This paper is a study of Daniel Defoe's novel, Robinson Crusoe. This novel is considered an adventure story, a moral tale, a commercial accounting and a Puritan fable.

Robinson Crusoe, a travel and shipwreck adventure story, is the prototype of modern European literature. It is supposed to be based on Selkirk sailor story because Defoe himself never experienced a shipwreck. The novel is the product of a prolific writer of narrative realism with great deal of imagination.

It is categorised within the fiction genre, while it seems a realistic story of marvellous insights into human nature, the struggle in relation with God, other races and nature. It is written in a direct style, often journalistic. The action of the story is fully interpreted and commented by the narrator. The novel also represents an internal journey that searches the creation of an identity through the analysis of mental and physical conditions.

The major difference between Robinson Crusoe and other books dating from this time is that the reader can identify himself with the characters. The book is also entertaining and even amusing to read. This represents a big contrast to most contemporary novels that stuck to unreality and dull patterns. At that time, most stories were basically chronicles of wonderful and magic events that did not attempt to resemble any human life.

Robinson Crusoe is a combination of the picaresque novel, as it contains autobiographical patterns, and a personal journal that accounts daily struggle and evolutions, however, it also includes the technic of describing many trivial events in order to make the story more realistic, which has become a common aspect of almost every novel to date.

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