The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Takes forever to get underway

Daniel Defoe

When published in 1719, Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe was so successful that he published a sequel later that year, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. These days, the title is more commonly published as “Further” rather than “Farther.” It is often said that sequels are never as good as the originals, and after reading The Further Adventures one can surmise that people have been making that comment for at least 300 years.

The story opens in 1693, several years after Crusoe left the island upon which he was stranded for so much of his life. He is now 61 years old, living comfortably on a farm in England, married with children, yet an uncontrollable obsession with his island fills him with unrest. When Crusoe’s nephew, a ship’s captain, plans a trading voyage to the East Indies, he offers to take his uncle along for a visit to his former island home.

While that sounds like a recipe for adventure, the stopover proves to be a bore for the reader, and the Adventures are had by everyone but Crusoe. When he left the island at the end of the last novel, a few Englishmen and Spaniards had arrived there, and they remained as colonists. Four or five chapters go by relating what happened to these people during those years while Crusoe was in England. This back story amounts to a tedious string of skirmishes and truces. What makes it worse is that, with one exception, none of the characters even have names, so the text is all about this or that Englishman, this or that Spaniard, this or that “savage.” Then follows a couple chapters in which Crusoe tries to get the settlers to marry their Native wives under the formalities of Christian matrimony. Not surprisingly, like the last novel, Christian piety is a major theme here. The only surprise here is that for a 17th-century Englishman, Crusoe has some remarkably tolerant things to say about Roman Catholics.

The real “Adventures” don’t start until Crusoe leaves the island halfway through the book. He travels onto far-flung exotic locales and undergoes more bad luck and hardship, but he perseveres through faith and his pronounced ingenuity. By 19th- or 20th-century standards, this is not a great adventure novel, but by early 18th-century standards, it’s pretty good. I’ve always found it remarkable how Defoe’s prose, written three centuries ago, still reads with a fresh and clean conversational tone, unlike later writers like Sir Walter Scott or James Fenimore Cooper, who often sound antiquated and clunky. This is not one of Defoe’s better works, but it is good enough to call to mind the travel adventures written by Jules Verne. I’m sure Defoe never traveled to China, India, or Southeast Asia, but like Verne might have done he has clearly researched the accounts of those who have. The big difference is that whereas Verne’s plots revolve around scientific discovery, The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe revolve around commerce and trade. Defoe provides some very vivid descriptions of the exotic lands visited, but the main thrust of these travelogues is that anywhere in the world is barbaric compared to pious mother England.

Fans of the first novel will be disappointed at the offhand manner in which one important character from the first novel is summarily dispatched. In all aspects, The Further Adventures is disappointing compared to the preceding novel, but one can’t help but admire the precocious ambition and enduring accessibility of Defoe’s novel. A century before Scott, Cooper, and Alexandre Dumas, Defoe was a pioneer in elevating the adventure genre to the heights of literature.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R2XWTV3D2U31WQ/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm

Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

Racy saga of a woman’s life of crime

Moll Flanders was originally published in 1722, though the text itself concludes with the phrase “Written in the year 1683.” Narrated in the first person, this book purports to be an autobiography of the title character. To strengthen the illusion of a memoir, it was first published anonymously. It wasn’t until decades later that the book came to be attributed to novelist Daniel Defoe (1660-1731). The book may have been inspired by the life of Moll King, a criminal who Defoe interviewed in London’s Newgate Prison. Even if the narrative was partially based on fact, the incredible life of Moll Flanders certainly bears the marks of some imaginative fictionalization.

Moll Flanders is not the narrator’s real name, but rather a criminal alias she acquired over the course of a career in thievery. She occasionally calls herself Betty, but never reveals her actual surname. She was born in Newgate Prison, where her mother was an incarcerated convict. The mother then opted for “transportation” (the deportation of criminals to colonies abroad) to Virginia, leaving her young daughter with a foster mother. The girl receives a decent upbringing, but eventually two personal characteristics become problematic: her beauty and her poverty. The former makes her irresistible to men, some of whom lead her away from the path of virtue. The latter leads her, out of necessity, to pursue a life of crime. Constantly seeking to improve her situation through marriage or theft, Moll’s life becomes a twisted saga involving several husbands, several children both in an out of wedlock, adultery, prostitution, bigamy, incest, larceny, fraud, and imprisonment.

When reading Moll Flanders, as with his earlier novel Robinson Crusoe, it is hard to believe Defoe was a writer of the early eighteenth century because his prose is so clear, engaging, and lively. The reader experiences none of the obscurity or ungainliness one finds with later writers like James Fenimore Cooper or Sir Walter Scott whose works, though often of great literary merit, can be tough going for today’s reader. Not so with Defoe. Because his audience of three centuries ago had a much longer attention span than today’s reading public, however, he really belabors every scene. If you were to accidentally skip a page, you probably wouldn’t even notice, because when you jump back in he’s likely still saying same thing.

Something that’s pleasantly surprising about the novel is its admirably progressive lack of prudery. Defoe doesn’t use foul or explicit language, but he does write about matters of sexuality, adultery, or abortion with a refreshing matter-of-factness that puts the puritanism of Victorian literature to shame. Some of this forthrightness can no doubt be attributed to Defoe attempting to attract a wider audience by being deliberately racy and risqué. For a book about crime and punishment, Moll Flanders is delightfully free of righteousness. The moral of the book is not “Crime doesn’t pay,” because here crime frequently does pay, and Moll usually lands on her feet. Defoe includes one brief scene of repentance, but it feels more like obligatory lip service than preachiness.

As a female protagonist, Moll Flanders is an independent woman centuries ahead of her time, and Defoe does a very fine job of telling the story from a woman’s point of view. For the most part, Moll Flanders is an enjoyable read, but it would be more so if the plot weren’t so unnecessarily long and overly drawn-out.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R3L07X0HF6MD66/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

A tropical-island Walden
Even for those who have never read the actual novel, the premise of Robinson Crusoe is well known. In the late 17th century, the title character, while on a voyage from Brazil to Africa, is shipwrecked alone on an uninhabited island in the Caribbean. While various movie adaptations and condensed children’s versions of the story have tried to make this book out to be an adventure novel, that label really only applies to the last few chapters. The majority of the book actually more closely resembles a tropical-island take on Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. The overall tone of the novel is one of contemplation rather than action. There is a strong Christian message to the book. At first Crusoe sees his isolation as a punishment from God for disregarding his father’s wishes. To the 21st-century audience, who don’t necessarily believe it is a son’s duty to follow his parents’ choice of career, this seems like an awfully harsh sentence. Over time, however, Crusoe renews and strengthens his relationship with God. He comes to tolerate and at times even to enjoy his solitude. He learns to count his blessings, resign himself to what fate hands him, and give thanks to providence for what he’s got. Though Defoe expresses these thoughts in blatantly Protestant terms, even Atheists of a Stoic persuasion can appreciate the book’s message. Truth be told, the novel does contain some profound thoughts, which would explain why it’s still being read three centuries after its initial publication. The modern reader, however, ends up wishing they would have been expressed in a less tedious manner.

After his arrival on the island, Crusoe is able to recover an amazing amount of stuff from the wrecked ship, to the point where he’s really wanting for nothing but companionship. For decades he makes no attempt to get off the island, and industriously applies his time and effort to the contrivance of various desert-island technologies to make his stay more comfortable. He sets about building houses, fences, even shelves; plants barley; and domesticates livestock; with each process described in minute detail by Defoe. This how-to narrative, coupled with Crusoe’s reflections on his lot in life, makes up the bulk of the text.

Although the book was first published in 1719, the prose has a conversational feel that is remarkably contemporary. The plotting, on the other hand, is hopelessly antiquated and frustratingly slow. The first three chapters leave the reader screaming, “Get to the damn island, already!” Soon afterwards there are a couple of chapters reproducing excerpts from Crusoe’s diary, which agonizingly repeat everything which took place in a preceding chapter. The soul searching discussed above occupies about two-thirds of the book, followed by a few chapters of action which at times defy belief. Defoe then unforgivably wraps up the entire book with a chapter that is almost totally unrelated to everything that came before, and is therefore quite unnecessary.

While reading Robinson Crusoe, one can’t help thinking, “What would I do if I were in his place?” After reading the novel, one realizes that pondering that question is more fun than reading the actual narrative that Defoe delivers. Though the book was no doubt ground breaking for its time, and has been extremely influential in subsequent literature, 21st-century readers may find it difficult to enjoy. The book does have its merits, but if you are expecting an adventure novel, prepare to be disappointed.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R23BOWFCOP0CEW/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm