SUMMARY OF ROBINSON CRUSOE BY DANIEL DEFOE

This novel is about a man called Robinson crusoe, he is eponymous character (his name is the title of the book). he is born in the year 1632,in the city of York he has two elder brothers and being the third son of the family, he was not taught any trade, his father trained him for the law profession but Robinson wants nothing but to go to the sea, he speaks to him about his elder brother who was killed because he obstinately goes to war. His father curses him that if he goes to the sea, God will not bless him but he still didn’t listen to his father’s words.

His father also foretells that if he goes abroad, He will be the most miserable wretch that was ever born so his father never gives his consent. Robinson crusoe left home after almost a year and went to sea without asking God’s blessings or his father’s .On the first September,1651, he left to sea. The ship got stuck in a storm, he got sea sick and promises God that if he survives, he will go straight home, the storm calms and becomes worse, they have to abandon ship and it sinks.

His comrades advises him not to go to sea again and compares him to jonah in the bible and tells him this “if you do not go back, wherever you go , you will meet with nothing but disasters and disappointment till your father’s words are fulfilled upon you”. He travels to London by land, He doesn’t go home due to shame. His first forms acquaintance with a master of ship who had been on the coast of Guinea, he went on a voyage with him using his last 40 pounds  to get toys and trifles, he learns the rule of navigation and takes observation of the ship. He earned almost #300 in five pounds and nine ounces of gold dust. They encountered pirates and their ship got dissables with three men killed and eight wounded, they were taken prisoners into sallee.

He stocks the boat with food, gun powder, axe, Hammer, etc .he successfully leaves with another slave called xury. After rowing for days, they got to an island where they find a monster, kill and skin him, then they continue for days and meet some negroes, during that time, he kills a leopard and they give him the skin. He found a Portuguese ship and sold everything with him including xury who agreed to be sold with the conditions to convert to christianity and be set free ten years later.

He arrives Brazil with A lot of money from all he sold to the captains, he stays the house of a good honest man who has a “ingenio” (plantation or sugarhouse). He resolves to get a licence to become a planter. He purchases so much land and plants on it prepares letters to get his money from London. He gets great success in his plantation.

He tells the merchant and planters about his voyages and how much he earns so they tell him in secrecy that they plan to go to guinea, being Negroes on the shore privately and divide them among their own plantation. He agrees to go, Therefore earlier in the novel the author tells us that Robinson’s father told him that if he ever leaves his home and leaves he’ll face disappointments and remain miserable.

He went on board on the 1st of September,1659, this was the same eight years later that he left his father and mother. They take items that they can use to trade with the negroes, their ship sunk, only him survives and ends up sleeping on a tree in an unknown island. When he wakes up in the morning, he finds the ship washed ashore but couldn’t reach it. He starts to cry because of the loss of all other companions, he finally gets to the ship and gets the provisions from the ship to eat and drink. Then he starts a raft with great deals of labour and pains, then he filled it up with “bread, rice, three Dutch cheeses, five pieces of dried goat’s flesh, which we lived much upon, and a little remainder of European corn which had been laid by for some fowls which we brought to the sea with them, but the fowls were killed; He found some barely and wheat together, but his disappointment, he found afterwards that the rats had eaten or spoiled it all.

As for liquors I found several cases of bottles belonging to our skippers. Then he also get ammunition and arms, he spends days on the shore returning to the ship to find anything salvageable until he is able to get everything off the ship.

Robinson prays that if God sent any ship in sight, I might not lose any advantage for my deliverance ,he begins to suggest that God had miraculously caused this grain to grow without help of seed sown, and that it was so directed purely for his sustenance on that wild miserable place. Crusoe spent his entire day thanking God and cursing his past wickedness. Sometimes at his work, he was struck with despair, seeing himself as a prisoner locked in by the ocean. But he read the bible daily and believed that God had not forsaken him.

Crusoe’s arrival doesn’t make him revert to a brute existence controlled by animals, instincts, and unlike animals, he remembers consciousness of himself actually deepens himself awareness as he withdraw from the external social world and turns inward. The idea that the individual must keep careful reckoning of the state of his own soul is a key point in the Presbyterian doctrine that defoe took seriously all his soul is a key point. We see that in his normal day to day activities, crusoe keeps account to himself enthusiastically and in various ways.

For example, it is significant that Crusoe’s make shift calendar does not simply mark the passing of his days on the island. Robinson crusoe outlined his day, including time for a daily reading of the scriptures. He then describes the work it took to build the shelf, a full three days cutting down the trees.

After eating he takes a walk and discovers naturally that God made the earth and the sea, the air and sky. He also believes that nothing happened without his knowledge, God knows why he is here and has appointed all this to befall to him. He takes the bible seriously starts reading the new testament seriously and he prays in true sense for the time.

ROBINSON CRUSOE’s VOYAGES THAT SHAPES THE PLOT OF THE STORY

The adventure of Robinson Crusoe eight voyages in all. The first voyage, set in 1652, takes the adventurous twenty-year old Robinson from his home in York to Great Yarmouth, and then to London. The second voyage takes him on a trading voyage from London to Guinea on the west coast of Africa.

The third voyage is similar in intent, but Robinson is captured by Moorish pirates and held as a slave in Sallee (Rabat). Escaping from the Moors in 1654, Crusoe and Xury head southwards along the African coast until they are picked up by a Portuguese trader who takes them to Brazil where Cruose is able to set up a plantation thanks to the money paid him by the honest Portguese for his boat and other goods. After four years, in 1659 Crusoe is persuaded by the plantation owners to lead a trading voyage back to Guinea to buy slaves, but two storms throw his boat off course and he is finally wrecked on his imaginary island south-east of Trinidad. There he spends 28 years until rescued by another trader who takes him back to England (his sixth voyage)in 1688.

The seventh voyage, in 1689, takes Crusoe to Lisbon, with the aim of travelling back to Brazil to see to his plantation, but his old friend the Portuguese captain conducts all his transactions for him by mail, so Crusoe is able to cash in his considerable resources without crossing the Atlantic. He then returns to London.

Finally, in 1694, Crusoe is encouraged to accompany a nephew on another trading voyage, this time to the East Indies. En route, they call in at his old island and the novel ends with a report of how well the Spaniards he left behind on “his island” have fared in the intervening years. (Source from mapping writing)