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# 2021-04-08 - Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
# Illustrations
(HTM) Crusoe eating dinner with a dog and two cats
(HTM) Crusoe alarmed at finding a footprint in the sand
I listened to the LibriVox recording of Robinson Crusoe read by Mark
F. Smith. The story kept my interest because of my background in
wilderness survival. It felt odd to listen to a colonial fiction
from a modern perspective. Robinson Crusoe was enslaved for a few
years in Africa, he escaped to Brazil, and the very first thing he
did was embark on passage back to Africa to enslave people to work on
his new plantation. He spent time reasoning philosophically on
cultural relativism about noble savages who were innocent with
regards to European people and superior to Europeans when it came to
applying moral sympathies. Yet he treated "his" Caribbean man with a
surprising amount of contempt.
His focus on craft and traps reminded me of my own play as a child.
My best friend loved to go to "the swamp" and build "booby traps."
> Novelist James Joyce noted that the true symbol of the British Empire
> is Robinson Crusoe, to whom he ascribed stereotypical and somewhat
> hostile English racial characteristics:
>
> He is the true prototype of the British colonist. ... The whole
> Anglo-Saxon spirit in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious
> cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the
> sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity.
>
> --Wikipedia
> I don't believe in censoring art which reflects the attitudes of the
> times in which it was produced. It allows us to understand change
> better," he said.
(HTM) From: https://inews.co.uk/news/racist-robinson-crusoe-leads-bbc-search-for-top-100-novels-that-shaped-our-world-249736
Below are relevant excerpts from the book:
"Upon the whole, here was an undoubted testimony, that there was
scarce any condition in the world so miserable, but there was
something negative or something positive to be thankful for in it;
and let this stand as a direction from the experience of the most
miserable of all conditions in this world, that we may always find in
it something to comfort ourselves from, and to set, in the
description of good and evil, on the credit side of the account."
So I went to work; and here I must needs observe, that as reason is
the substance and original of the mathematics, so by stating and
squaring every thing by reason, and by making the most rational
judgment of things, every man may be in time master of every mechanic
art.
I had now brought my state of life to be much easier in itself than
it was at first, and much easier to my mind, as well as to my body.
... I learnt to look more upon the bright side of my condition, and
less upon the dark side; and to consider what I enjoyed, rather than
what I wanted... all our discontents about what we want, appeared to
me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.
... the conduct of the Spaniards, in all their barbarities practised
in America, where they destroyed millions of these people, who,
however they were idolaters and barbarians, and had several bloody
and barbarous rites in these customs, such as sacrificing human
bodies to their idols, were yet, as to the Spaniards, very innocent
people; and that the rooting them out of the country is spoken of
with the utmost abhorrence and detestation, even by the Spaniards
themselves, at this time, and by all other Christian nations of
Europe, as a mere butchery, a bloody and unnatural piece of cruelty,
unjustifiable either to God or man; and such, as for which the very
name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible to all
people of humanity...
This renewed a contemplation... in the dangers we run through in this
life; how wonderfully we are delivered when we know nothing of it:
how, when we are in a quandary, (as we call it) a doubt or
hesitation, whether to go this way, or that way, a secret hint shall
direct us this way, when we intended to go another way; nay, when
sense, our own inclination, and perhaps business, has called to go
the other way, yet a strange impression upon the mind, from we know
not what springs, and by we know not what power, shall over-rule us
to go this way; and it shall afterwards appear, that had we gone that
way which we would have gone, and even to our imagination ought to
have gone, we should have been ruined and lost... 'tis never too late
to be wise... certainly they are a proof of the converse of spirits,
and the secret communication between those embodied, and those
unembodied...
...yet that [God] has bestowed upon [indigenous people] the same
powers, the same reason, the same affections, the same sentiments of
kindness and obligation, the same passions and resentments of wrongs,
the same sense of gratitude, sincerity, fidelity, and all the
capacities of doing good, and receiving good, that he has given to us
[European people]; and that when he pleases to offer [indigenous
people] occasions of exerting these, they are as ready, nay more
ready, to apply them to the right uses for which they were bestowed,
than we [European people] are. And this made me very melancholy
sometimes, in reflecting, as the several occasions presented, how
mean a use we [European people] make of all these, even though we
have these powers enlightened by the great lamp of instruction, the
Spirit of God, and by the knowledge of his word, added to our
understanding; and why it has pleased God to hide the life saving
knowledge from so many millions of souls, who... would make a much
better use of it than we did.
Let no man despise the secret hints and notices of danger which
sometimes are given him when he may think there is no possibility of
its being real. That such hints and notices are given us I believe
few that have made any observation of things can deny; that they are
certain discoveries of an invisible world, and a converse of spirits,
we cannot doubt; and if the tendency of them seems to be to warn us
of danger, why should we not suppose they are from some friendly
agent (whether supreme, or inferior and subordinate, is not the
question), and that they are given for our good?
author: Defoe, Daniel, 1661-1731
(TXT) detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Robinson_Crusoe
LOC: PR3403 .A1
(DIR) source: gopher://gopher.pglaf.org/1/5/2/521/
tags: ebook,fiction
title: Robinson Crusoe
# Tags
(DIR) ebook
(DIR) fiction