Summary of Robinson Crusoe (1719), Daniel Defoe

Robinson Crusoe, often called the first English novel, was written by Daniel Defoe and published in
1719. The novel is the tale of one man’s survival on a desert island following a shipwreck. Published in
1719, the book didn’t carry Defoe’s name, and it was offered to the public as a true account of real
events, documented by a real man named Crusoe. But readers were immediately sceptical.

In the same year as the novel appeared, a man named Charles Gildon actually published
Robinson Crusoe Examin’d and Criticis’d, in which he showed that Crusoe was made up and
the events of the novel were fiction. The name ‘Crusoe’, by the way, may have been taken from
Timothy Cruso, who had been a classmate of Defoe’s and who had gone on to write
guidebooks.

What follows is a short summary of the main plot of Robinson Crusoe, followed by an analysis
of this foundational novel and its key themes.

Robinson Crusoe: summary

The novel, famously, is about how the title character, Robinson Crusoe, becomes marooned on
an island off the north-east coast of South America. As a young man, Crusoe had gone to sea
in the hope of making his fortune. Crusoe is on a ship bound for Africa, where he plans to buy
slaves for his plantations in South America, when the ship is wrecked on an island and Crusoe
is the only survivor.

Alone on a desert island, Crusoe manages to survive thanks to his pluck and pragmatism. He
keeps himself sane by keeping a diary, manages to build himself a shelter, and finda a way of
salvaging useful goods from the wrecked ship, including guns.

Twelve years pass in this way, until one momentous day, Crusoe finds a single human footprint
in the sand! But he has to wait another ten years before he discovers the key to the mystery:
natives from the nearby islands, who practise cannibalism, have visited the island, and when
they next return, Crusoe attacks them, using his musket salvaged from the shipwreck all those
years ago.

He takes one of the natives captive, and names him Man Friday, because – according to
Crusoe’s (probably inaccurate) calendar, that’s the day of the week on which they first meet.

Crusoe teaches Man Friday English and converts him to Christianity. When Crusoe learns that
Man Friday’s fellow natives are keeping white prisoners on their neighbouring island, he vows
to rescue them. Together, the two of them build a boat. When more natives attack the island
with captives, Crusoe and Friday rescue the captives and kill the natives. The two captives
they’ve freed are none other than Friday’s own father and a Spanish man.

Crusoe sends them both off to the other island in the newly made boat, telling them to free the
other prisoners. Meanwhile, a ship arrives at the island: a mutiny has taken place on board, and
the crew throw the captain and his loyal supporters onto the island.

Before the ship can leave, Crusoe has teamed up with the captain and his men, and between
them they retake the ship from the mutineers, who settle on the island while Crusoe takes the
ship home to England.
Robinson Crusoe has been away from England for many years by this stage – he was marooned
on his island for over twenty years – and his parents have died. But he has become wealthy,
thanks to his plantations in Brazil, so he gets married and settles down. His wife dies a few
years later, and Crusoe – along with Friday – once again leaves home.

Robinson Crusoe: analysis

Robinson Crusoe is a novel that is probably more known about than it is read these days, and
this leads to a skewed perception of what the book is really about. In the popular imagination,
Robinson Crusoe is a romantic adventure tale about a young man who goes to sea to have
exciting experiences, before finding himself alone on a desert island and accustoming himself,
gradually, to his surroundings, complete with a parrot for his companion.

In reality, this is only partially true (although he does befriend a parrot at one point). But the
key to understanding Defoe’s novel is its context: early eighteenth-century mercantilism and
Enlightenment values founded on empiricism (i.e. observing what’s really there) rather than
some anachronistic Romantic worship of the senses, or ‘man’s communion with his
environment’.

And talking of his environment, Crusoe spends the whole novel trying to build a boat so he can
escape his island, and leaves when the first ship comes along. While he’s there, he bends the
island’s natural resources to his own ends, rather than acclimatising to his alien surroundings.

In this respect, he’s not so different from a British person on holiday in Alicante, who thinks
speaking English very loudly at the Spanish waiter will do the job very nicely rather than
attempting to converse in Spanish.

And, of course, the very reason Robinson Crusoe ends up shipwrecked is because he’s making
a business trip, to purchase slaves. As Gilbert Phelps, the moment in the novel when Robinson
Crusoe shows the most emotion is probably when he’s back in England and discovers how rich
his plantations have made him.

This tells us a great deal about Robinson Crusoe the man but also Robinson Crusoe the novel.
It was written at a time when Britain was beginning to expand its colonial sights, and it would
shortly become the richest and most powerful country on earth, thanks to its imperial
expeditions in the Caribbean, Africa, and parts of Asia, notably India.

Crusoe embodies this pioneering mercantile spirit: he is obsessed with money (he even picks
up coins on his island and keeps them, even though he cannot spend them), and takes great
pleasure in the physical objects, such as the guns and powder, which he rescues from the wreck.
Man Friday is, in the last analysis, his own private servant.

But was Robinson Crusoe the first such ‘Robinsonade’? Not really. This, from Martin
Wainwright: ‘There is a tale for our troubled times about a man on a desert island, who keeps
goats, builds a shelter and finally discovers footprints in the sand. But it is not called Robinson
Crusoe. It was written by a wise old Muslim from Andalusia and is the third most translated
text from Arabic after the Koran and the Arabian Nights.’
That book is The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan,
known as the first Arabic novel (just as Robinson Crusoe is often cited as the first English
novel), written in the twelfth century by a Moorish philosopher living in Spain.

Yes, Robinson Crusoe wasn’t the first fictional narrative to take place on a desert island,
although it has proved the most influential among English writers.

Although Defoe is widely believed to have been influenced by the real-life experiences of the
Scottish man Alexander Selkirk (who spent over four years alone on a Pacific island, living on
fish, berries, and wild goats), one important textual influence that has been proposed is Hai Ebn
Yokdhan’s book.

Indeed, Defoe’s debt to the story of Alexander Selkirk as his source material for Robinson
Crusoe is almost certainly overplayed. Numerous scholars and historians, including Tim
Severin in his book Seeking Robinson Crusoe, have challenged this widely held belief.

Severin cites the case of a man named Henry Pitman, who wrote a short book recounting his
adventures in the Caribbean (not the Pacific, which is where Selkirk was marooned) following
his escape from a penal colony and his subsequent shipwrecking and survival on a desert island.

Pitman appears to have lived in the same area of London as Defoe, and Defoe may have met
Pitman in person and learned of his experiences first-hand. It is also revealing that both men
had taken part in the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 (in the wake of which, at Judge Jeffreys’
infamous ‘Bloody Assizes’, Defoe was lucky not to be sentenced to death).
The novel Robinson Crusoe by the writer Daniel Defoe was published in 1719 and tells the
story of the sailor with the same name. On his third sea voyage, after a shipwreck, the English
merchant's son is stranded on a lonely Caribbean island during a trip from Brazil to Africa.

Over the next few years, Robinson learns to use the natural resources of the fertile, uninhabited
island, withstands earthquakes, overcomes crises, and survives a disease. He must fight
cannibals and, after 23 years of lonely life, finds a companion in the person of the man-eater
Friday, whom he saved from certain death. After 28 years on the island, the adventurer finally
manages to return to England. The action of the novel takes place in the second half of the 17th
century, between 1651 and 1687.

The Three Voyages

Robinson was born in 1632 in York, in northern England. His father was a merchant. As a child,
Robinson already dreams of going to sea one day. As a young adult, he runs into an
acquaintance who offers to take him on his ship to London. Robinson then decides to leave
home against his father's wishes.

The young, inexperienced man is shipwrecked in a heavy storm on his first voyage. Fortunately,
he is rescued and is able to reach London. In the English capital he meets a friendly ship captain
who offers to take Robinson on a voyage to Guinea. On the voyage, the captain teaches the
clever adventurer mathematics and basic navigation skills before the ship is attacked by pirates.

Robinson is made a slave by Moorish pirates. He lives in captivity for two years before escaping
at sea. He is rescued by Portuguese sailors and brought to Brazil. Robinson settles in the country
for a while and leads a fairly comfortable and wealthy life.

One day Robinson receives an offer to travel to Guinea to engage in the slave trade. He finds
the proposal very interesting and agrees to take part in this long overseas voyage. During a
hurricane, the ship drifts aimlessly at sea and finally gets stuck on a sandbank not far from land.
Fearing that it might break up, the crew flees in a lifeboat, which is overturned by a large wave.
The entire crew drowns, except for Robinson, who is washed up on a beach, completely
exhausted, on 30 September 1659.

The Solitary Life

Robinson Crusoe soon realizes that the Caribbean island on which he is stranded is uninhabited.
He must survive here alone from now on and begins to salvage food, tools, weapons, and
ammunition from the wreck. He is afraid of dangerous animals and therefore sleeps in a tree on
the first day there. The next day, he explores the island, which is fortunately very fertile. He
finds plenty of food and water, and he starts to bring everything he can use from the wreck. He
is also able to save the ship's dog.

Over the next few years, the industrious and practical Robinson painstakingly builds two
dwellings with a protective wall around them. To do this, he uses the tools he fetched from the
ship and the building materials he finds on the island...