Robinson Crusoe, God, fathers

I'm sorry about getting this up so late.
Several others mentioned their dislike of Crusoe's colonialism. I agree. I also found the religious didacticism repellent, combined as it is with a blithe willingness to buy and sell people into slavery. Crusoe's religious beliefs seem related to his imperialist beliefs.

Crusoe believes that God controls everything that happens in the world, that every misfortune is a punishment from God, and that God even caused Crusoe's shipwreck in which all of the other sailors died, the earthquake, and various other misfortunes for the purpose of teaching Crusoe a lesson.

His morality seems shallow to me. I found it funny when, after his illness and his first prayer, he reasons that "some secret Power" created everything, and that "the Power that could make all Things, must certainly have Power to guide and direct them," and then admits that "Nothing occur'd to my Thought to contradict any of these Conclusions, and therefore it rested upon me with the greater Force, that it must needs be" (68). And when Friday asks him why, if God is so powerful, he doesn't kill the devil, Crusoe "pretend[s] not to hear him" because he doesn't have a rote answer. The answer he finally gives is unsatisfying --God will kill the devil one day, after everyone has had a chance to repent. In the meantime, he continues to tempt people to sin. Those who take the bait will be punished. This is the sort of belief system that allows the healthy, wealthy, and successful to smugly believe that they deserve their good fortune and that the less fortunate also get what they deserve. It's a bit like a supernatural version of this country's meritocracy myth.

Crusoe believes that he must trust in God's Providence and that any willfulness or ungratefulness is a sin worthy of punishment. His God demands perfect obedience and submission, not only in deed, but in thought. For instance, when he is nearly cast out to sea after sailing around the island with the hope of finding a way of escape, Crusoe believes that God is punishing him for being unhappy with his lot instead of being grateful for the sustenance that he has received.

Crusoe makes a strong connection between God and paternal authority, saying that his "ORIGINAL SIN" [emphasis in original] was disobeying his father (141). This is also related to his attitudes regarding class. The novel begins with his account of his father's insisting that the middle class are the happiest, and cursing him for his disobedience. Regretting his disobedience, Crusoe says that he has been strickened by the "general Plague of Mankind, [...] that of not being satisfy'd with the Station wherein God and Nature has plac'd them" (141). The wanderlust that brought him into his misfortunes came from his desire as a third son to improve his position, since he would not inherit his father's property. What is a third son to do if he doesn't want to take up a profession? Declare himself "lord" and "king" of an island in the Caribbean. When he first surveys the island, he insists that he is "King and Lord of all this Country indefeasibly" and by "Right of Possession; and if I could convey it, I might have it in Inheritance, as completely as any Lord of a Manor in England" (73). He can then assume the role of a father figure and "master" of the local people. Crusoe says that Friday is attached to him like "a Child to a Father" (151). It is as if he is a member of a father "race," and the "noble sabages" are those who, like Xury and Friday, obey him as good sons obey their fathers, or as good Christians obey God. Despite his fear of the "savages," when Friday's real father and the Spaniard arrive, he assumes that they will be his "Subjects" (174). After his rescue, he takes the role of a father, dividing the island and its wealth among the Europeans who now live there.

Despite his repentance for disobeying his father and not fearing God, he never repents for buying and selling slaves. Near the end of his supposed moral development, he says that his trip to Africa was wrong, not because enslaving people is wrong, but because he should have been satisfied with the slaves that were available for purchase in Brazil (141). When he contemplates killing the cannibals who bring Friday's father and the Spaniard, he admits that God did not appoint him to be "Judge of their Actions" or "Executioner of his Justice," and says that God will "by National Vengeance punish them as a People, for national Crimes" (168). But he attacks them anyway when he sees that one of their captives is a white man.

Crusoe believes that God controls everything that happens. His idea that the "Savages" who don't practice Christianity are receiving a "national punishment" for "national sins" sounds like a justification for the Europeans to take a paternal hand in their fate, ostensibly guiding them and providing them with illumination, but really exploiting them.


A note to myself--the discussion of the devil, fallen angels, and Abraham (157-9) also seems related to paternal authority. And what exactly is going on with the father's talk about the middle class?