Today, anyone who endures an ordeal like Robinson Crusoe’s can expect the eyes of the world upon him: a book deal; a film or documentary; a lucrative turn on the motivational speaking circuit. Think Aron Ralston, who amputated his arm to free himself from a boulder in Utah’s Bluejohn Canyon. Think Joe Simpson, who, left for dead in the Peruvian Andes by his climbing partner, crawled to safety. Think Steven Callahan, who weathered 76 days on a life raft in the Atlantic. “My God! Who’s that?” he wrote of first looking into a mirror post-rescue. “The face I see is straight out of Robinson Crusoe.”
We all know that face, the brown, bearded, impassively skeletal face of the true survivor. We know its story, too, even if we have not actually read its original, the harrowing tale Daniel Defoe published three centuries ago.
The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner is often supposed to have its own original in Captain Woodes Rogers’s account of the sailor Alexander Selkirk’s time alone on one of the uninhabited Juan Fernández Islands. In fact, Selkirk was not even marooned, let alone shipwrecked, but rather left behind at his own request on an island from which he could expect eventual rescue. Defoe was familiar with this and other tales of seafaring, privateering, piracy and adventure. Yet the elements of his tale that speak to the soul—both words of inspiration and words of rebuke—issue from Defoe’s battle-tested Puritan faith, his striking psychological insight, and his genius.
Not to mention that he was deeply acquainted with vicissitude and failure. That Robinson Crusoe is the missing link between the Book of Job and the parable of the Prodigal Son, on the one hand, and the inspirational or self-help literature of today, on the other hand, will make sense to anyone familiar with his biography.
Defoe, son of a tallow chandler, squandered financial advantages; pursued zany get-rich-quick schemes (producing musk from the anal glands of civets, for instance, or hunting for sunken treasure with a diving bell); made powerful enemies through his career as a pamphleteer; and was once dismissively referred to by Jonathan Swift as “the Fellow that was pilloryed, I have forgot his Name.” By presenting Robinson Crusoe as “Written by Himself,” a brilliant marketing gimmick, Defoe anticipated the “I slay all day, and you can, too” tone of today’s TED talk gurus and corporate leadership consultants.
What distinguishes Robinson Crusoe from the flotsam and jetsam of #inspo and business books—apart from the coruscating complexity of its 18th-century prose—is its ambivalence toward ambition and its disdain for human vanity. Young Crusoe is told by his father “that it was for Men of desperate Fortunes on one Hand, or of aspiring, superior Fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon Adventures, to rise by Enterprize, and make themselves famous in Undertakings of a Nature out of the common Road.” Greed, whether for money, experience, or forbidden knowledge, leads to disaster. Whether disaster is always a bad thing, Defoe lets the reader decide.
Robinson Crusoe counts God or “Providence” as a main character, and as Crusoe meets the challenges of solitary survival, he devotes much mental exertion to justifying God’s ways to men. One may read this with an ecumenical “Higher Power” in mind, as adherents of Alcoholics Anonymous do. An atheist may simply appreciate the perspective that “Providence” provides. Man is small, and never more so than when viewed from a height, tempest-tossed or clinging barnacle-like to a rock in a vast, thoughtless sea.
Defoe is merciless about man’s tendency to bargain—be it with God or with the annihilating immensity of nature—and then conveniently to forget his promises. Crusoe recognizes the absurd uselessness of the gold and silver he has on his island, but he is cynical enough to keep it close at hand. Defoe believed that man would commit any misdeed or compromise any principle to advance himself or save his skin. This attitude came unwittingly from experience: Defoe approved of slavery, and though Crusoe trades in slaves it is never presented as the cause of his providential suffering. Crusoe’s use of the native he names Friday has long led critics to view him as the consummate imperialist.
Defoe’s careful examination of the loneliness and fear that are man’s inheritance makes it clear that he is not without sympathy. And for all his ostensible contempt for hubris, he respects man the problem-solver, the inventor, the builder, the unkillable mosquito in God or nature’s ear. He shows that man cannot happily live in safety all the time. He must dwell in tension between hearth and hazard.
And Defoe presents optimism as a supreme human technology. When Crusoe devises, prefiguring a self-help gratitude exercise, a list headed GOOD and EVIL, he marks in the GOOD column that “I am alive, and not drown’d as all my ship’s company was.” For the hardiest of our species, Defoe has reminded us for the past 300 years, this may be all the encouragement we need.