the life and adventures of robinson crusoe

I don’t feel that I even need to go into how horrible that is.Ĭrusoe ends up in Brasil, where he starts a plantation. Upon this, and Xury saying he was willing to go to him, I let the captain have him.” Ugh. Crusoe then sells Xury to the Portuguese captain! He feels conflicted, “not that I was not willing to let the captain have him, but I was very loath to sell my poor boy’s liberty, who had assisted me so faithfully in procuring my own,” but the captain offers to “set him free in ten years, if he turned Christian. Xury is a charming companion who helps Crusoe remain safe and fed until a Portuguese ship picks them up. He contrives to escape and takes a Moorish boy, Xury, with him as he can’t sail his escape vessel all by himself.

Regardless, he sets sail on a ship that gets attacked and captured by a “Turkish rover of Sallee.” Crusoe’s captors sell him into slavery. Who doesn’t dream of a life of servitude?įirst the rudiments of the plot, Crusoe starts out as a headstrong youth, determined to go to sea despite the tearful pleas of his father who begs him not to forsake his easy middleclass setup in England. It’s as if Defoe is so certain of the superiority of British nobility that he thinks natives of other countries are just sitting around hoping that a glorious white nobleman will show up so they can serve him forever. I didn’t know that Crusoe is marooned more than once and I was shocked by the boldly racist and colonial attitudes portrayed in the novel. Despite its fame, I didn’t know much about this book going in.

Generally, I’m not drawn to novels with no female characters. Yeah, that’s right, I made it to 27 without reading Robinson Crusoe.

continually in print since it was first published in 1719.

The life and adventures of robinson crusoe