Robinson Crusoe

Robinson’s journal breaks off here and he begins speaking at length again of his goings-on in general. He is happy to report that he has become able to make more things that he had thought impossible to construct, such as a cask to hold water and a candle (which he makes from the tallow of a killed goat). He also notes that at one point he had shook out the contents of an old bag in which corn had been stored onto the ground. He finds, some time later, that the seeds have — through no tending of his own — begun to sprout. He takes this as another sign of divine providence.
On the 14th of April Robinson finishes his wall, furnishing it not with a door, but with a ladder for climbing over it, just to ensure that it does not appear to be the gateway to a dwelling. But just after he finishes the wall, the ceiling of the cave falls in again, and Robinson finds that he is in the middle of a large earthquake, and stands in awe of the consequent landslides he watches happening all around him. He resolves to move his dwelling from the cave to something that is out from under the earth, so that if an earthquake happens again he’ll be in a less perilous position. It will be a huge job, he realizes, and is reluctant to begin it. He makes a grindstone to help him fashion tools for the construction job. In the middle of the work, though, Robinson realizes that the late hurricane has caused the ship to run aground closer to shore. He is able to walk out to it when the tide is low. He begins dismantling it, reserving the wood, iron and lead for future projects. He works on the wreck until June 15.

June 21
Robinson falls ill and prays to God, he tells us, for the first time since the storm he experienced on leaving Hull.

June 27
In his illness, Robinson hallucinates a man coming down from a raincloud — a huge man, shaking the earth as he steps closer to Robinson. The figure threatens Robinson that because he has not repented for his wayfaring ways and his rebellion against his father, he will die. Robinson imagines the man lifts a spear to kill him. Robinson is inexpressibly horrified, and also reflects on the absolute lack of self-reflection that he’s shown up until this point. He remembers the way in which he did not feel thankful when he was rescued by the Portuguese Captain. He also notes that while when he first landed on the island, he was thankful for his rescue, these feelings subsided into a simple happiness to be alive, without a sense of the divine will by which his salvation must have been delivered. He reflects that he’s become too comfortable on the island. But his sickness, he realizes, brings on thoughts of God again. He prays to God directly now, and asks for help. The next night, when eating his dinner of turtle in the shell, Robinson notices that he says grace for the first time in his life.

A Revelation

As he languishes, Robinson decides that God must have put him on the island for a purpose. Which leads him to the question: why has God done this to him? His conscience quickly answers that this misery is payback for a life of rebellion against his father and repudiation of middle-class comfortability. Before going to bed, Robinson chews some tobacco and drinks some rum — both medicinals he’s learned from the Portuguese. He also says a prayer before bed that night — another first.
When Robinson awakes, he’s miraculously better. He continues his treatment with tobacco and alcohol. As he begins to recover, he worries that if God has thus saved him, what has he done to glorify God? He knees and thanks God out loud. The next morning he begins reading the New Testament. Robinson’s prayers begin to transform: whereas previously he prayed to be delivered from his isolation on the island, or from sickness, he now prays to be delivered from the weight of guilt that he bears for his misspent life, and ceases asking to be delivered from physical afflictions.
Robinson begins to get better and determines to get a better sense of the island’s terrain and layout. He finds meadows that he hadn’t known were there. They boast wild sugar cane and tobacco in abundance. He also locates forests, with grapes and limes growing in them. He begins stockpiling these foods in preparation for the wet season. When he forays out again, he leaves the grapes and limes back at the tent, and on his return he finds that they have been trampled and consumed by a wild animal he has not yet seen. He builds a bower, and hangs grapes from it, having gathered quite a few by the time the rains come. He also plants corn and barley, and experiments through the months of February, March and April with sowing and harvesting techniques.
With what he learns from planting, Robinson reconceptualizes his year on a non-European model. He bases this new year, instead, on the harvesting cycles, and splits it up into four sections: two rainy and two dry. He begins to refer to the bower area and its surrounding crops as his country house, or country “seat�? — a term borrowed from a tradition of British landownership. He takes up wicker-work, fashioning twigs into baskets for corn. As he explores the opposite side of the island further he finds numerous turtles and fowl, and regrets building his home on the barren side, where he washed up. On one of these journeys he gets lost, and since a haze settles over the island for several days, he is unable to use the sun as a guide to find his way home. During this time, his dog injures a young goat and Robinson makes it a collar, and leads the goat to the bower, where he leaves it. He has now been absent from his tent for a full month and is anxious to get back. He resolves to go back and get the goat, though, who had had left without food, and it is so starved that it responds to him as a dog would, following him around for sustenance.

Island Life

He has now been on the island for two years. On the anniversary of this occasion, he thanks God humbly for the luxuries and good fortune he has come across — the abundance of food and his ability to eke out a comfortable existence. He thanks God for making up for his isolation through His presence. He begins to feel as if his solitary existence is in fact happier than the life he had been living in society. He reflects that whereas previously he had walked about the island acutely conscious of his loneliness and his entrapment there, he now feels as if it is more possible to be happy in his solitude than it would be to be happy in civilized society. He thanks God for bringing him to the island.
Robinson embarks on this third year on the island, which he will recount in great detail, he tells us, but which consists mainly of reading the Bible in three separate sittings a day, searching for food every morning for three hours, and preserving and cooking the animals he shoots or fruits and vegetables he gathers and harvests. He works on his corn and barley crops, refining his methods of protecting them from scavenging birds. He teaches himself how to make bread — a turn of events that he is very delighted with, and remarks that he now works for his bread, thus making the idiom quite literal. Robinson is in awe of all the factors that go into something as simple as bread. He spends six months making the tools he needs to grind the grain and make the corn ready for integration into a loaf.
Robinson also acquires a parrot, who he spends time teaching how to speak his name, Poll. This is the first word he hears spoken since he’s landed on the island. He also teaches himself to make sun-baked earthenware pots, by great trial and error. He improves upon this system by fashioning a kind of ad hoc kiln, after which he has pots in abundance. He is now able to make himself a stew. He also equips himself with a mortar and pestle for pounding grains into meal.
Robinson becomes interested in finding the wreck of his boat once again. He travels up the island in search of where it is beached. He uses planks from the boat to fashion a kind of raft-like mechanism large enough to hold himself and all his possessions. Unfortunately, however, he finds himself unable to get the canoe, as he calls it, the 100 yards to the water.
He finishes his third year on the island and reflects on his absolute distance from the civilized world. He conceives himself to be so removed from it as to not even desire to return. What does he enjoy about being apart from Western society? He does not feel lust on the island, first of all. And neither does he feel pride. He covets nothing — he is envious of no-one; who would he have to be envious of? He is in competition with no-one, and must bear the laws of no sovereign. He avoids the pitfalls of luxury, since if he produces more corn than he can eat, for instance, or kills more animals than he can stomach in a reasonable period of time, the meat and vegetables will simply spoil. Robinson decides that the only good things in this world are those that we can use, as opposed to luxury items that exceed our immediate needs. This emotion, of course, is described as in direct contradistinction to the overriding attitude of the Western world.

Not Alone?

Robinson begins to notice that some of the supplies that he brought from the boat are deteriorating or have been almost entirely consumed. His ink, for instance. And his clothes are decaying, which is a problem since without them, he will be unable to bear the sun’s strength. He uses the skins of animals that he’s killed to produce makeshift apparel as well as an umbrella. After some more time passes (Robinson’s now been on the island for five years), he digs a canal from where the canoe is, to the water. He is able to launch it at last. He decides to tour the perimeter of the island on the boat, and makes a mast and sail for it, also fixing the umbrella to it for shade. He sets out on November 6th, in the 6th year of his stay on the island. His voyage quickly turns dangerous, however, as Robinson gets caught up in a current, and finds himself unable to land again on shore. He looks on his island with longing and wishes only to be on shore again. By chance, the next day, the winds change, and he is brought close into shore again, finally able to land.
Of course, Robinson has landed quite a ways from his habitation on the island, and doesn’t want to have to sail back, since the travel was perilous. He stashes the boat on shore and sets off on foot. After some searching, he finds his country house and falls into a sleepy stupor from which he is roused by someone calling his name and asking where he’s been. When he rouses himself enough to focus, he finds that Poll is calling him. He is amazed that the parrot has traveled from the tent to the country house, and welcomes the bird warmly. He spends the next year very sedately, he tells us, working on his earthenware, carpentry and wickerware. He is concerned, however, at the dwindling of his gunpowder — something that he cannot reproduce. He has been on the island for eleven years. He springs traps for goats now, so that he can capture them without wasting gunpowder. Robinson resolves to keep most of the captured goats, to breed them tame instead of shooting wild ones. He sets about enclosing a space of land to keep them in — no small task, of course. He learns to milk the goats and to make butter and cheese. He is pleased with himself, and begins to regard himself less as a prisoner of the island, and rather as its Sovereign. He also refers to his country house and his primary fortification as his two plantations. He imports terminology, in other words, from his former life and applies it to life on the island.
Robinson is determined to get his boat back to his side of the island, and goes back to fetch it. Along the way, he notices that the sea is much calmer than when he had sailed it. He attributes this to tidal flow, and determines to get a sense of when it is more safe to sail. He decides, finally, to build another canoe for the other side of the island, rather than hazard sailing the original one again.
Things proceed swimmingly until Robinson notices the footprint of a man on the shore near his boat. There’s just the one footprint, though. No other tracks coming or going. Robinson is amazed and dumbfounded. He flees home to his tent, which he begins referring to thenceforth as his Castle, since it is fortified against intruders. He decides the footprint must be the work of the Devil in human form, since he thinks it impossible that any other human would have found their way to the island. But then again, he also finds it amusing to imagine that Satan would take human form simply to leave a footprint on a deserted island. Improbable, he thinks, and begins to imagine that it must be the mark of some savage (as he calls them), having traveled by canoe, and come and gone from the island with the currents.

Anxious Preparations