Blaine's Reviews > Robinson Crusoe

Those people cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them because they see and covet what He has not given them. All of our discontents for what we want appear to me to spring from want of thankfulness for what we have.

Robinson Crusoe is, of course, a classic novel written 300 years ago. It is surprisingly inventive, with such detail about trying to survive after being shipwrecked on a deserted island that one would expect the author had survived such a situation. And it may be the first book ever to end by teasing a sequel (which he apparently did write later).

Alas, large parts of Robinson Crusoe just don’t hold up today. At least half the book is an overly detailed account of scavenging, farming, building things, and random encounters with animals. The action picks up when the character Friday comes onto the scene—two-thirds of the way through the story—but so does the casual racism. It’s the ending, though, that is the biggest disappointment. 28 years stranded on the island, and when Robinson Crusoe finally gets back to England, it’s all minutiae about his land holdings and money and amazingly—inconceivably—a return trip to the island. There are no reunions or reconciliations, no passages reflecting on his experience, no emotion to any of it. It might have worked as storytelling 300 years ago, but Robinson Crusoe lacks what the modern reader wants and expects.