A Myopic and Secular Misinterpretation of Daniel Defoe’s Masterpiece Robinson Crusoe

 

Robinson Crusoe is one of the earliest works of fiction in English literature. In this book Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) characterized an adventurous and stubborn young man who had a long-cherished desire to travel by seas and oceans and to explore the world. That young man was Robinson Crusoe, the protagonist of the story. His father wanted him to study law and didn’t endorse his son’s willingness to travel overseas as a navigator. But Robinson Crusoe did not pay heed to his father’s advice. He left home one day and moved away to London from his hometown York by a ship.

Since Robinson Crusoe emerged during a period in English literature when the exercise of writing English fiction was at its outset during 18th century, there has been a broad spectrum of interpretations of this classical book till recent years. One school of researchers underscored the story of Robinson Crusoe as a tale of self-exploration and spiritual enlightenment. On the other hand, another flock of reviewers wanted to focus on Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe through secular lenses terming Daniel Defoe a colonial propagandist. I would like to contradict with the valued authors and analysts from different countries including Bangladesh who have attempted to portray Daniel Defoe as a preacher of the conceptual instruments that the British Empire exercised to subdue colonized masses in various parts of the world during the previous centuries.

It’s a materialistic way to interpret Robinson Crusoe and to judge Daniel Defoe as a notional campaigner of the British colonial forces. It easily goes on sale with very conventional and cliched narratives that aim at undermining Daniel Defoe’s power to illustrate his protagonist Robinson Crusoe in the form of a young man who rose to the stature of a hardboiled navigator by dealing with natural disasters one after another on a remote island as well as while he was in the sea. Robinson Crusoe, as found in the book, was never concerned about God. Neither was he interested in thinking about whether God exists or not but the adversities he faced on the pristine and inhospitable island and on the dire sea when his ship drowned, impelled Robinson Crusoe to seek help from the realms of the unknown and from invisible sources. Daniel Defoe implements his authorial intervention through this aperture to depict Robinson Crusoe’s instincts which instigated him to feel the omnipresence of God. We find Robinson Crusoe having a dream which further drove him to fortify his faith in God’s power to rescue him from the unprecedented perils he was undergoing.

I don’t mean to say that the idea of colonial propaganda connecting it with Daniel Defoe’s masterpiece is a totally wrong approach but it is certainly a depreciated way of analyzing a great story that encouraged countless numbers of explorers and mariners to seek out their destiny in the sea with solid confidence on God’s commandments. A few words about secularism need to be stated to address this context. Most educated people believe that secularism is being neutral when it comes to religions. This is a substandard definition of secularism that morally bankrupt politicians and theorists have fed us. Secularism actually stands for totally moving away from religions. Being absolutely irreligious is the core meaning of secularism. Keeping religions isolated from state machineries was a trick by the ancient Roman Emperor Constantine to fool naive believers. This tactic was afterwards followed by the Western policymakers as a plain-sailing device to plunge people into a dark abyss of moral degeneration which blindfolds ordinary citizens and makes them unconscious and oblivious about the malpractices being spearheaded by the ruling authorities. Italian statecraft philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 to 1527) called it “political breads and circus” in his famous book Florentine Histories. Secularism teaches people another viciously unethical concept—end justifies means. We have witnessed with bare eyes how some under developed countries became devastated and their economic prospects fell apart with corruption and plundering under cover of camouflaged terms like “secularism” and “neoliberalism”. These two terms are in fact capitalism’s textual humbugs to hoax susceptible people belonging to the third world nations. Exactly for this reason, some scholars are reluctant to evaluate Daniel Defoe from a materialistic viewpoint and would prefer to look at Robinson Crusoe through the mirrors of spiritualism.

Robinson Crusoe proceeded from England to other countries and on his way through different maritime zones he learnt the strategies of a trader. He purchased several food items, clothes and other things from one port and sold those commodities to another. From this point of view, we come across the image of a colonial merchant in Robinson Crusoe. We have read in history that during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries traders from England, France, Spain, Portugal and some other countries visited different parts of the globe in order to set up colonies across continents. Robinson Crusoe was virtually on a similar pursuit. He landed on the soils of Africa and Latin America to quest for business opportunities. However, he got in a big trouble while sailing along the African coastline when his ship was seized by a gang of Moorish pirates. Those pirates plundered all the belongings of Robinson Crusoe and the pirates’ ringleader detained him and later made him a slave. Robinson Crusoe passed two years on that island of the Moors under captivity. Anyway, one day he escaped. He had with him another slave named Xury while running away from the pirates’ den. They were picked up by a Portuguese captain on his ship that took them to Brazil. Robinson Crusoe sold Xury to the Portuguese captain and got a good amount of money. While in Brazil, Robinson Crusoe made plans to become a slave-trader because he thought there would be very lucrative monetary prospects in this business. So, he left for West Africa to procure black slaves from there and to sell them out to different nations. But his ship capsized near the coast of the Caribbean Islands. Robinson Crusoe alone survived that shipwreck while all his companions drowned. It was a terrific test for Robinson Crusoe to survive on that remote, solitary island. One lucky thing happened at that time that the remains of the wrecked ship were brought ashore by a strong current which enabled Robinson Crusoe to recover a few guns, ammunitions, a little food and some more things including a copy of Bible from the rubble of the ship. Nevertheless, he became very repentant for not listening to his father.

Robinson Crusoe’s struggle for survival continued through hunting goats and birds and gathering foodstuff from trees and plants. He also learnt to make fire which gave him a little light to read verses from the Bible inside his small hut which he had made with branches and planks of wood by cutting down trees. One night it seemed to him that he was visited in his dream by an angel and he came to realize that God had sent him to that island for deliverance from his previous sins and for spiritual regeneration. He apologized to God several times for his reckless, impious past life and his penitence enlightened him with the truth that sufferings purify human souls and get humans closer to sanctity. He started to view his total loneliness on that island from a brighter angle and envisioned himself as the king of that landscape. After some years he came across another human being on that island who belonged to a primitive clan and was a cannibal. Robinson Crusoe saved that man from his opponent group of cannibals and thus became his master. Robinson Crusoe named him Friday, taught him a little English and gradually converted him into Christianity.
During Robinson Crusoe’s initial days on that island where he had been marooned for over two decades, he once asked himself:

“Can God spread a table in the wilderness?”

His query was answered before long. Mother Nature offered her benevolent resources generously to make survival easy for Robinson Crusoe on that island. It made Robinson Crusoe overwhelmingly glad as he came across a great deal of fruits in one part of that island and he expressed his pleasure through the following lines:

“I found melons upon the ground in great abundance and grapes upon the trees. The clusters of grapes were just now in their prime, very ripe and rich.”

The trees on that island not just yielded edible fruits to Robinson Crusoe; they proved highly essential to him as he chopped down wood from those trees for making fire, for securing his hut and also for making a boat. He built a bower in a particular part of the island surrounded by hills and woods which he found beautiful and at times he stayed there to delight himself with the pristine natural glamour of the island.

Anyway, after many years Robinson Crusoe and Friday were rescued from that island by a ship bound for England. Coming back home, Robinson Crusoe found that his parents had died before his return. Only his two sisters were alive. He left England once again for East Indies in 1694 to make new commercial efforts. The story ends with Robinson Crusoe’s revisit to that island where he had been stranded for over twenty years. When he went back there, he found that the island had become a Spanish colony and looked much more civilized than before. So, through the voyages of Robinson Crusoe we get to look back on the colonial history of past centuries as well as a man’s rediscovery of himself in an absolutely new light while he was going through hardships, hunger and hazards and finally experienced a spiritual resurrection accorded by God.

Contemplative readers, in a number of cases, have correlated the odyssey of Robinson Crusoe with the ordeal experienced by Royal Navy officer Alexander Selkirk of Scottish origin who spent around four years on an uninhabited island located on the South Pacific Ocean during the 18th century. Tareq Zuhair, Associate Professor in Department of English Language and Literature, University of Petra, Amman, Jordan, stated in his paper published in the journal “Cogent Arts and Humanities” that all religions stem from one source, which is God. Religious teachings have stressed the necessity of abhorring sins to avoid punishment and pursuing virtues in achieving happiness and success.

 
Mahfuz Ul Hasib Chowdhury is
a contributor for different English
newspapers and magazines.