Book #4: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

This is one of the classics that I wanted to read last year but never got around to it until January. I powered through it during naptime today because I wanted to have finished at least four books this month! I didn't get to read as much this month as I would have because I spent almost every nap time working on my class stuff and planning for the semester. Things are a little more calm now so I should have at least one or two days a week I can read, plus more in the evenings too.

So anyway--this book. I read it on my iPhone since I couldn't find a good copy at the library, which means I did most of my reading while at the gym this month. I knew the basic story of Robinson Crusoe, of course (although it was only a few years ago that I found out it wasn't Robinson CArusoe instead of Crusoe) and I remember learning in college that it was the first novel written in English (although now that I look that up there are a lot of books that claim that privilege). I feel like this is one I should have read eons ago because of that little tidbit, but now I finally have. I enjoyed the first half of the novel the best, where he describes how he ended up on the island and how he made his life there. I think that must be a normal human trait, to be fascinated by these survival techniques. He's like the original survivor reality TV show, getting dropped on an island and having to survive and figure out how to get food for himself. It reminded me of some parts of the Little House on the Prairie series, where she goes into such descriptive detail about how they did all of these little now-extinct processes for providing the most basic requirements of life. He figures out how to hunt and breed the goats native to the island, he makes grapes and plants corn and barley, he builds and protects his little home and makes baskets and pots and a wheat mill and all sorts of things--and he tells in detail how he managed them. I thought this was the most interesting part.

I kind of lost interest when the focus of the story became more on Friday, the native that he saved from the savages and made his servant. Crusoe is incredibly imperialistic and dismissive of Friday's background (as can only be expected in a book published in 1719) but it's a little uncomfortable to read in today's day and age. Eventually they save more hostages and after that are rescued by a stranded English ship that happens to end up by the island. The book ends with a few other kind of random adventures (like him traveling through France to get back to England and being set upon by 300 wolves) which are very anticlimactic-feeling. But I guess since this was among the first novels ever, you can't complain that he didn't follow a traditional novelistic plot line.

Crusoe talks a lot about his religion and how at first he didn't really believe in God or live as he should, but that he becomes more devout the more time he spends on the island (where he has a Bible he scrounged from the ship). I thought it was really interesting to read what I imagine was a common view of God at the time (Defoe's view?), that God was actively doing everything TO him, that his life was a punishment or a reward for what he did, instead of my belief that God knows what is happening to us and helps us to deal with our trials, but that it's not all just reactionary like that. I actually really liked some of the things Defoe described, particularly when Crusoe is recognizing his gratitude to God for his blessings instead of the obvious trials of living alone on an island. He says, "In a word, as my life was a life of sorrow in one way, so it was a life of mercy another, and I wanted noting to make it a life of comfort but to be able to make my sense of God's goodness to me, and care over me in this condition, be my daily consolation... I learned to look more upon the bright side of my condition, and less upon the dark side, and to consider what I enjoyed rather than what I wanted; and this gave me sometimes such secret comforts, that I cannot express them; and which I take notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it, who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them, because they see and covet something that He has not given them. All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have." Although I KNOW that Crusoe is an imaginary character going through an imaginary thing, I want to remember that idea--that even a guy on a desert island can be grateful for his blessings and focus on the positive, and so can I.