Robinson Crusoe and Savagery

Robinson Crusoe and Savagery
Kalil Chikha
Daniel Defoe s novel is considered the first in English to establish the foundations of realism, upon which later English realist literature was built. Published in 1719, the novel tells the autobiographical story of Robinson s sea and life adventures. During his voyages, he is captured by pirates and becomes a slave to a Moor. He escapes and works for a slave-trading group, but the ship is wrecked, and he survives near the island of Trinity (or Trinity Island), which Columbus named to give it a Christian connotation. He lives on the island for 28 years, isolated from the world, where he encounters a group of Native Americans celebrating the cannibalism of a captive. He rescues one of them and becomes his slave, helping him with farming and raising goats. Later, a group of Europeans arrives, and he returns with them to the continent. The novel doesn t end there-;- the adventures continue.
I read this novel in high school and thoroughly enjoyed it. Some have said that Defoe was influenced by Ibn Tufayl s Hayy ibn Yaqzan, but the truth is that Defoe adapted it from the true story of a Scottish man named Alexander Selkirk. This man lived in isolation for about four years on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean.
The novel has several layers. One is the determination to survive in harsh conditions of solitude and desolation. Another layer is the era in which it was written-;- it is a document of the age of slavery and piracy. Slavery at that time had its legitimacy, its governmental institutions, and its laws. In other words, slavery was a highly ethical matter. The novel then touches on the Native Americans and their practice of cannibalism. For them, eating human flesh was also commonplace, just as we eat cows and sheep today. We don t consider eating these animals immoral´-or-unusual. Herein lies the clash of civilizations between a culture that abandoned cannibalism thousands of years ago and a culture that still enjoys it. This stage of cannibalism has been experienced by all humanity. Incidentally, I have an article that discusses this topic. Another message you might glean from the novel is the era of enlightenment´-or-colonialism. More precisely, it s a prelude to the colonial period and European expansion, illustrated by Robinson teaching Friday (or Friday) the English language and the principles of European life style.

At that time, the Arab world was in a state of slumber, ruled by the Mamluks and Ottomans. The Arabs suffered a complete defeat, and these defeats have continued to this day. Meanwhile, the European star rose in every field.

The novel is enjoyable to read, and I still enjoy reading it, but it encapsulates an era, civilization, and nations that lived during that period.

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