Robinson Crusoe Summary
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Setting
The novel, Robinson Crusoe is set in several places including York, England, London, sallee, North Africa, Brazil, a deserted island off Trinidad, Lisbon, and overland from Spain towards England.
Main Characters
Robinson Crusoe- is the novel’s protagonist and narrator. The novel begins with Robinson as a young middle-class man in York in search of a career. His father recommends law but Crusoe yearns for a life at sea, which leads to him becoming a merchant and the starting point for the whole adventure that follows.
Friday- he is a twenty-six-year-old Caribbean native and cannibal who converts to Protestantism under Crusoe’s guidance.
The Portuguese Captain- he is the sea captain who picks up Crusoe and the slave boy Bury from their boat after they escape from their Moorish captors and float down the African coast.
The Spaniard- he is one of the men from the Spanish ship that is wrecked off Crusoe’s island, and whose crew is rescued by the cannibals and taken to a neighboring island.
Xury- he is an Arab or black slave boy introduces during the period of Crusoe’s enslavement in sallee.
The Widow- she keeps Crusoe’s 200 pounds safe in England throughout all his thirty-five years of traveling.
Plot Summary
Crusoe sails from Kingston on Hull on a sea voyage against the wishes of his parents, who wanted him to pursue a career in law. After a long journey where his ship is involved in a shipwreck during a storm, his longing for the sea remains so strong that he gets on board again. This trip also ends in disaster, since the ship is taken by the pirates of Sale 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 on its way to Brazil. Crusoe sells Xury to the captain and with the help of the captain, he acquires a plantation.
Years later, Crusoe joins a mission to bring slaves from Africa but gets a shipwreck in a storm about forty miles from the sea on an island near the mouth of the Orinoco River. As for his arrival there, only he and three animals survive the wreck. Overcoming his despair, he looks for weapons, tools, and other supplies from the ship before it breaks and sinks. Using tools rescued from the ship, and some that he himself manufactures, Crusoe hunts, grows barley and rice, dries 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 destiny in which nothing is missing but human society.
As years pass by, Crusoe discovers native cannibals, who occasionally visit the island to kill and eat prisoners. At first, he plans to kill them for committing an abomination, but then he realizes that he has no right to do so since 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 him "Friday" after the day of the week he appeared. Crusoe then teaches him English and converts him to Christianity.
After more natives arrive to participate in a cannibal party, Crusoe and Friday kill most of the natives and save two prisoners. One is the Friday’s father and the other is a Spaniard, who informs Crusoe about other Spaniards who were shipwrecked on the mainland. They come up with a plan for the Spaniard to return to the mainland with Friday's father and bring the others back, build a ship and sail to a Spanish port.
An English ship appears Before the Spaniards return and the mutineers seize the boat and intend to garnet their captain on the island. Crusoe and the ship's captain reach an agreement in which Crusoe helps the captain and the loyal sailors to retake the ship and leave the worst mutineers on the island. Before embarking to England, Crusoe shows the mutineers how he survived on the island and states that more men will come. Crusoe leaves the island and arrives in England. He learns that his family believed he is dead. As a result, he has left nothing in his father's will. Crusoe leaves for Lisbon to claim the profits of his wealth in Brazil, which grants him much wealth. He transports his wealth by land to England from Portugal to avoid traveling by sea.
Themes
- Sin and Retribution. Robinson Crusoe fails to heed his father’s advice and runs away without even saying goodbye. He is immediately involved in a shipwreck as punishment. He tries again and makes a financial success of his life but sins again by getting into the slave trade, and is punished far more severely this time. He finally embraces Christianity and also converts a savage to Christianity.
- The Importance of Repentance. Crusoe’s experiences not only constitute an adventure story in which thrilling things happen but also a moral tale illustrating the right and wrong ways to live one’s life.