The main characters are Robinson Crusoe, a sailor from York and a savage Friday. the main idea book is that a person can achieve well-being even on a desert island, if he works and tries.

The main characters of "Robinson Crusoe"

• Robinson Crusoe - sailor from York
• Savage Friday
• Xuri
• Portuguese ship captain
• Hispanic

Robinson Crusoe was born in 1632 in rich family in the city York. The father saw his son in the future lawyer. But Robinson thought only of sea ​​voyages.

September 1, 1651 Robinson Crusoe, without asking permission from his parents, went on a trip. The first voyage was unsuccessful because the ship sank during a storm. Having escaped and survived the shock, Robinson again went to sea. This time, pirates attacked the ship, which sailed to the shores of Guinea, and the young man was captured. Only through 2 years. Robinson managed to escape. Over time, Crusoe found himself in Brazil, and became the owner sugar plantation. On September 1, 1659, the restless young man again went to Guinea to buy slaves. But the ship during the storm was impossible to save. Robinson was the only one who managed to survive.

When Robinson was on the island, he first of all moved everything he needed from the ship and built housing. He tried to leave the island and even built a boat. But he could not launch the boat himself.

Robinson learned a lot on the island, such as making and maintaining a fire, making candles from goat fat. Crusoe was also able to feed himself, for example, by making cheese and butter from goat's milk. The hero tries to make dishes from clay, furniture, improves his house. He learned on the island to process skins, weave baskets, cultivate the land, grow grain, bake bread.

“Before that, I had never picked up any tool,”

"... the carpenter of me was bad, and the tailor was even worse." Over time, "improved in all crafts." “... Time and need soon made me a jack of all trades. So it would be with everyone in my place, "- said Robinson Crusoe

Robinson adheres to all civilized habits, strives to bring a certain aesthetics to his life, which he is used to at home.

Robinson even begins a new chronology on the island, for he is cut off from the world.

Robinson Crusoe not only managed to defeat himself, his fear, despair, he was reborn: he managed to rethink and reevaluate his life. The uninhabited island became the place of his spiritual rebirth, realizing himself as a Man with a capital letter, unique and priceless.

Daniel Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" was a truly innovative work of its time. Not only its genre feature, realistic tendencies, natural manner of narration and pronounced social generalization make it such. The main thing that Defoe achieved is the creation of a novel of a new type, what we now mean when we talk about this literary concept. English lovers probably know that there are two words in the language - "romance" and "novel". So, the first term denotes the novel that existed until the 18th century, a literary text that includes various fantastic elements - witches, fairy-tale transformations, witchcraft, treasures, etc. The novel of the new time - "novel" - implies exactly the opposite: the naturalness of what is happening, attention to the details of everyday life, orientation towards reliability. The latter succeeded the writer as well as possible. Readers really believed in the veracity of everything written, and especially fierce fans even wrote letters to Robinson Crusoe, to which Defoe himself answered with pleasure, not wanting to remove the veil from the eyes of inspired fans.

The book tells about the life of Robinson Crusoe, starting at the age of eighteen. It was then that he leaves his parental home and goes on an adventure. Even before reaching a desert island, he experiences many misfortunes: he twice falls into a storm, is captured and endures the position of a slave for two years, and after fate seemed to have shown its favor to the traveler, endowed him with moderate prosperity and profitable business, the hero rushes into a new adventure. And this time, he already remains alone on a desert island, life on which constitutes the main and most important part of the story.

History of creation

It is believed that Defoe borrowed the idea of ​​​​creating a novel from a real incident with one sailor - Alexander Selkirk. The source of this story most likely came from one of two sources: either Woods Rogers' Sailing Around the World, or an essay by Richard Steele in The Englishman. And this is what happened: a quarrel broke out between the sailor Alexander Selkirk and the captain of the ship, as a result of which the first was landed on a desert island. He was given the necessary supply of provisions and weapons for the first time and landed on the island of Juan Fernández (Juan Fernández), where he lived alone for more than four years, until he was noticed by a passing ship and brought to the bosom of civilization. During this time, the sailor completely lost the skills of human life and communication; it took him time to adapt to the past conditions of life. Defoe changed a lot in the history of Robinson Crusoe: his lost island moved from the Pacific to the Atlantic, the hero's life on the island increased from four to twenty-eight years, while he did not run wild, but, on the contrary, was able to organize his civilized life in pristine conditions. wildlife. Robinson considered himself its mayor, established strict laws and regulations, learned to hunt, fish, farm, weave baskets, bake bread, make cheese and even make pottery.

From the novel, it becomes clear that the ideological world of the work was also influenced by the philosophy of John Locke: all the foundations of the colony created by Robinson look like an arrangement of the philosopher's ideas about government. Interestingly, in the writings of Locke, the theme of the island, which is out of any connection with the rest of the world, was already used. In addition, it is precisely the maxims of this thinker that most likely imposed the author’s convictions about the important role of labor in human life, about its influence on the history of the development of society, because only hard and hard work helped the hero create a semblance of civilization in the wild and preserve civilization himself .

Life of Robinson Crusoe

Robinson is one of three sons in the family. The elder brother of the protagonist died in the war in Flanders, the middle one went missing, so the parents were triple worried about the future of the younger. However, he was not given any education; from childhood, he was mainly occupied with dreams of sea adventures. His father persuaded him to live measuredly, to observe the "golden mean", to have a reliable honest income. However, the offspring could not get out of his head childhood fantasies, a passion for adventure, and at the age of eighteen, against the will of his parents, he went on a ship to London. Thus began his journey.

On the very first day, there was a storm at sea, which pretty much frightened the young adventurer and made him think about the insecurity of the journey he had taken and about returning home. However, after the end of the storm and the usual booze, doubts subsided, and the hero decided to go further. This event became a harbinger of all his future misadventures.

Robinson, even as an adult, never missed an opportunity to embark on a new adventure. So, having settled down well in Brazil, having his own very profitable plantation, making friends and good neighbors, having just reached that very “golden mean” that his father once told him about, he agrees to a new business: to sail to the coast of Guinea and secretly purchase slaves there to increase the plantations. He and the team, only 17 people, set off on a fateful date for the hero - the first of September. Sometime on the first of September, he also sailed on a ship from home, after which he suffered many disasters: two storms, capture by a Turkish corsair, two years of slavery and a difficult escape. Now a more serious test awaited him. The ship again fell into a storm and crashed, his entire crew died, and Robinson was alone on a desert island.

Philosophy in the novel

The philosophical thesis on which the novel is built is that man is a rational social animal. Therefore, the life of Robinson on the island is built according to the laws of civilization. The hero has a clear daily routine: it all began with reading the Holy Scriptures, then hunting, sorting and cooking the killed game. In the remaining time, he made various household items, built something or rested.

By the way, it was the Bible, taken by him from the sunken ship along with other essentials, that helped him gradually come to terms with his bitter fate of a lonely life on a desert island, and then even admit that he was still that lucky, because all his comrades died, and he life was given. And for twenty-eight years in isolation, he not only acquired, as it turned out, the much-needed skills of hunting, farming, various crafts, but also underwent serious internal changes, embarked on the path of spiritual development, came to God and religion. However, his religiosity is practical (in one of the episodes, he distributes everything that happened in two columns - “good” and “evil”; in the “good” column there was one point more, which convinced Robinson that God is good, He gave him more than he took) - a phenomenon in the 18th century.

Among the enlighteners, who was Defoe, deism was widespread - a rational religion based on the arguments of reason. It is not surprising that his hero, without suspecting it, embodies the philosophy of enlightenment. So, in his colony, Robinson gives equal rights to the Spaniards and the British, professes religious tolerance: he considers himself a Protestant, Friday, according to the novel, is a newly converted Christian, the Spaniard is a Catholic, and Friday's father is a pagan, besides also a cannibal. And they all have to live together, but there are no conflicts on religious grounds. The heroes have a common goal - to get off the island - and for this they work, not paying attention to confessional differences. Labor becomes the center of everything, it is the meaning human life.

It is interesting that the story of Robinson Crusoe has a parable beginning - one of the favorite motifs of English novelists. "The Parable of the Prodigal Son" is the basis of the work. In it, as you know, the hero returned home, repented of his sins before his father and was forgiven. Defoe changed the meaning of the parable: Robinson, like the "prodigal son" who left his father's house, emerged victorious - his work and experience ensured a successful outcome.

The image of the main character

The image of Robinson can not be called either positive or negative. It is natural and therefore very realistic. Youthful recklessness, pushing him to more and more adventures, as the hero himself says at the end of the novel, remained with him in adulthood, he did not stop his sea travels. This recklessness is completely contrary to the practical mind of a man, who is accustomed to think through every little thing in detail on the island, to foresee every danger. So, one day he is deeply struck by the only thing that he could not foresee - the possibility of an earthquake. When it happened, he realized that a collapse during an earthquake could easily fill up his dwelling and Robinson himself, who was in it. This discovery made him seriously frightened and moved the house to another, safe place as quickly as possible.

His practicality is manifested mainly in the ability to earn a living. On the island, this is his persistent trips for supplies to the sunken ship, the manufacture of household items, adaptation to everything that the island could give him. Outside the island, it is his profitable plantation in Brazil, the ability to get money, which he always kept a strict account of. Even during a sortie on a sunken ship, despite the fact that he understood the absolute uselessness of money there, on the island, he nevertheless took it with him.

His positive qualities include thriftiness, prudence, foresight, resourcefulness, patience (it was extremely difficult to do something for the economy on the island and it took a lot of time), diligence. Of the negatives, perhaps recklessness and impulsiveness, to some extent indifference (for example, to his parents or to the people who remained on the island, whom he does not particularly remember when the opportunity to leave it arises). However, all this can be presented in another way: practicality may seem redundant, and if you add the hero's attention to the money side of the issue, then it can be called mercantile; recklessness, and indifference in this case, can speak of the romantic nature of Robinson. There is no unambiguity in the character and behavior of the hero, but this makes him realistic and partly explains why many readers believed that this was a real person.

Friday image

In addition to Robinson, the image of his servant Friday is interesting. He is a savage and a cannibal by birth, saved by Robinson from certain death (he, by the way, was also supposed to be eaten by his fellow tribesmen). For this, the savage promised to faithfully serve his savior. Unlike the protagonist, he never saw a civilized society and before meeting with a non-believer he lived according to the laws of nature, according to the laws of his tribe. He is a "natural" person, and by his example the author showed how civilization affects the individual. According to the writer, it is she who is natural.

Friday improves in a very short time: he learns English pretty quickly, stops following the customs of his fellow cannibals, learns to shoot a gun, becomes a Christian, and so on. At the same time, he has excellent qualities: he is faithful, kind, inquisitive, quick-witted, reasonable, not devoid of simple human feelings, such as love for his father.

genre

On the one hand, the novel "Robinson Crusoe" belongs to the literature of travel, so popular in England at that time. On the other hand, there is clearly a parable beginning or a tradition of an allegorical story, where the spiritual development of a person is traced throughout the narrative, and a deep moral meaning is revealed on the example of simple, everyday details. Defoe's work is often called a philosophical story. The sources for the creation of this book are very diverse, and the novel itself, both in content and in form, was a deeply innovative work. One thing can be said with certainty - such original literature had many admirers, admirers, and, accordingly, imitators. Similar works began to be highlighted in special genre"Robinsonade", rightly named after the conqueror of a desert island.

What does the book teach?

First of all, of course, the ability to work. Robinson lived on a desert island for twenty-eight years, but he did not become a savage, did not lose the signs of a civilized person, and all this thanks to work. It is conscious creative activity that distinguishes a person from a savage, thanks to which the hero kept afloat and with dignity passed all the tests.

In addition, undoubtedly, the example of Robinson shows how important it is to have patience, how necessary it is to learn new things and comprehend what has never been touched before. And the development of new skills and abilities gives rise to prudence and common sense in a person, which was so useful to the hero on a desert island.

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Publication year— 1719

genre- novel

Topic- Man's struggle with nature.

Full title- “Life, extraordinary and amazing adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a sailor from York, who lived for 28 years in complete solitude on a desert island off the coast of America near the mouths of the Orinoco River, where he was thrown out by a shipwreck, during which the entire crew, outlining his unexpected release by pirates; written by himself"

2. Labor Theme. It was labor that helped Robinson survive and remain human.Robinson Crusoe does not lose heart. He always occupies himself with something, works, ennobles his life. Realizing his loneliness, the hero begins to look for something, to strive for something, to do something. Doesn't sit idly by.

3. The theme of love of life, optimism, hope for salvation. Robinson Crusoe had two basic building blocks: Faith and Action. Robinson Crusoe believes and hopes for his salvation, he does not lose optimism, he fights for his life.

4. The theme of friendship.

In the life of the protagonist, an assistant and friend Friday appears on the island.With the advent of Friday, his life takes on new meaning. Robinson Crusoe becomes Friday's friend and mentor. He teaches Friday how to communicate English language, properly cook food, eat, work, ennoble the home, land, teaches various skills: reading, writing, shooting a gun. This helps Robinson to get distracted, he has no time to be bored. With the advent of Friday, the main character has an increased chance of salvation. They build a boat together.

When an almost sixty-year-old well-known journalist and publicist Daniel Defoe(1660-1731) wrote in 1719 "Robinson Crusoe", he least of all thought that an innovative work was coming out from under his pen, the first novel in the literature of the Enlightenment. He did not expect that it was this text that descendants would prefer out of 375 works already published under his signature and earned him the honorary name of "the father of English journalism." Literary historians believe that in fact he wrote much more, only to identify his works, published under different pseudonyms, in a wide stream of the English press at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries is not easy. Behind Defoe at the time of the creation of the novel was a huge life experience: he comes from a lower class, in his youth he was a participant in the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth, escaped execution, traveled around Europe and spoke six languages, knew the smiles and betrayals of Fortune. His values ​​- wealth, prosperity, personal responsibility of a person before God and himself - are typically puritanical, bourgeois values, and Defoe's biography is a colorful, eventful biography of the bourgeois of the era of primitive accumulation. He started various enterprises all his life and said about himself: "Thirteen times I became rich and again poor." Political and literary activity led him to a civil execution at the pillory. For one of the magazines, Defoe wrote a fake autobiography of Robinson Crusoe, the authenticity of which his readers should have believed (and believed).

The plot of the novel is based on real story, told by Captain Woods Rogers in an account of his journey, which Defoe could read in the press. Captain Rogers told how his sailors removed from a desert island in the Atlantic Ocean a man who had spent four years and five months alone there. Alexander Selkirk, mate on an English ship, distinguished violent temper, quarreled with his captain and was landed on the island with a gun, gunpowder, a supply of tobacco and a Bible. When Rogers' sailors found him, he was dressed in goatskins and "looked wilder than the horned original owners of this attire." He forgot how to speak, on the way to England he hid crackers in the secluded places of the ship, and it took time for him to return to a civilized state.

Unlike the real prototype, Defoe's Crusoe has not lost his humanity in twenty-eight years on a desert island. The story of the affairs and days of Robinson is permeated with enthusiasm and optimism, the book exudes an unfading charm. Today, "Robinson Crusoe" is read primarily by children and adolescents as a fascinating adventure story, but the novel poses problems that should be discussed in terms of the history of culture and literature.

The protagonist of the novel, Robinson, an exemplary English businessman who embodies the ideology of the emerging bourgeoisie, grows in the novel to a monumental depiction of the creative, creative abilities of a person, and at the same time his portrait is historically completely specific.

Robinson, the son of a merchant from York, dreams of the sea from a young age. On the one hand, there is nothing exceptional in this - England at that time was the leading maritime power in the world, English sailors plied all the oceans, the profession of a sailor was the most common, considered honorable. On the other hand, Robinson is drawn to the sea not by the romance of sea voyages; he does not even try to enter the ship as a sailor and study maritime affairs, but in all his voyages he prefers the role of a passenger paying the fare; Robinson confides in the traveler's unfortunate fate for a more prosaic reason: he is drawn to "the rash venture to make a fortune by scouring the world." Indeed, outside of Europe it was easy to get rich quick with some luck, and Robinson runs away from home, defying his father's admonitions. Father Robinson's speech at the beginning of the novel is a hymn to bourgeois virtues, to the "average condition":

Those who leave their homeland in pursuit of adventure, he said, are either those who have nothing to lose, or the ambitious who yearn for the highest position; embarking on enterprises that go beyond the framework of everyday life, they strive to improve their affairs and cover their name with glory; but such things are either beyond my powers, or humiliating for me; my place is the middle, that is, what can be called the highest level a modest existence, which, as he was convinced by many years of experience, is for us the best in the world, the most suitable for human happiness, freed both from the need and deprivation, physical labor and suffering that fall to the lot of the lower classes, and from luxury, ambition, swagger and envy of the upper classes. How pleasant such a life is, he said, I can already judge by the fact that all those placed in other conditions envy him: even kings often complain about the bitter fate of people born for great deeds, and regret that fate did not put them between two extremes - insignificance and greatness, and the sage speaks in favor of the middle as a measure of true happiness, when he prays heaven not to send him either poverty or wealth.

However, young Robinson does not heed the voice of prudence, goes to sea, and his first merchant enterprise - an expedition to Guinea - brings him three hundred pounds (it is characteristic how accurately he always names sums of money in the narrative); this luck turns his head and completes his "death". Therefore, everything that happens to him in the future, Robinson considers as a punishment for filial disobedience, for not obeying "sober arguments of the best part of his being" - reason. And on an uninhabited island at the mouth of the Orinoco, he falls, succumbing to the temptation to "get rich sooner than circumstances allowed": he undertakes to deliver slaves from Africa for Brazilian plantations, which will increase his fortune to three or four thousand pounds sterling. During this voyage, he ends up on a desert island after a shipwreck.

And then the central part of the novel begins, an unprecedented experiment begins, which the author puts on his hero. Robinson is a small atom of the bourgeois world, who does not think of himself outside this world and regards everything in the world as a means to achieve his goal, having already traveled three continents, purposefully following his path to wealth.

He is artificially torn out of society, placed in solitude, placed face to face with nature. In the "laboratory" conditions of a tropical uninhabited island, an experiment is being carried out on a person: how will a person torn from civilization behave, individually faced with the eternal, core problem of mankind - how to survive, how to interact with nature? And Crusoe repeats the path of mankind as a whole: he begins to work, so that labor becomes main theme novel.

The Enlightenment novel, for the first time in the history of literature, pays tribute to labor. In the history of civilization, work was usually perceived as a punishment, as an evil: according to the Bible, God placed the need to work on all the descendants of Adam and Eve as a punishment for original sin. In Defoe, labor appears not only as the real main content of human life, not only as a means of obtaining the necessary. Even Puritan moralists were the first to talk about labor as a worthy, great occupation, and labor is not poeticized in Defoe's novel. When Robinson finds himself on a desert island, he does not really know how to do anything, and only little by little, through failure, he learns to grow bread, weave baskets, make his own tools, clay pots, clothes, an umbrella, a boat, breed goats, etc. It has long been noted that it is more difficult for Robinson to give those crafts with which his creator was well acquainted: for example, Defoe at one time owned a tile factory, so Robinson's attempts to mold and burn pots are described in detail. Robinson himself is aware of the saving role of labor:

"Even when I realized all the horror of my situation - all the hopelessness of my loneliness, my complete isolation from people, without a glimmer of hope for deliverance - even then, as soon as the opportunity opened up to stay alive, not to die of hunger, all my grief was like a hand took off: I calmed down, began to work to satisfy my urgent needs and to save my life, and if I lamented about my fate, then least of all I saw heavenly punishment in it ... "

However, in the conditions of the experiment started by the author on the survival of a person, there is one concession: Robinson quickly "opens up the opportunity not to starve to death, to stay alive." It cannot be said that all his ties with civilization have been completely cut. First, civilization operates in his habits, in his memory, in his life position; secondly, from the plot point of view, civilization sends its fruits to Robinson surprisingly timely. He would hardly have survived if he had not immediately evacuated all food supplies and tools from the wrecked ship (guns and gunpowder, knives, axes, nails and a screwdriver, sharpener, crowbar), ropes and sails, bed and dress. However, at the same time, civilization is represented on the Isle of Despair only by its technical achievements, and social contradictions do not exist for an isolated, lonely hero. It is from loneliness that he suffers the most, and the appearance of the savage Friday on the island becomes a relief.

As already mentioned, Robinson embodies the psychology of the bourgeois: it seems quite natural for him to appropriate everything and everyone for which there is no legal property right for any of the Europeans. Robinson's favorite pronoun is "my", and he immediately makes Friday his servant: "I taught him to pronounce the word" master "and made it clear that this is my name." Robinson does not question whether he has the right to appropriate Friday for himself, to sell his friend in captivity, the boy Xuri, to trade in slaves. Other people are of interest to Robinson insofar as they are partners or the subject of his transactions, trading operations, and Robinson does not expect a different attitude towards himself. In Defoe's novel, the world of people, depicted in the story of Robinson's life before his ill-fated expedition, is in a state of Brownian motion, and the stronger its contrast with the bright, transparent world of an uninhabited island.

So, Robinson Crusoe is a new image in the gallery of great individualists, and he differs from his Renaissance predecessors by the absence of extremes, by the fact that he completely belongs to the real world. No one will call Crusoe a dreamer, like Don Quixote, or an intellectual, a philosopher, like Hamlet. His sphere is practical action, management, trade, that is, he is engaged in the same thing as the majority of mankind. His egoism is natural and natural, he is aimed at a typically bourgeois ideal - wealth. The secret of the charm of this image is in the very exceptional conditions of the educational experiment that the author made on him. For Defoe and his first readers, the interest of the novel lay precisely in the exclusivity of the hero's situation, and a detailed description of his everyday life, his daily work was justified only by a thousand miles distance from England.

Robinson's psychology is fully consistent with the simple and artless style of the novel. Its main property is credibility, complete persuasiveness. The illusion of the authenticity of what is happening is achieved by Defoe using so many small details that no one seems to have undertaken to invent. Taking an initially improbable situation, Defoe then develops it, strictly observing the limits of likelihood.

The success of "Robinson Crusoe" with the reader was such that four months later Defoe wrote "The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe", and in 1720 he published the third part of the novel - "Serious reflections during a life and amazing adventures of Robinson Crusoe". Over the course of the 18th century, about fifty more "new Robinsons" saw the light in various literatures, in which Defoe's idea gradually turned out to be completely inverted. At defoe hero strives not to become savage, not to simplify himself, to wrest the savage from "simplicity" and nature - his followers have new Robinsons, who, under the influence of the ideas of the late Enlightenment, live one life with nature and are happy to break with an emphatically vicious society. This meaning was put into Defoe's novel by the first passionate exposer of the vices of civilization, Jean Jacques Rousseau; for Defoe, separation from society was a return to the past of mankind - for Rousseau it becomes an abstract example of the formation of man, the ideal of the future.

Olga SMOLITSKAYA,
Moscow

About "Robinson Crusoe" and its author

The famous "Robinson Crusoe" Defoe created already in adulthood in 1719. He had almost sixty years of life behind him. "The Adventures of Robinson is the scheme of a real life - twenty-eight years spent in the most wandering, lonely and sad circumstances that man has ever experienced. During this time I have lived a long and wonderful life - in constant storms, in the fight against the worst kind of savages and cannibals<...>I experienced all kinds of violence and oppression, unjust reproaches, human contempt, attacks by devils, heavenly punishments and human enmity; experienced countless vicissitudes of fortune, was in slavery worse than Turkish: escaped with the help of a plan as clever as that described in the history of Xuri<...>fell into a sea of ​​disasters, was saved again and died again<...>I have often been shipwrecked, though rather on land than at sea. In a word, there is not a single circumstance in an imaginary life that would not be a legitimate allusion to a true story," Defoe wrote in the third and final part of Robinson Crusoe, which was published in 1720. What kind of life did Daniel Defoe live?

O n was born in the family of a London candle merchant - a humble man, but quite wealthy. Daniel Defoe was prepared to be a priest, but he preferred commercial activity. What kind of enterprises he did not undertake: he traded in knitwear, and tobacco, and vodka, tried to organize an agency that predicts earthquakes and the appearance of ghosts, started his own brick factory and even a cat farm, where it was supposed to receive musk from cats - an odorous substance, in those times used in perfumery. But commerce was for Defoe not only a means to get rich. He just didn't get rich. "Thirteen times I was rich and became poor again" - so Daniel Defoe will say about himself later. Commerce and merchants were for him the real embodiment of human abilities - intelligence, courage, energy and curiosity. He wrote many books on commerce during his lifetime, such as A General History of Commerce, Especially as It Relates to British Commerce (1713); "A general history of discoveries and improvements in the useful arts, especially in the great branches of commerce, navigation and agriculture in all known parts of the world" (1725-1726); "Full English merchant" (1725-1727) and others. In one of his books, he wrote this: “A real merchant is a universal scholar. He is as much higher than a simple connoisseur of Latin and Greek, as this latter is higher than an illiterate person who cannot read and write. He knows languages ​​​​without the help of books, geography - without the help of cards; his trade travels have streaked the whole world; his foreign transactions, bills and powers of attorney speak different languages; he sits in his office and talks to all nations."

Evil tongues reproached Defoe that he traded his political convictions just like everything else. Indeed, in the political strife between the two main English parties - the Whigs and the Tories - Defoe acted on the side of some, then on the side of others; he was also a secret government agent and used his travels around the country and the world not only for commercial purposes. Let's not try to justify or condemn Daniel Defoe. It is obvious that here, too, the sober and prudent mind of a man of Enlightenment spoke in him. Many of Defoe's contemporaries, including Jonathan Swift, wrote more than once that the confrontation between the Whigs and the Tories was, in essence, meaningless, and members of a particular party most often thought not about how to implement certain methods governing the country, but simply for their own personal gain. And if so, if from the point of view of reason - the merciless judge of the Enlightenment - one party was worth the other, then why not choose the one whose adherence to this moment provided the most benefit? One way or another reasoned Defoe - it's hard to say. But if he had not got involved in the political confrontation between the Whigs and the Tories, the brilliant pamphlets that made up the glory of English journalism would not have been written. For one of them, Defoe was sentenced to stand at the pillory. This pamphlet is remarkable in itself: here Defoe supported the official point of view, but brought it to the point of absurdity. The pamphlet was called "The Shortest Way to Deal with Dissidents" (1702). It came out without the author's name. All possible and impossible punishments, divine and human, were invoked in it on the heads of dissidents. The author suggested exiling them to hard labor, hanging them and even crucifying them along the main road. The merciless irony of the author did not immediately become apparent, but soon the true intention of the pamphlet was revealed, and the author, Daniel Defoe, was also found. Copies of the pamphlet were burned, and Defoe was sentenced to a fine and pillory. But even earlier, Defoe wrote the equally ironic, defiant and bold pamphlet “Hymn to the Pillory”. It must have happened ("provided it was good" - Robinson Crusoe would say) that the pamphlet went on sale just on the day of the civil execution of its author. Admirers and supporters of Defoe snapped up the pamphlet, and the shame turned into a triumph.

But a man who so often changed supporters and allies had many enemies, and his friends were more and more wary, more and more aloof - and it would be difficult to blame them for this ... Defoe ultimately felt very lonely, which he wrote about in his last parts of Robinson.

The novel Life, Extraordinary and Amazing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe... was published in April 1719. The book was an extraordinary success. In the same year, Defoe published the second part - "The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe", and in 1720 the third part was published - "Serious reflections during the life and amazing adventures of Robinson Crusoe with his vision of the angelic world." Following Robinson, Defoe wrote several more novels, such as The Life, Adventures and Piracy of the Famous Captain Singleton (1720), The Joys and Sorrows of the Famous Moll Flanders (1722) and others. These novels were also successful and left a significant mark on literature. And yet Daniel Defoe's tombstone was carved: "Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe."

The life, extraordinary and wonderful adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a sailor from York, who lived for twenty-eight years in complete solitude on a desert island off the coast of America, near the mouth of the great Orinoco River, where he was thrown by a shipwreck, during which the entire crew of the ship, except for him, perished, outlining his unexpected release by pirates. Written by him." This was the title of the first edition of Defoe's novel. His success was a foregone conclusion. Passion for travel, a burning interest in unknown countries swept all of Europe in the eighteenth century, and England more than any other country. Every Englishman at least once boarded a ship that separated the island from the rest of Europe, which means he relied on the will of the sea. The British were spoken of as a nation of navigators, and in English literature the sea was one of the most common images in which each era saw something of its own. For enlighteners, the sea has become the place where the true qualities of a person are tested, where everything depends on his will, determination, and his skills.

But not only the sea itself attracted the English of the eighteenth century. Somewhere out there, in the sea, lay unknown lands, in which, it seemed, untold and unexplored riches were hidden. In the 18th century, Europeans knew much less about the world than they do now. In 1722, the geographer Edward Welles produced a map of the globe that showed neither the northeastern border of Asia nor the western border. North America, and Australia's western border was only partially delineated. Instead of the borders of the continents, as well as on some other, in the literal sense of the word, "white spots" there was an inscription: "As yet undiscovered places." The magazines often featured stories about travel and travelers. In 1713, an essay about the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk appeared in The Englishman. He spent 4 years and 4 months on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez in the Pacific Ocean. An English ship picked him up; the story of Selkirk became known and was hotly debated. It seemed as if it was purposely created for the Enlightenment. Again and again the question arose of what a person is capable of, whether he can survive, relying only on his own strength, and what he will be like. Selkirk, by the time he was picked up, almost lost his human appearance and forgot human speech (she returned to him later, and there is evidence that Defoe met with Selkirk and talked with him).

And so, in Robinson Crusoe, the reader, a contemporary of Defoe, could find everything that he wanted to see in books - a story about travels, about shipwrecks, descriptions of unprecedented nature and breathtaking skirmishes with savages. Many imitators and authors of abridged revisions of "Robinson" stopped there. But Defoe's intention was deeper. "Robinson Crusoe" is also a parable about a person's spiritual path, about how he comes to comprehend the highest meaning of human existence and God's providence.

The allegorical parable genre has long been popular in England. One of the most famous examples of such works can be considered the "Progress of the Pilgrim" (1678-1684) by John Bunyan (1628-1688). This book tells about a Christian who, seeking to escape from a city doomed to destruction, embarks on a journey, meets the Faithful, avoids the dangers of the Fair of Worldly Vanity and finally reaches the City of Heaven - Jerusalem. The book is written in a very bright, juicy language and in the end can be read simply as an adventure novel. The popularity of The Pilgrim's Way for several centuries was enormous, and in English literature a tradition was firmly established, according to which almost any story about the life and fate of a person assumed not only a literal, but also an allegorical reading.

Fate did not immediately throw Robinson Crusoe on a desert island. At first, against his parental will, he ran away from home, led a wild life, and was captured. The shipwreck became for him something like retribution for sins and even death, and life on the island became a rebirth, a slow atonement for sins and self-knowledge, and then salvation. (It is noteworthy that in English and Scottish folk tales the world where the souls of the dead settle is often depicted as an island.) Robinson Crusoe, once on the island, must understand what the true destiny of man is.

Robinson is one of those people about whom Defoe wrote with admiration. He does not lose his presence of mind, he knows a lot and can do a lot. With taste and thoroughness, Defoe describes how Robinson's housing and life are arranged. The hero again traverses the path that human civilization had done by the 18th century: he learns to make fire, to protect the body from heat and cold; he himself invents a way to burn clay, he molds pots himself, etc. But at the same time, he is aware that he is being guided (and maybe even tested) by a higher power - Divine Providence. Gradually, Robinson not only overcomes despair, but also learns to thank fate for what has been sent down to him, learns to find joy in his position, and in this the highest grace of God is manifested. But Robinson is not a hermit. He does not strive to mortify the flesh, does not feed on water and roots - on the contrary, he skillfully creates comfort around himself, strives to live like a civilized person. Even at the beginning of his stay on the island, Robinson takes out things from the wrecked ship. These things are a symbol of the civilization to which Robinson belongs. They are made by the hands of other people, and that is why he is, as it were, not alone on the island.

Defo tries to solve the problem that arose in European literature and culture as early as the 16th century - how the will of man and God's providence correlate. Robinson finds a certain balance between the desire to improve his situation, realizing that he is still deprived of much, and submission to God's will. He does not lose heart, he takes what happened to him for granted, but he is not passive, but active and energetic. When peace reigns in Robinson's soul, Defoe introduces savages into the story - now Robinson can teach others what he himself has comprehended.

Shocked by the bloodthirstiness of cannibal savages, Robinson, however, gradually realizes that they are not hardened villains, but simply do not know real (from Robinson's point of view) moral values. Robinson brings up one of them, "enlightens". The name that Robinson gives to the young savage is symbolic - Friday. On Friday, mankind received atonement for sins, since Christ was crucified, but the Resurrection, the acquisition of new life, occurred later. And Friday, and Robinson, and, perhaps, from the point of view of Defoe, humanity itself is precisely on this segment of the path to the truth: reason, will, work are able to eradicate the vices of the old society, but what the new one will be is still unclear. There are many reflections of this kind in the third part of Robinson.

The modern reader may be surprised at how persistently Robinson tries to convert the savage to his faith. But let's not forget that the idea of ​​equality of cultures and, as a result, respect for primitive culture appeared only in the twentieth century, when researchers proved that primitive man and those peoples that are now at this stage of development have their own rather complex system of values, their own ideas about morality, about good and evil. Neither Robinson nor Defoe could have such a view of the savage. But Robinson's reflections that savages are not to blame for their bloodthirstiness are quite remarkable. Robinson recalls how the colonialists used to behave when they exterminated savages who did not consider them to be people. He opposes this view of the savages with his own, new, "enlightened", he believes that he must bring to the savages all the best that is in his culture - the culture of a civilized European.

Defoe's novel was subsequently often imitated. The word "robinsonade" arose as a designation for a whole genre; Until now, we use the word "Robinson" as a common noun. It is interesting that Jules Verne, creating "The Mysterious Island", like Defoe, endowed his hero Cyrus Smith - also a "Robinson" - with the profession that at the end of the 19th century seemed to be the embodiment of time - the profession of an engineer.

Questions and tasks for students of the novel

1. What were Robinson's actions on a desert island? Why do you think they are listed in that order?
2. What did Robinson take with him from the wrecked ship? Why does Defoe consider these things to be the most necessary for his hero?
3. What does Robinson Crusoe say about money? What is the important Enlightenment message behind this episode?
4. Read and comment on the list of "Evil and Good" from Robinson's diary.
5. What feature of the worldview of the people of the Enlightenment manifested itself in detailed descriptions the process of making an item? Find these descriptions. Could you burn the pot yourself following this description?
6. How are savages described in Robinson Crusoe? Why, in your opinion, does Defoe describe Friday's meeting with his father in such detail?
7. How did Robinson manage the colony on his island? How would you comment on such a social structure?
8. What imitations of "Robinson Crusoe" do you know (in cinema, in literature)? How do they reflect the time and place of their creation?