Robinson Crusoe: A Covenantal Outline

You can find my earlier posts on Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe here.

THEMES

1. Crusoe shows us that divine providence often works through, rather than in spite of, hardships.
2. Crusoe’s experience on the island demonstrates that hierarchies among people are natural, but intolerance is a sinful distortion of that natural hierarchy.
3. While Crusoe believes that God’s word is true and applicable to daily life, he discovers that its application and explanation is more difficult than it first appears.
4. Crusoe effectively survives on the island, takes care of his charges, and returns home safely because he is able to discern the natural and ethical laws of cause/effect.
5. Crusoe’s biblical analogue is the Prodigal Son, and while Crusoe is never reunited with his earthly father, he is never abandoned by his Heavenly Father.

SYMBOLS

1. The Bible – “I never opened the Bible, or shut it, but my very soul within me blessed God for directing my friend in England, without any order of mine, to pack it up among my goods, and for assisting me afterwards to save it out of the wreck of the ship.” The Bible comes to represent God’s providential care.
2. The human footprint – “It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition.” The footprint comes to represent people who are both absent and present on Crusoe’s island. He both wants companions and fears them. It is only in their absence that he can find God, but it is only in their presence that he can find his way home.
3. The Cave – “I fancied myself now like one of the ancient giants who were said to live in caves and holes in the rocks, where none could come at them; for I persuaded myself, while I was here, that if five hundred savages were to hunt me, they could never find me out—or if they did, they would not venture to attack me here.” “They conveyed them to the cave as to a prison: and it was, indeed, a dismal place, especially to men in their condition.” – Crusoe’s cave is a place of shelter and a place of imprisonment. It symbolizes the law of God, which if someone follows is a source of blessing and if someone disobeys is a source of cursing.
4. The island – “In the relating what is already past of my story, this will be the more easily believed when I shall add, that through all the variety of miseries that had to this day befallen me, I never had so much as one thought of it being the hand of God, or that it was a just punishment for my sin—my rebellious behaviour against my father—or my present sins, which were great—or so much as a punishment for the general course of my wicked life.” The island is both a punishment for Crusoe’s sins and a means of redemption as he later discovers. It is here that Crusoe meets God.
5. The sea – “[T]he seafaring life, which of all lives is the most destitute of the fear of God, though His terrors are always before them…” The sea symbolizes both God’s eternal judgment as well as the life that comes through baptism and regeneration. Crusoe spiritually “dies” during his shipwreck, and through this baptism of exile, he finds new life. He tastes God’s wrath and then experiences his mercy.

CONTEXT: BIOGRAPHICAL and HISTORICAL

1. Defoe was born into a Dissenter’s family. They were Non-Conforming Presbyterians who opposed the Anglican Church and the Catholic monarchy.
2. Defoe supported William of Orange’s accession in the 1688 Glorious Revolution.
3. Defoe was a journalist who satirical pamphlet The Shortest Way with the Dissenters landed him in prison for sedition. 
4. While Defoe attempted various businesses, his most successful professional efforts involved writing, whether as a journalist, a propagandist/spy, or novelist.
5. Crusoe is most known for his novels–Robinson Crusoe, Roxana, Colonel Jack, and Moll Flanders--rather than the voluminous other political tracts, letters, and poems he wrote (an edition of his selected works is over 40 volumes long).

1. Following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Non-Dissenters were allowed freedom of worship and education in England.They could not, however, hold public office or attend universities. The same held for Roman Catholics who continued to be denied even the right to worship.
2. During Crusoe’s writing of the book, George I was king of Great Britain, and he successfully resisted Catholic attempts to substitute the Great Pretender James Stuart. The book is set during the 1660s where Charles II would have returned to the English throne after the failed Interregnum.
3. The Sedition Act was made law in 1661 after Charles II assumed the throne. Defoe was later incarcerated for breaking this act in a pamphlet that proposed crucifying dissenters.
4. Alexander Selkirk is the real life model for Crusoe. He asked to be left on an island and was there for over four years. Selkirk did not fare as well as Crusoe and left the island traumatized.
5. Many scholars acknowledge Robinson Crusoe as the first example in English of realistic fiction.