Robinson Crusoe: A Mans Discovery of Himself, Civilization, and God. E

Robinson Crusoe A Mans Discovery of Himself, Civilization, and God. hardly roughly everyone can recite the highlights of Robinsons adventures A man is shipwrecked with come forward resources on a desert island, survives for historic period by his own wits, undergoes immeasurable anguish as a result of his isolation, discovers a footprint in the sand that belongs to Friday, and is at long last rescued from his exile. Unfortunately, all of this is wrong. But more significant than any of these lucubrate is that our overall perception of Robinson Crusoe is wrong. The single most important fact about this boys adventure book is that it is not a boys adventure book at all. It is, rather, a grown-up tale of a mans discovery of himself, civilization, and God. As Defoes book begins, Robinson Crusoe of York commits what he calls his Original Sinhe spurns his fathers advice to join the family business and instead heads out to sea. Robinson is self-willed, arrogant, and hungry for exploit s. Catastrophes ensuestorms, shipwrecks, and slaverybut the lad continues in his follies. I was, he confesses, to be the willful Agent of all my own Miseries. and so providence gives him a second chance, shipwrecking him on an Atlantic island, whose features roughly rack up those of the Juan Fernandez group in the Pacific Ocean where Robinsons real-life prototype, Alexander Selkirk, passed seven years in solitude. Robinsons island is a pristine land of surpassing beauty. To its forlorn outset inhabitant, it seems nothing short of Eden the Country appeard so fresh, so green, so flourishing, every thing being in a constant Verdure, or Flourish of Spring, that it looked like a planted Garden. In this paradise Robinson builds a new homewithout Eve... ...ledge the enormity of our task for when before has a unconsecrated culture rebuilt itself on sacred foundations? We need solutions as ingenious as any devised by our industrious hero. Like Robinson, we must never despair like Rob inson, we must find strength in prayer. It helps to bear in mind that it is we who have uprooted God from our homes, schools, books, arts we have cast ourselves adrift. God, the outmatch mariner, never abandons his children. We do well to remember, too, that Robinson found salvation in a plight more desperate than ours. Then, perhaps, we can relish the truth in Walter de la Mares heartfelt remark about Defoes finest creation Even to specify of his admirable hermit is to be cheerful and to take heart of grace. Bibliography Zaleski, Philip. The unsung Shipwreck of Robinson Crusoe. First Things 53 (May 1995) 38-44.