READING GROUP GUIDE ROBINSON CRUSOE

BY DANIEL DEFOE

Restless Classics presents the Three-Hundredth Anniversary Edition of Robinson Crusoe, the classic Caribbean adventure story and foundatio- nal English novel, with new illustrations by Eko and an introduction by Jamaica Kincaid that recontextualizes the book for our globalized, post- colonial era.

Three centuries after Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe, this gripping tale of a castaway who spends thirty years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being ultimately rescued, remains a classic of the adventure genre and is widely considered the first great English novel.

But the book also has much to teach us, in retrospect, about entrenched attitudes of coloni- zers toward the colonized that still resound today. As celebrated Caribbean writer Jamaica Kincaid writes in her bold new introduction, “The vivid, vibrant, subtle, important role of the tale of Robinson Crusoe, with his triumph of individual resilience and ingenuity wrapped up in his European, which is to say white, identity, has played in the long, unin- BUY FROM RESTLESS terrupted literature of European conquest of the rest of the world must not be dismissed or Paperback List Price: $19.99 ignored or silenced.” ISBN: 9781632061195 Publication: 8/27/19 Daniel Defoe (c. 1660 - 1731) was an English writer, journalist, and spy, who gained 5.5” x 8.25” • 384 pages enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest Fiction: Classics/ World Litera- ture / Caribbean/ Adventure/ practitioners of the novel and helped popularize the genre in Britain. Postcolonial Studies Territory: World jamaica kincaid is an Antiguan American author of essays, memoir, stories, and novels. eBook ISBN: 9781632061201 Immigrating to New York at age 16, she became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1976. She is a professor in the department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University and lives in Vermont.

Eko is a Mexican engraver and painter. His wood etchings, often erotic in nature and the focus of controversial discussion, are part of a broader tradition in Mexican folk art popu- larized by José Guadalupe Posada. He is the illustrator of three books in the Restless Clas- sics series: Don Quixote, Frankenstein, and Robinson Crusoe.

“[Robinson Crusoe] is a masterpiece, and it is a masterpiece largely because Defoe has throughout kept consistently to his own sense of perspective… The mere suggestion—peril and solitude and a desert island— is enough to rouse in us the expectation of some far land on the limits of the world; of the sun rising and the sun setting; of man, isolated from his kind, brooding alone upon the nature of society and the strange ways of men.” —Virginia Woolf EXCERPT FROM JAMAICA KINCAID'S INCENDIARY INTRODUCTION

Dear Mr. Crusoe,

Please stay home. There’s no need for this ruse of going on a trading journey, in which

more often than not the goods you are trading are people like me, Friday. There’s no need at

all to leave your nice bed and your nice wife and your nice children (everything with you is

always nice, except you yourself are not) and hop on a ship that is going to be wrecked in a

storm at night (storms like the dark) and everyone

(not the cat, not the dog) gets lost at sea except

lucky and not nice at all you, and you are near

an island that you see in the first light of day and

then your life, your real life, begins. That life in

Europe was nice, just nice; this life you first see

at the crack of dawn is the beginning of your new

birth, your new beginning, the way in which you

will come to know yourself—not the conniving,

delusional thief that you really are, but who you

believe you really are, a virtuous man who can

survive all alone in the world of a little god-forsaken island. All well and good, but why

did you not just live out your life in this place, why did you feel the need to introduce me,

Friday (and I will come to that name), into this phony account of your virtues and your survi-

val instincts? Keep telling yourself geography is history and that it makes history, not that

geography is the nightmare that history recounts. ROBINSON CRUSOE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Crusoe embodies the perfect British colonist — he makes himself the “king” of the island, considers its inhabitants his savage subjects, and attempts to civilize them. What other parallels do you see between the novel and British colonial history? How do the two differ? 2. What are the implications of Crusoe selling Xury to the Portu- guese ship captain? Do you think it’s an unpardonable betrayal, or is Crusoe’s action justified by his desperation to survive? What does this say about the value he places on relationships? 3. Friday’s journey of redemption is complete only upon his assi- milation into Crusoe’s “superior” lifestyle. However, Crusoe also undergoes several changes, from “primitive” to “civi- lized.” Does Crusoe play the role of colonist, colonized, or both? How is his transformation different from Friday’s? 4. Crusoe faces the dilemma of being repulsed by cannibalism yet feeling guilty about forbidding the cannibals from practi- cing it. Ultimately, his own beliefs have precedence over theirs, and he forbids them from cannibalism. What do you think of Crusoe’s decision? Would you have done the same in his place? 5. Crusoe’s relationships with Xury and Friday are diametrically diffe- rent—Xury is his friend, and without his help, Crusoe would not have been able to escape, while Friday is Crusoe’s subject and under his control. What do you think of Crusoe’s treat- ment of the two men? Why does he get rid of Xury but not Friday? 6. How do Crusoe’s superficial claims to care for both Xury and Friday tie in to his complicated relationship with his father? 7. Crusoe repeatedly bemoans his fate and wishes he had taken his father’s advice not to set out to sea. How do you think his life would have been different if he’d stayed at home? 8. What correlations are there between the novel’s overtly masculine themes and the exclusion of female characters, other than Crusoe’s mother? How would this story be different if Crusoe were a woman? SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

9. What are the contradictions in Crusoe’s religious beliefs? How would you describe his spiritual journey? 10. Crusoe meets a diverse range of people during his adventures. Do you think that the message of the book is to embrace this diversity, or to uphold the supre- macy of the white race? 11. While adaptations of Robinson Crusoe vary in narrative focus, one popular theme is homoeroticism. What do you think of Crusoe’s sexual identity? Are there any indications that Crusoe may be exploring his sexuality? 12. Crusoe’s desire to sail stems from a yearning to be free. Despite this, and being a victim of slavery himself, why do you think Crusoe has no qualms about coloni- zing the cannibals? 13. The phrase “Man Friday” originated from this book. What do you make of the term’s common usage considering Crusoe’s struggle with communication throu- ghout the novel? 14. How do you think you would fare if you were shipwrecked on an island without any technological tools at your disposal? 15. Why do you think this novel has survived 300 years? How might the reactions of modern-day readers differ from those of 18th century readers? SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Interested in reading more by Daniel Defoe?

The Storm. 1704 The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. 1719. Captain Singleton. 1720. Memoirs of a Cavalier. 1720. Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With his Vision of the Angelick World. 1720. A Journal of a Plague Year. 1722. Colonel Jack. 1722. Moll Flanders. 1722. Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress. 1724. A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain. 1724. A Plan of the English Commerce. 1728.

Want to learn more about Defoe himself? Check out these biographies

Daniel Defoe: His Life, Paula Backshsider. Defoe’s Early Life, Frank Bastian. Daniel Defoe, Citizen of the Modern World, J. Robert Moore. Daniel Defoe, Francis Waston. OTHER READING GROUP GUIDES AVAILABLE

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