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Robinson Crusoe (Penguin Popular Classics)

Author: Daniel Defoe
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

9 reviews
Sales Rank: 4208

Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.9 x 4.4 x 1

ISBN: 014062015X
EAN: 9780140620153
ASIN: 014062015X

Publication Date: January 13, 1994
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW and IN STOCK - dispatched within 48 hours from the UK

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Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

Lengthy, but worth it June 25, 2008
The original Robinson Crusoe story is said to have been told by an old sailor in a dark bar in Bristol, and said to be his own. Daniel Defoe heard closely and used it to inspire his novel. Modern authors (like French Le Clezio) made their versions a lot shorter, simpler, well, for kids. Defoe's work is of another dimension, much closer to reality.

3 out of 5 stars

Part Ray Mears Bush Craft, Part Religious Meditation November 14, 2007
Acknowledged to be one of (if not the) first novel, the unexpurgated version of Robinson Crusoe is nothing like the childrens' book that most people grow up with. For starters, the vast majority of pages in the Penguin version are about the practicalities of living alone on a deserted island, including details accounts of catching, enclosing and raising goats, planting crops and strengthening his shelters. As other reviewers have said, this does become repetitive and it's not helped that Defoe interserpeses it with paragraphs wherein Robinson considers the nature of God and the road to salvation. Yes, Crusoe does become a more devout Christian as a result of staying on the island, but it's telling that this starts because of a terror that he's about to die and what will happen to him when he does.

The book begins with an account of Crusoe's upbringing, his determination to go to sea in the face of parental objection and a disastrous voyage that sees him sold into slavery. On his escape (helped by a fellow slave who Crusoe in turn sells into slavery!), he's rescued by a Portugese captain and taken to Brazil where he starts a plantation before his wanderlust takes hold again and he embarks on a voyage to buy slaves in Guinea, a voyage that ends in the shipwreck that leaves him stuck on an island for 28 years.

The casual attitude towards slavery may make modern readers uncomfortable. I was certainly shocked by the way Crusoe on several occassions wishes he had some slaves to work for him and his relationship with Friday is certainly one of benevolent white man bringing God to the savage.

The plot only really gets going in the final 80 pages when Defore introduces cannibals and deserters and has Crusoe engage in two daring rescues. Even now these sections are entertaining and the action really gathers speed as we follow Crusoe's deliverance back to civilisation and ending with a peculiar almost postscript of what happens when he decides to travel by land instead of sea and is attacked by ravenous wolves.

The novel is definitely worth a look, but will likely be unpalatable to some modern readers because of the extensive (and somewhat unconvincing) religious meditations.

5 out of 5 stars

A deep polemic, not a children's story, but a great adventure November 13, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

Reviewers are completely missing the point of this novel. It isn't primarily an adventure story: it is primarily a tract, a polemic against Rome. Nonetheless, taken just as a novel, it is one of the best and most enjoyable I have read.

If your only encounter with Robinson Crusoe so far has been through some children's adaptation, you're in for a real treat. The kids' adaptations remove most of what makes this a good read. There is so much to the plot that I keep remembering twists that I've forgotten.

That said, I found it an extremely gripping novel. Despite the occasionally unfamiliar language, the action is fast-paced and Defoe succeeds in developing a tremendous empathy with his subject. When one realises that it based on the life's story of an actual man, this really hits home. Robinson Crusoe is a candidate for the earliest English novel ever written; nonethless, it is also a serious contender for one of the best novels. Our generation of microwave TV dinners might need our minds expanding before we can appreciate such a feast without complaining that it has no machine guns or aliens and that it pauses to express ideas and offer reflection on the inner thoughts of a real man, but I still claim that it is a truly enjoyable read and one which I would unhesitatingly recommend to anyone.

What makes this a polemic? As the action begins to unfold, the reader thinks that he is in for some moralising: "if only I had listened to my parents and been a good boy." Once Crusoe ends up on his island, things couldn't be more different. He falls in love with the Lord Jesus and follows him. He doesn't do this through a Catholic Priest or any institution, but by reading God's word. He goes from not even having much memory of the religion of his parents, to being a disciple of Christ, then an evangelist and pastor on his little colony. At the time of Defoe's, writing, the notion that one could come into relationship with the living God apart from the institutions of Rome was a bold claim indeed.

These days, the polemic probably works the opposite way. For many evangelicals the notion that there may be more to life in Christ than "me and my Bible (with a bit of help from church to help me get on with 'me and my Bible')" is anathema and smacks of traditionalism or even worse. The fact that one cannot be saved in isolation, the fact that the church isn't a vehicle to salvation but that the church is salvation (as argued, e.g., by Leithart in Against Christianity) is glimpsed in this novel. His walk with Christ doesn't properly unfold until it is part of his relationship with other Christians.

Read it. If you don't enjoy it, you're probably making do with entertainment that is doing little more than stunting your mind.

3 out of 5 stars

Traditional and factual. Hard to complete comapared to modern novels June 24, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

Robinson Crusoe is claimed to be one of the first novel's written in English (1719) and is a fictional autobiography of a man who is from a very average family in England at that time. The story moves from the main characters moving out of his family home and travelling the seas to his eventual shipwreck off the American coast.

I read this book over an extended period of time due to exams in School but also because they book is very laborious with a completely different style of writing to contemporary writers. At times it is written very factually that reminded me of a non-fiction book such as the treatment of certain animals and how to tame them.

For looking into how literature started and an abstract insight into general life in these times, the first part of the book, the story can be of relevance and provide enough stimulation to finish. Also as many reviewers have mentioned before the novel is also allegorical with the classic shipwrecked story on one level and the deep insight into humanity and how humans behave on the other. Despite some believing that this second level of thought provides more entertainment to the story and makes the book worth reading I personally did not find that stimulating.

However despite its downfalls I still believe Robinson Crusoe to be worth reading for its literature value (as in what the book did for literature, moving it along etc), but it also captures the practical issues with being stuck on a desert island very well. If looking for a page-turner I wouldn't advise this book but the storyline is still appealing.

Other links: Defoe went on to write a lesser known sequel: The further adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
Film: Castaway

5 out of 5 stars

Open your eyes. October 14, 2006
11 out of 12 found this review helpful

Just a quickie. Some of the above reviews remind us of how slow and boring this book can be and how repetitive. Well, guys, that's the point. How exciting do you suppose being stranded alone on an Island can be? What would you do to pass the time? Defoe takes us back to a time before T.V etc. Your day would be boring, although eventually menial tasks save ones sanity. Time does pass slowly as it looses relavance. It's not a classic for nothing.