Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

I just felt like reading an antiquated work of fiction, where it may be observ'd an earlier state of the English language; and may thus allow me notice of the stages to its actual transfiguration. Robinson Crusoe was published in 1719, so exactly 300 years prior to today.

Robinson Crusoe recounts his tale of shipwreck and from this posterior perspective he tells of his foolish youthful desires for adventure, going against his father's counsel and wishes, against his father's insistence that the "middle state" is best and most conducive to happiness.

Crusoe runs away from home, and after many adventures he is the only survivor of a storm on a deserted island, where he will be stuck for 28 years. Two thirds of the novel recounts his gradual mastery of his condition, the last third is a bit more exciting and recounts his encounters with cannibals and mutineers.

Robinson Crusoe demonstrates a certain colonial/protestant ideology of 17th/18th century England (I do not know the precise terminology for it), an ethics of work, individualism, and cultivation over nature (as a pure, primordial state). Crusoe goes from a scared victim of shipwreck to regulating order (culture) onto the island (pure state of nature) through agriculture, domesticating animals, familiarizing himself with weather patterns, building tools, etc. While in this active pursuit of order he submits himself to God and God's will, repenting on his sinful ways of the past, cultivating himself as a refined religious subject.

The practice of cultivation is also a form of colonialism. Crusoe saves a 'savage' from other cannibalistic savages and names him Friday. Friday conforms to the image of the noble savage, a nostalgic image of purely natural and innocent man and Crusoe teaches him and reforms him, teaching to eat goat stew and bread instead of human flesh, and to worship the one and only God instead of his primitive deity. After finding some more stragglers on his island, he fancies himself a king with subjects under his island dominion.

While reading Robinson Crusoe, I almost felt nostalgic at this possibility of an untouched island in a pure, natural state. The beaches of an unpeopled island are now probably littered with plastic waste, the material vestiges of human culture. Even if free from the traces of human materiality, the island is already "known" in the virtual world, represented by Google maps.

An uninhabited island. Even if I were to make it my space of solace, it is impossible to disappear and escape the gaze of the state and the gaze of Google, as my digital footprint will linger forever.it.

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