Prophetic Lessons in Robinson Crusoe

A Critical Paper Presented to Prof. John Hotchkiss

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of English Novel

by Peter G. Epps

December 17, 1998

Prophetic Lessons in Robinson Crusoe

Defoe's Robinson Crusoe has generated significant critical commentary; 280 years after its publication, it continues to be regarded as a significant milestone in the development of the English novel—and indeed the novel form as a whole. Its development of a consistent plot composed of continuing actions in addition to the episodic actions, its interest in characterization and contemporary relevance are all touchstones for commentary and controversy. In a recent article (reviewing Ian Watt's new book Myths of Modern Individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe), Tzvetan Todorov summarizes its main action as follows:

Robinson Crusoe (1719) is a young man who dreams of adventure. His father is opposed to his plans, but the son ignores his prohibition and sets off on a ship. His fate leads him through various incidents, until the day when Crusoe is shipwrecked and finds himself stranded on a desert island. By working like a demon, he is able, eventually, to lead a fairly comfortable and agreeable life; one day he saves a young savage and names him Friday. After twenty-eight years, he manages to head for home on another ship, accompanied by his servant, Friday. There he learns that his parents are both long dead (Todorov).

This is, of course, only a brief summary—all plots need not even be mentioned. Still, in peeling back the layers of meanings that Defoe puts into this novel narrative, religious and political concerns vie for importance; and it is important to note some of the elements which a plot summary such as this omits: namely, the connections between the father's warnings and the son's consequences—and their parallel to the leadings of divine providence. Since Crusoe puts great stress on the role of divine intervention in his life, it is incumbent upon the thoughtful reader to pay close attention to the prophetic utterance of the father and its specific consequences. These consequences are important to Defoe on each of the three levels named above (narrative, political, religious); to ignore them is to be missing important pieces of the novel's total meaning.

Of course, on a narrative level most of the above is true. And Todorov (using Watt's analysis) is quick to point out that this and plots like it fit a single category:

They are all punitive. In each instance, the hero challenges the norms of society in order to follow the desire that moves him … Crusoe wants to experience adventures and rebels against his father's orders … [and] is condemned to long years of solitude and exhausting labor before being allowed to return home.

So far as this goes, it describes the basic narrative flow of the plot—it is the cycle from home to the sea and back by way of misadventures that interests the reader, and it is Crusoe's rebellion against his father that sets the ominous pattern of misfortune in motion. However, there is lacking from this reading of the plot a sense of why fate should choose to punish Crusoe so severely for a fault common in his time. It is only when close attention is paid to the foreshadowing and other narrative devices Defoe uses in opening his tale that the strong binding of the natural forces which drive Crusoe—an almost tragic situation—become apparent. These are the forces of Providential intervention set in motion by his father's prophecy and prayers. Crusoe informs the reader that "my Father, a wise and grave Man, gave me serious and excellent Counsel against what he foresaw was my Design" (3). There is no doubt in the mature Crusoe's mind that his father correctly saw the outcome of the escape to the seas; he reinforces this by recounting his father's speech, which concludes, "Tho' he said he would not cease to pray for me, yet he would venture to say to me, that if I did take this foolish Step, God would not bless me, and I would have Leisure thereafter to reflect upon having neglected his Counsel when there might be none to assist my Recovery" (6). Crusoe acknowledges that his father's prophecy was more accurate than he could have imagined, when he says that the end of the speech "was truly Prophetick, tho' I suppose my Father would not know it to be so himself" (6). It is this bond between the prophecy which Crusoe informs the reader will come to pass and the fulfillment to come that glues the narrative plot together.

The prophecy serves more than a narrative role; it is also a device of Defoe's political expression. In the speech which Crusoe's father gives, the primary appeal is from the middle-class values of his merchant parents:

He ask'd me what Reasons more than a mere wandering Inclination I had for leaving my Father's House and my native Country, where I might be well introduced, and had a Prospect of raising my Fortune by Application and Industry, with a Life of Ease and Pleasure He told me it was for Men of desperate Fortunes on one Hand, or of aspiring, superior Fortunes on the other … that these things were all either too far above me, or too far below me; that mine was the middle State, or what might be called the upper Station of Low Life, which he had found by long Experience was the best State in the World (3,4).

A lengthy encomium on the advantages of middle-class living follows. This emphasis on the worth and value of the life of the merchant class, of those who "by Application and Industry" raise fortunes, is in accordance with Defoe's political alignment. The political agenda in Robinson Crusoe is thus served by showing the disturbances and unease which resulted from Crusoe's rejection of the middle-class standard; his fortunes are made when, at last, the means he has laid by along the way (the outworkings of his father's good teaching) are multiplied by his acceptance of those values against which he once rebelled. As Todorov says: "His curse becomes blessing. He is not all that unhappy on his island, and when he returns home he discovers that his earlier expeditions have made him rich." The prophetic nature of his father's utterance makes this more than a passing theme, however; that the father could with such accuracy predict the course of events based on his son's rejection of the middle- class value system shows more clearly than anything else the universality and inescapability of those laws of nature by which the middle class (according to Defoe) tend to gain the greatest advantage, and incur the least harm, from all the changes of civil society. Without the prophecy, the connection between this lecture and Crusoe's later contemplations is weakened.

The final, and strongest, aspect of the plot which is bound to the prophecy is the religious. This religious aspect pervades both the narrative and political; Crusoe's rebellion against his father is not only a plot device and a social crime, but a spiritual sin as well. Crusoe defies, not only his father's command, but a definite portent from God; after his first voyage ends in shipwreck (off the cost of Britain), he is told

Young Man, says he, you ought never to go to Sea anymore, you ought to take this for a plain and visible Token that you are not to be a Seafaring Man … as you had made this Voyage for a Tryal, you see what a Taste Heaven has given you of what you are to expect if you persist; perhaps this is all befallen us on your account, like Jonah in the Ship of Tarshish (14)..

This is accompanied by another prophetic warning:

Depend on it, if you do not go back, where ever you go, you will meet with nothing but Disasters and Disappointments, till your Father's Words are fulfilled upon you" (17).

This reinforcement of the Providential message from Crusoe's father and captain is steadfastly ignored. In the end, it is only the experience of the island—and that only after some time—that brings Crusoe to the point of readiness to accept God's real presence in his life, and to begin to assent to God's will. In a fit of fever, Crusoe cries out, "Lord look upon me, Lord pity me, Lord have Mercy upon me" (103); the result is a sudden storm, and a vision of a Man terrible and beautiful to behold, who says, "Seeing all these things have not brought thee to Repentance, now thou shalt die" and makes as if to kill him (103). It is this experience, as Crusoe recounts, that finally brought him into an awareness of his state before God and his need to accept God's remedy. It is at this point that Crusoe begins the reversal of his fortunes, when he finally begins to accept his father's counsel:

The good Advice of my Father came to my Mind, and presently his Prediction, which I mentioned at the Beginning of this Story, viz. That if I did take this foolish step, God would not bless me; and I would have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected his Counsel, when there might be none to assist in my Recovery. Now, said I aloud, my dear Father's Words are come to pass; God's Justice has overtaken me, and I have none to help or hear me … Then I cry'd out, Lord be my Help, for I am in great Distress.
This was the first prayer, if I may call it so, that I had made for many Years (107).

The religious conversion of Robinson Crusoe through the realization of his father's prophecy is the narrative crux, as well as warrant for the central political argument, of the book. Any critical view of the major plots of Robinson Crusoe which leaves out the role of the prophecy against him will be, to some extent, skewed. The prophecy is the focal point for the book, the reason the island scenes are the most gripping and important, and the germinal point for the applications to political and religious life that Defoe chose to make.

Works Cited:

Todorov, Tzvetan. "No Man is an Island" The New Republic (Washington: New Republic, March 25, 1996 ) on ProQuest Direct (http://proquest.umi.com/pdqweb)

Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe (1719): a machine-readable transcript (Cambridge: Chadwyck- Healey, 1996) in Eighteenth-Century Fiction Full-Text Database (http://lion.chadwyck.com/)