A man alone and his will to survive. “THE LIFE AND STRANGE SURPRIZING ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE, Of YORK, MARINER: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of AMERICA, near the Mouth of the Great River of OROONOQUE; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. WITH An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by PYRATES. Written by Himself.”
The basic situation of Robinson Crusoe’s early life was that of a young man who did not want to get a job. Robinson was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family. His father was a successful businessman, a trader in “merchandise.” Robinson had two older brothers, one of whom was killed in war, the second of which his destiny unknown. Robinson avoided training for any particular occupation. He had a solid general education, and there was a vague idea that he might go into the Law. But Robinson dreamed only of adventure, of “going to sea.” This wayward impulse brought him into conflict with both of his parents, not to mention several of the best friends of his youth. Why he would wish to leave the safety of his family’s home, its environs, and his native land was beyond his father’s comprehension. All Robinson had to do to attain “a life of ease and pleasure” was to follow the course that had been laid out for him by his magnanimously given upper-middle class socio-economic circumstance, supplementing this patrimony with a modicum of “application and industry.” Thanks to the efforts of those who preceded him, his life had already been shielded from the miseries to which most human beings are subjected. Only men “of desperate fortunes” and rich men seeking fame or extravagant wealth go abroad for lengthy periods of time. For a middle class person to voluntarily do so was the height of folly, his father admonished. One invites the worst of all possible misfortunes.
At the age of nineteen, having already missed his opportunities to learn a respectable trade or profession, Robinson Crusoe sets out for the first time to sea. It is a short normal trip from Kingston upon Hull to London, but even on this routine route there is trouble. The ship gets caught in a terrible storm. The weather started getting rough. The tiny ship was tossed. “Lord be merciful to us, we shall all be Lost.” As he shudders with fear, Robinson pledges that, should it please God to spare him just this one time, he will return to the House of his Father and never stray again. But as soon as the weather clears he forgets his resolution. On the eighth day of the voyage, an even more ferocious storm blows, frightening the most experienced seamen among the crew. “The sea went mountains high, and broke upon us every three or four minutes.” The ship takes on more water than it can bear. Robinson and the others on board are saved by another ship just before their own vessel sinks. After being deposited safely on shore, they walk to the port of Yarmouth. Here Robinson receives a second ominous verbal warning, articulated by the Master of the sunken ship. “Young man, you ought never to go to sea any more, you ought to take this for a plain and visible token that you are not to be a seafaring man. (…) As you made this voyage for a trial, you see what a taste Heaven has given you of what you are to expect if you persist. (…) Pray, what are you? and on what account did you go to sea?” After Robinson recounts the story of his rebellious conflict with his parents, the Master reacts with total exasperation, wondering aloud what he had done that such an “unhappy wretch” would come aboard his ship. Not for all the money in the world would he travel again with such a harbinger of doom. “Young man, depend upon it,” the Master concludes, “if you do not go back, where ever you go, you will meet with nothing but disasters and disappointments, till your father’s words are fulfilled upon you.”
Yet an apprehension of the shame of facing family, friends and acquaintances in defeat deters Robinson Crusoe from returning to his hometown in white England. He instead takes passage on a ship to Africa, provoking the resumption of his misadventures. Sailing eastward of the Canary Islands, his ship of traffic is intercepted by a coast-guarding vessel from the Moroccan seaport of Sallee. He and his shipmates are taken prisoner by the “Moors.” The Captain of the defending rover fancies the “young and nimble” Robinson as his “proper prize.” He takes him as a sort of lily feminized ornament tending to his house and garden. Sometimes the Captain has the captured blue-eyed boy lie in his private cabin while the ship is in harbor.
After two years of domestication, Robinson Crusoe undertakes a daring escape by stealing the light sailboat known as the pinnace that is used in attendance on a larger ship. He proceeds along the coast of what is now Mauretania in the company of the Arab lad named Xury. The two male companions live through all manner of death-defying escapades together. They battle wild animals, struggle to obtain food and fresh water, learn to communicate and negotiate with people of native tribes, and deal with their own fear of being eaten by cannibals. Living in the vicinity of mortal dangers without being consumed by worry about them is an important stage in the Tantric challenge of initiation of the spiritual traveler into manhood of a different kind. The strength of the New Man who earns the respect of the one true Goddess Gaia as an equal partner to change the world derives not from production, power, Stoicism, muscle, weapons and the dream of immortality, but rather from honest I-and-Thou encounters with the Others of femininity and death. Sustained encounters – it must be added – where the outcome is never known in advance. The final outcome of whether Gaia herself – the marvelous living alien being also known as planet Earth – will survive is also not known. It may be too late. As spiritual force, Gaia is the wounded Offspring of a complex copulation between the Judeo-Christian monotheistic God and the worldview of the most ethically Enlightened scientific atheism, the latter exemplified by Gregory Bateson’s deep ecology, Walter M. Elsasser’s holistic biology, or Donna J. Haraway’s cyborg theory.Near the Cape Verde Islands, the exhausted Robinson Crusoe and his pal Xury are rescued by a passing Portuguese ship that is on its way to the Brazilian colonies.
Robinson knows none of the Continental languages – Portuguese, Spanish or French – but there is one Scottish sailor on board who happens to speak the escaped slave’s native tongue. Restored to the company of European Men after months on the lamb in the “state of nature,” the Englishman’s first act as a once again Free Citizen of the West is to sell his young friend Xury into ten years of indentured servitude.
Arriving in Brazil with the tidy sum of 220 Pieces of Eight in his pocket, Robinson is accepted into the settlers’ society and becomes a sugar and tobacco plantation owner. Receiving a shot-in-the-arm of capital from England, he buys one African slave and two white servants. As time goes by, he becomes something of a neighborhood celebrity among his fellow male colonizers by retelling the story of his prior exploits along the northwest African coastline. His braggadocio tales of how he bartered with natives whet the luxury goods farmers’ appetite for ownership of human flesh from Across the Ocean, an indulgence that was until now the exclusive privilege of those who could afford to pay the high prices demanded by the Assiento Monopoly. The South Atlantic West Shore local business doers enlist the services of an expert in how South Atlantic East Shore local business is done. Robinson Crusoe joins the expedition to go get some dark meat to make brown sugar. In exchange for his expertise, he will receive a full share of booty without having to make any up-front capital investment.
After twelve days at sea, the slave-seeking ship gets caught in a terrible hurricane, where it remains trapped for twelve days of relentless terror for the fearless crew. After plotting a course northwest by west in the direction of Trinidad, the helpless victims of Nature’s Wrath are seized upon by a second raging storm that blows them deep into unchartered waters. At the break of Dawn at the end of the Darkest Night, one man miraculously sights Land. But at this very same moment, the ship runs aground. The eleven who are still alive squeeze into a small lifeboat, abandoning themselves to the mercy of the violent waves and uncertain approach to a close by rocky strand. There is no suitable landing spot in view. “As we made nearer and nearer the shore, the land look’d more frightful than the sea.” A final massive wave capsizes the boat, sending all the aspiring slavers to their probable deaths.