Robinson Crusoe

by Daniel Defoe

Robinson Crusoe is a story about loneliness.

How does Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe avoid the madness that overtakes the heroes of the films by Buñuel and Zemeckis? He works, and therein lies a major key to the book’s enduring appeal. Crusoe informs the reader that he is ‘‘very seldom idle’’

Crusoe reflects at length on the ways of Providence—how God ordains different conditions and fates for different kinds of men—and the text thereby suggests that Friday and his whole race were created as natural servants of European man.

The racism in the book was distasteful.