Robinzon Kruzo (Robinson Crusoe)

Author: Daniel Dafoe
Original Title: The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
Genre: Adventure

Original publisher: William Taylor
Date first published: 25. April 1719
Date first read: ca. May 1992

Main character(s): Robinson Crusoe, Friday
Favorite quote: N/A

Synopsis: *SPOILERS*
The book is about Robinson Crusoe, an English gentleman, who after adventures on sea and in the New World, winds up stranded on an island for some 20-odd years. After his shipmates die off, he is left alone to fend for himself, and so he does. He builds a home, makes his food, and otherwise tries to keep as much of his English customs as he can to avoid the depression caused from his loneliness. I believe he also becomes increasingly religious as time passes.

He also discovers that he is not truly alone. A tribe of natives from a neighboring island which practices cannibalism regularly comes to Crusoe's island to sacrifice prisoners. Crusoe saves one of them, whom he names Friday, and who becomes his servant. Eventually, Crusoe and Friday are rescued from the island by a ship that takes them back to England.

I can't quite recall the ending, but I believe that after returning home, Crusoe finds he has no money left. With his family believing him dead, his inheritance has been given away to others. He does manage to get money and restore his status through other means - but I don't recall how.

Review:
This was one of the last books I read in Cyrillic. I made my mom buy me this book, a book of Grimm's tales, and some other book - Gulliver's Travels, I think - while we were in Belgrade, waiting to find out what was happening in Bosnia. It was actually such a selfish thing to make my mom buy me those books - we barely had any money, and what we had, people didn't want to take. We were despised by many of them after all. But then again, I was 8 years old. I had no clue about these things.

I, of course, know the story nowadays, but I don't remember reading it at all. I just remember the cover of the book. So, I can't really say much about what I thought about the book. Knowing the story, my current thoughts on the general ideas expressed are that it is quintessentially a book of its period. Today, our sensitivities would be offended at the fact that native inhabitants are automatically labeled cannibals and become servants to the English, but given the time period when it was written, those were common perceptions of the English at that time. I peeked at Wikipedia, and they have a nice quote by James Joyce:

"He is the true prototype of the British colonist. … The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity."
- Robinson Crusoe, Wikipedia entry

I think that probably sums up my current view of the book. It is a classic English read, of course, but as I read it when I was rather young, I really don't know how I viewed the storyline and whether re-reading the book would have the same impression on me.