Today’s Agenda
Presentations
A Beckwith: Daniel Defoe’s Life and Times (2)
B Commette: Chaucer’s prologue to the Canterbury Tales
Journal:
Over the past two weeks, we have been reading Robinson Crusoe. We’ve been talking a lot about the story, and the important events that come up along the way in the story. But today I want to stop to consider your experience of the story, and what it has been like for you to read it. As University students, you probably find yourself pressed for time on certain days of the week. I would like you to write about some – not all – of the possible things that may be weighing on your mind when you have been reading this book, and then I want you to talk a little about whether or not you believe that anything in this book may relate to these same things, may help you understand them in a new or different way.
Group Discussion
Class Discussion
Mini-Lecture:
Last time I suggested that there was a possible correlation to be made between Crusoe’s critique of the “savages” and a possible seb-textual indictment of Roman Catholicism. On page 159, you will see that he is making an explicit connection between these two groups when he comments on Friday’s God “Benamuckee.”
I think it is also worth noticing a few very telling facts about Friday. First, we need to consider the fact that Friday appears to be 26 years of age, the same amount of time Crusoe has been on the island. We might wonder about the close correlation between these ages. Second, we need to consider that, when Crusoe considers every other “savage,” even “savages” he sees up close, he offers virtually no description of what they look like. This is similar to his treatment of the “monsters” on the coast of Africa. His lack of detail his is strange, as so much else in the novel is described in extreme detail.
However, you will have noticed that, when he describes Friday, he goes into extreme detail, and what’s most interesting about Friday here is how European he looks. Consider the description on Friday on 150. I think it is safe to say that Crusoe finds him to be a handsome man. And not only does he look European, but he is also appears to be very ready to totally adopt Crusoe’s religion and world view. Crusoe thinks this is out of thankfulness, but what would be another possibility.
One of the issues that appears to be totally overlooked by Crusoe is the political infighting that brought Friday to the island in the first place, which he does not appear to understand at all. And when we see Friday’s father later in the tale, we can either believe that it is simple coincidence, or that there is a more complicated dispute going on along the mainland that we know.
We learn virtually nothing about this, and I would argue that it is at this point in the novel that Crusoe becomes totally overwhelmed with his new status as master of not only Friday, but also of what he start to call “my island.” Notice that he never used this phrase when he was alone, but that it is only now that there are people on the island who may be competing with him for control that this issue is raised.
[...] Friday, Feb 13 [...]