The only class I did at University that dealt with a period of time before the 19th century was an entire class on Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Other than that, I never touched 16th, 17th, or 18th literature. Not that I didn’t want to, but I could never take up those classes along others I really wanted to do, or compulsory classes I had to take from my major and minor. So I never did read Robinson Crusoe until I went to Germany for a few days.
So everyone’s heard of this book – a guy is the sole survivor of a devastating shipwreck, hundreds of miles away from England, and is on the island for almost three decades and learns how to look after himself in the process. It’s been parodied a number of times, and the most famous one is probably Cast Away (with Tom Cruise!). It’s a classic, and I enjoyed reading it…
BUT.
Oh yeah, there’s always a but.
Main critique number 1) WHY the hell is this book not split into chapters? It’s literally blocks of text with no breaks. NO. CHAPTERS. It was very difficult to keep up the concentration with no chapters.
Main critique number 2) Robinson Crusoe feels like such a Mary Sue kind of character. He is So Perfect and So Good at surviving. He always manages to have enough ammunition, or enough food, or always manages to solve the problem in enough time. It’s honestly sickening how he manages to survive for literally thirty years without a hitch. Even his problems turn into minor inconveniences, because he solves them all so quickly. I get being a survivalist, but I’m sure that mentality didn’t exist at the time. And besides, even if he was a survivalist, he wouldn’t have managed all he did on that island in real life at all. Reading this book felt like I was living out Defoe’s epic fantasy where he was asking himself ‘What would I do if I was abandoned on an island?!’. The detail in it is so so so extensive it’s almost boring.
Main critique number 3) I get it, the 17th century was a completely different time. The British were assholes colonizing every corner of the planet. They thought that everything they did was awesome – their language, their religion – and that anywhere they stepped was theirs to claim from the ‘savages’. I get it, I do. But wow I am so glad we’re past that time nowadays. The way Robinson talks about Friday – as if he is lesser than him in every single way because he’s not British – is nauseating. He teaches him English which, fine, I get it, you want someone to communicate with. And I understand the aversion to cannibalism because hey, I’d be freaked out too. But telling him that his God isn’t real, and shitting on his religion like he did is a shit move. This novel exudes the British Colonial Ideal and it seriously made me so glad that we’ve moved past that time now. What really got to me int his regard was the way that Robinson talks about Friday as ‘his man’, and how he makes Friday call him ‘Master’. It just does not go down well with me at all.
Overall, my final rating, because of my bias, is a 3/5. Mostly as well because of how difficult it is to read from a stylistic point of view – what with the no chapters thing and all – this book is a bit of a British Colonialist Wet Dream. And if there’s anything the Maltese hate, it’s the British Colonial mentality.
Buy it here.
Of Scripted Shadows and Painted Words 