by Daniel Defoe, 1719
Robinson Crusoe decides to leave his safe, middle-class existence in York, England on 9/1/1651, against the advice of his father and mother and others. He takes a sea voyage to London. But the ship gets hit by a storm. They manage to get on another ship before their’s “founders” – sinks. Safe on shore, he doesn’t go home with his tail between his legs: “…that they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent; not ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning, which only can make them be esteemed wise men.”
He then goes on another sea voyage to Guinea. Returned and went again but this time, “a Turkish rover of Sallee” overtakes them and he is taken prisoner and brought to the Moors. He escapes on a small fishing boat and makes his way along the coast of Africa. At night they heard and saw great beasts on the shore so they refused to land. When they (he and Xury, a young boy) finally found a safe place to land, Robinson shoots a great lion-they skin him. Then they meet Africans and are given food (roots and corn) and water and they give them the meat of the big cat they shot soon after meeting them. The Africans get the meat, Robinson got the skin. They go further down the coast, get picked up by a Portuguese vessel, and sail to Brazil. He buys some land and after 4 years has the makings of a successful plantation. Then, his fellow plantation owners ask if he’d like to sail to Africa to get slaves. He jumped at the chance. On Sept 1, 1659, he sails from Brazil. They get caught in 2 hurricanes. He is the only survivor on a desert isle in the Caribbean.
“But I, that was born to be my own destroyer…”
“And here I found a fresh renewing of my grief; for I saw evidentlly that if we had kept on board we had been all safe…”
After 2 years on the Island, he went from miserable to happy. “I gave humble and hearty thanks that God had been pleased to discover to me even that it was possible I might be more happy in this solitary condition than I should have been in a liberty of society and in all the pleasures of the world; that he could fully make up to me the deficiencies of my solitary state, and the want of human society, by his presence, and the communications of his grace to my soul–supporting, comforting, and encouraging me to depend upon his providence here, and hope for his eternal presence hereafter.”
“I learned 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…discontented people who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them because they see and covet something that he has not given them. All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”
“Thus I lived mighty comfortably, my mind being entirely composed by resigning to the will of God, and throwing myself wholly upon the disposal of his providence.”
“…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 that way…”
“I have been, in all my circumstances, a memento to those who are touched with the general plague of mankind, whence, for ought I know, one-half of their miseries flow–I mean, that of not being satisfied with the station wherein God and nature has placed them.”
After about 23 years he saw a footprint in the sand and lived in fear for many years. One day, the cannibals came to shore and he rescued the one they were going to eat – named him Friday – and they became wonderful companions. Crusoe taught him all about God.
Then after 28 years, they rescued some more people from cannibals – one of whom was Friday’s father! Also a Spaniard. Then, it was decided the Spaniard and Friday’s father would sail to the mainland to get 16 other Spaniards and they would come back to the Island, make a ship and sail away. While waiting for them Friday and Crusoe rescued another ship captain and crew from mutineers and they left the island with them, returned to England, discovered he was rich beyond belief – got married, had children, wife died, went to Brazil and back to his island where quite a colony had developed. Re-supplied them. The end.
On the way from Lisbon, Portugal back to England, he decided to go by land in winter and they were attacked by hundreds of wolves. Survived, but barely.