Question: Substantiate the view that Robinson Crusoe is as much the story of a man's spiritual development as a story of action and adventure.
Or, “The character of Robinson Crusoe is elaborate to give the action significances relating the story to a world of religious belief and to the inner life of the self.” Show the truth of this opinion.
Or, What changes do the mind and the soul of Robinson Crusoe undergo under the stress of hardship and misfortune?
Or, Write a brief account of the psychological development of the protagonist in Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe.
Or, Trace the spiritual progress of Robinson Crusoe as depicted by Defoe in his novel of that name.
Or, “Crusoe's greatest adventure is his spiritual one.” Amplify.
Answer: Robinson Crusoe is as much the story of a man's psychological development and spiritual progress as a tale of adventure in the physical sense. It would therefore be entirely wrong to describe this novel as a children's story. Robinson Crusoe is very much a novel for the adult reader, and it has an even greater appeal for the thinking adult reader than for the non-thinking adult reader of fiction. This novel tells the gripping story of the hardships and afflictions which the protagonist experiences, but it also gives us an engrossing account of the thoughts, emotions, and moods of the protagonist in various actions and a mirror of thought and feelings. If it depicts the process by which a man achieves a triumph over his (alien and hostile) environment, it also depicts the journey of that man's mind and soul towards God.
In the physical sense, Robinson Crusoe tells us of the hero's adventures on an uninhabited island where he finds himself stranded after a shipwreck in which all his companions perished. As a lonely castaway, the hero Crusoe toils against heavy odds to build himself a suitable habitation and to ensure a steady supply of food to keep himself alive. Making use of the numerous articles which he has been able to retrieve from the wrecked ship, he is able not only to preserve himself on the island but to make his existence fairly comfortable.
The novel is a record of the reflections and cogitations of Crusoe, and of the spiritual development which takes place in him. Having embarked upon his adventurous care every much against the wishes of his father, Crusoe is overtaken by feat and remorse during his very first voyage when his ship is caught in a storm. In this state of fear, he begins to regret his decision to leave his house against his father's advice. He thinks that the storm has been sent by Heaven as a punishment to him for his wicked action in leaving his father's house and his paying no heed to his father's tears and his mother's entreaties. His conscience begins to reproach him for this breach of his duty to God and to his father. In this agony of mind, he forms many resolutions to the effect that, if his life is saved he would go directly home to his father and never again get into a ship.
Crusoe is blessed with good fortune in Brazil where he becomes fairly prosperous. He finds himself in that middle station of life that his father had strongly recommended to him. But he does not feel content with this middle station. His middle station did not satisfy him in England, and it does not satisfy him in Brazil. He now wishes to pursue a "rash and immoderate desire to rise faster than the nature of the thing admitted.” After staying in Brazil for four years or so, he is overcome by his "rambling thoughts and designs” to go on another voyage. This voyage also ends in disaster. All Crusoe's companions perish, and he finds himself a lone survivor on an uninhabited island. He is not staving on a barren island but is able to feed on the meat of animals and birds. He is on a warm island where he does not need much clothing. There are no wild beasts on this island to hurt him. God had wonderfully sent the wrecked ship near enough to the shore so that he was in a position to obtain many necessary and useful things from there. The realization, that the positive side of his life on the island is weightier than the negative side, makes him feel quite cheerful. Here is an important stage in Crusoe's spiritual development.
Having found a rational explanation for this growth, Crusoe pushes his acknowledgment of God's miraculous powers into the background, thus committing a sin. His faith in God is slightly undermined by his feeling of skepticism. Then the island is shaken by an earthquake. But even at this time of danger, he does not utter any serious or ardent prayer, apart from the common words which every human being utters as a matter of routine, those words being: “Lord, have mercy upon me.” When the earthquake has ended, even this routine kind of prayer is forgotten.
The real transformation in Crusoe occurs when he falls ill. He develops a high fever and experiences a severe headache. For a week or so his condition remains almost critical.
Here we have a turning point in the spiritual life of Crusoe. Crusoe now opens his Bible and reads the following words: “Call on me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver, and thou shalt glorify me." These words create a powerful impression on his mind. A few days later he reads those words in the Bible which emphasize the need for repentance in life; and on this occasion Crusoe says aloud: "Jesus, thou son of David, give me repentance.”
It is in a religious mood that Crusoe observes the first anniversary of his arrival on the desolate island. He keeps the first anniversary of his landing on the island as a day of tasting, as a say
of confessing his sins to God, a day acknowledging God's righteous judgments upon him, and a day of praying to God to show mercy to him through Jesus Christ. Thus Crusoe is now a devout Christian, an ardent believer in God and Christ, and also a believer in the efficacy of repentance and prayer.
Having stayed on the island for eighteen years, he one day discovers that his island is sometimes visited by cannibals who come here to feast upon the flesh of the human beings whom they bring as prisoners. Cannibalism is abhorrent to Crusoe. He would like to destroy as many of the cannibals as he can. But he is restrained from doing so by the religious thought that he has no right to sit in judgment upon the cannibals. He has a right to defend himself against an attack by them, but he cannot play the role of a judge, and sentence them to death for eating human flesh. In fact, Crusoe is averse to killing any human being unless it becomes absolutely unavoidable.
We perceive Crusoe's essentially religious maturity also in his mystical tendency. He thinks that a human being often receives secret thins from Providence as to what he should do and which path he should follow. Crusoe's attaching much importance to such mysterious, inexplicable suggestions shows that he believes in some kind of communication between the human spirit and the spirit of God. In his twenty-third year on the island, Crusoe once again recalls the excellent advice of his father, and says that his failure to act upon that advice was his "original sin”. He also says that his original sin and his subsequent mistakes of the same king had been the means of his coming into his miserable condition on this island. Once again he realizes that, if had settled permanently in Brazil where he had already become prosperous, he would have been by now one of the most important planters in that country.
This realization too may be regarded as a step forward in Crusoe's spiritual development. Another important stage in this development is reached when Crusoe begins to teach Friday the Christian religion. Through a laborious effort, he is able to introduce Christian beliefs into Friday's mind. He is able to convert a heathen into a Christian; and, as he himself says, he had not only saved Friday's life but also Friday's soul. Here Crusoe plays the role of a Christian missionary; and, as we know missionaries are among the noblest members of Human society because they are always prompted by the noblest motives.
In the light of this discussion, it would not be straining a point if we say that Crusoe's greatest adventure is his spiritual one. Crusoe's soul is brought very much into prominence in the course of the novel. He often enters into a dialogue with his soul, as it were. All passages of reflection in the novel pertain to critical situations in Crusoe's inner experience. All these passages are episodes in the Puritan drama of the soul or in the spiritual agony of the Christian left alone to discover whether he is to be saved or damned. It is on such occasions that Crusoe truly appears as a hero, and not merely on those occasions when he is giving us the details of his daily life on the island. Crusoe's spiritual adventure may thus be justly regarded as a leading theme of the novel: herein lies also part of the allegorical significance of the novel. Defoe called this novel an allegory of his own soul. Actually, it is an allegory of the souls of all those people who have to go through trying, taxing, tormenting, harrowing, and agonizing experiences in life who are doomed to solitary lives devoid of all fellowship and companionship.
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