is simple after that: Ivar finds and cares for John; as John heals, he and Ivar become close; John postpones the brutal act that is his purpose on the island; and then Mary comes in search of her missing husband.

But the storytelling is sophisticated and playful, swooping back across decades to Mary’s childhood and John’s vocation, and among different points of view. We leap between John’s and Ivar’s voices on the island, to Mary now and in the past, and, at the moment of John’s accident, into a second-person voice and a glorious, anachronistic aerial view unknown to the 19th-century gaze: “If you’d been up in the island above the sky that morning with the gannets … you would have seen his tiny black figure leaving the Baillie house and making its way across patches of pink thrift and lush green pasture.”

This is a novel of aftermath, the island’s lifeways over and its community gone. It’s a “Robinson Crusoe” in reverse, where, rather than inventing imperial capitalism, the man alone on the island thinks outside modern structures of knowledge and power. There’s no nostalgia, just playful attention to time and place.

“Clear” is deeply interested in language and particularly in words for the natural world. John cannot distinguish different fogs and mists for which Ivar has terms. “He still couldn’t differentiate, for example, between the great number of words that to him seemed to denote ‘a rough sea.’ Nor could he separate a gob from a gagl , a degi from a dyapl, a dwog from a diun .” John’s alienated gaze misses what matters for survival; his theological scholarship doesn’t help here.

Davies has done her research and these are real words in a real dead language. “Clear” contemplates fictional resuscitations, opening itself, and its readers, to the ghosts of lost ideas through John’s dawning understanding and love of Ivar’s words. The novel is bold and inevitably not flawless — the ending gestures toward an unconvincing resolution — but if you like wild writing and high-stakes thinking in small, polished form, you’ll like this.

CLEAR | By Carys Davies | Scribner | 193 pp. | $24

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