LITR 5831 Colonial &
Postcolonial Literature
Lecture Notes
Dialogue
dialogue: 1.10 [mother paraphrased]; 1.17-1.19 real dialogue
15.7
15.30 they lived still there; that they had been there about four years; that the savages left them alone, and gave them victuals to live on. I asked him how it came to pass they did not kill them and eat them. He said, "No, they make brother with them;" that is, as I understood him, a truce; and then he added, "They no eat mans but when make the war fight;" that is to say, they never eat any men but such as come to fight with them and are taken in battle. [i.e., “ritual cannibalism” as opposed anthropophagy for sustenance]
Review discussion of Puritanism & secular individualism and capitalism in selections from Ian Watt, “’Robinson Crusoe,’ Individualism, and the Novel.” See also Adam Smith, selections from The Wealth of Nations (1776) ("Providence" as "invisible hand")
realism, reason and technology (Todorov 158-60)
4.9 efficient realistic description of natural process effecting rescue of raft
4.10 realistic description, too much detail? but consistent observation
4.12 the first gun that had been fired there since the creation of the world
4.43 from whence I concluded that, by the position of their optics, their sight was so directed downward that they did not readily see objects that were above them; so afterwards I took this method—I always climbed the rocks first, to get above them, and then had frequently a fair mark.
4.46 so without help, abandoned, so entirely depressed, that it could hardly be rational to be thankful for such a life.
4.47 reason, as it were, expostulated with me the other way
12.9 gave God thanks, that had cast my first lot in a part of the world where I was distinguished from such dreadful creatures as these [Crusoe verges on moral relativism, implying that, if born among cannibals, he would be one];
12.16 so outrageous an execution as the killing twenty or thirty naked savages, for an offence which I had not at all entered into any discussion of in my thoughts, any farther than my passions were at first fired by the horror I conceived at the unnatural custom of the people of that country, who, it seems, had been suffered by Providence, in His wise disposition of the world, to have no other guide than that of their own abominable and vitiated passions; and consequently were left, and perhaps had been so for some ages, to act such horrid things, and receive such dreadful customs, as nothing but nature, entirely abandoned by Heaven, and actuated by some hellish degeneracy, could have run them into. But now, when, as I have said, I began to be weary of the fruitless excursion which I had made so long and so far every morning in vain, so my opinion of the action itself began to alter;
12.18 not my business to meddle with them
I concluded that I ought, neither in principle nor in policy, one way or other, to concern myself in this affair:
[11.9] You are to understand that now I had, as I may call it, two plantations in the island
[11.14] This will testify for me that I was not idle, and that I spared no pains to bring to pass whatever appeared necessary for my comfortable support,
[11.17] . . . one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition.
11.18 after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly confused and out of myself,
11.20 Sometimes I fancied it must be the devil
All this seemed inconsistent with the thing itself and with all the notions we usually entertain of the subtlety of the devil.
11.21 savages of the mainland opposite
11.22 come again in greater numbers and devour me;
11.23 I resolved for the future to have two or three years' corn beforehand;
11.24 Today we love what tomorrow we hate; today we seek what tomorrow we shun; today we desire what tomorrow we fear, nay, even tremble at the apprehensions of. This was exemplified in me, at this time
11.25 the station of life the infinitely wise and good providence of God had determined for me
my unquestioned duty to resign myself absolutely and entirely to His will; and, on the other hand, it was my duty also to hope in Him, pray to Him, and quietly to attend to the dictates and directions of His daily providence,
11.28 filled my head with new imaginations, and gave me the vapors again to the highest degree
11.29 fear! It deprives them of the use of those means which reason offers for their relief.
12.2 distribution of goats] the most rational design.
12.4 All this labor I was at the expense of, purely from my apprehensions on account of the print of a man's foot;
12.5 discomposure of my mind had great impression also upon the religious part of my thoughts; for the dread and terror of falling into the hands of savages and cannibals lay so upon my spirits, that I seldom found myself in a due temper for application to my Maker . . . expectation every night of being murdered and devoured before morning
12.6 make such another deposit
12.6 seeing the print of a man's foot was not such a strange thing in the island as I imagined: and but that it was a special providence that I was cast upon the side of the island where the savages never came,
12.7 nor is it possible for me to express the horror of my mind at seeing the shore spread with skulls, hands, feet, and other bones of human bodies; and particularly I observed a place where there had been a fire made, and a circle dug in the earth, like a cockpit, where I supposed the savage wretches had sat down to their human feastings upon the bodies of their fellow-creatures.
12.8 buried in the thoughts of such a pitch of inhuman, hellish brutality, and the horror of the degeneracy of human nature,
12.9 gave God thanks, that had cast my first lot in a part of the world where I was distinguished from such dreadful creatures as these [Crusoe verges on moral relativism, implying that, if born among cannibals, he would be one];
12.10 the aversion which nature gave me to these hellish wretches was such, that I was as fearful of seeing them as of seeing the devil himself.
12.11 more cautious of firing gun
12.11 a most formidable fellow to look at when I went abroad
12.12 aphorism
12.13 make some of my barley into malt, and then try to brew myself some beer.
12.13 my invention now ran quite another way; for night and day I could think of nothing but how I might destroy some of the monsters in their cruel, bloody entertainment [cannibals dining] and if possible save the victim they should bring hither to destroy. It would take up a larger volume than this whole work is intended to be to set down all the contrivances I hatched, or rather brooded upon, in my thoughts, for the destroying these creatures
12.14 thoughts of revenge and a bloody putting twenty or thirty of them to the sword, as I may call it, the horror I had at the place, and at the signals of the barbarous wretches devouring one another, abetted my malice
12.14 there I might sit and observe all their bloody doings, and take my full aim at their heads, when they were so close together as that it would be next to impossible that I should miss my shot, or that I could fail wounding three or four of them at the first shot.
12.16 so outrageous an execution as the killing twenty or thirty naked savages, for an offence which I had not at all entered into any discussion of in my thoughts, any farther than my passions were at first fired by the horror I conceived at the unnatural custom of the people of that country, who, it seems, had been suffered by Providence, in His wise disposition of the world, to have no other guide than that of their own abominable and vitiated passions; and consequently were left, and perhaps had been so for some ages, to act such horrid things, and receive such dreadful customs, as nothing but nature, entirely abandoned by Heaven, and actuated by some hellish degeneracy, could have run them into. But now, when, as I have said, I began to be weary of the fruitless excursion which I had made so long and so far every morning in vain, so my opinion of the action itself began to alter;
12.16 what authority or call I had to pretend to be judge and executioner
12.16 "How do I know what God Himself judges in this particular case? It is certain these people do not commit this as a crime; it is not against their own consciences reproving, or their light reproaching them; they do not know it to be an offence, and then commit it in defiance of divine justice, as we do in almost all the sins we commit. They think it no more a crime to kill a captive taken in war than we do to kill an ox; or to eat human flesh than we do to eat mutton."
12.17 although the usage they gave one another was thus brutish and inhuman, yet it was really nothing to me: these people had done me no injury
12.17 justify the conduct of the Spaniards in all their barbarities practiced in America, where they destroyed millions of these people; who, however they were idolators and barbarians, and had several bloody and barbarous rites in their customs, such as sacrificing human bodies to their idols, were yet, as to the Spaniards, very innocent people; and that the rooting them out of the country is spoken of with the utmost abhorrence and detestation by even the Spaniards themselves at this time, and by all other Christian nations of Europe, as a mere butchery, a bloody and unnatural piece of cruelty, unjustifiable either to God or man; and for which the very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible, to all people of humanity or of Christian compassion
12.18 not my business to meddle with them
I concluded that I ought, neither in principle nor in policy, one way or other, to concern myself in this affair:
Religion joined in with this prudential resolution; and I was convinced now, many ways, that I was perfectly out of my duty when I was laying all my bloody schemes for the destruction of innocent creatures
As to the crimes they were guilty of towards one another, I had nothing to do with them; they were national, and I ought to leave them to the justice of God, who is the Governor of nations, and knows how, by national punishments, to make a just retribution for national offences, and to bring public judgments upon those who offend in a public manner, by such ways as best please Him.
12.19 all these I removed, that there might not be the least shadow for discovery, or appearance of any boat, or of any human habitation upon the island
after serious thinking of these things, I would be melancholy, and sometimes it would last a great while; but I resolved it all at last into thankfulness to that Providence which had delivered me
a secret hint shall direct us
a certain rule with me, that whenever I found those secret hints or pressings of mind to doing or not doing anything that presented, or going this way or that way, I never failed to obey the secret dictate
a proof of the converse of spirits, and a secret communication between those embodied and those unembodied
12.20 a mere natural cave in the earth
12.21 two broad shining eyes of some creature, whether devil or man I knew not
12.24 I fancied myself now like one of the ancient giants who were said to live in caves and holes in the rocks
13.1 they all ran wild into the woods, except two or three favorites, which I kept tame, and whose young, when they had any, I always drowned; and these were part of my family.
13.1 How frequently, in the course of our lives, the evil which in itself we seek most to shun, and which, when we are fallen into, is the most dreadful to us, is oftentimes the very means or door of our deliverance, by which alone we can be raised again from the affliction we are fallen into. [<aphorism]
13.2 surprised with seeing a light of some fire upon the shore, . . . on my side of the island.
13.4 no less than nine naked savages sitting round a small fire . . . as I supposed, to dress some of their barbarous diet of human flesh which they had brought with them, whether alive or dead I could not tell.
13.5 considered their coming must be always with the current of the ebb
13.6 stark naked, and had not the least covering upon them; but whether they were men or women I could not distinguish. [distance + otherness]
13.8 to kill another, and so another, even ad infinitum, till I should be, at length, no less a murderer than they were in being man-eaters—and perhaps much more so
in the month of May, as near as I could calculate, and in my four-and-twentieth year, I had a very strange encounter with them
13.10 as I was reading in the Bible, and taken up with very serious thoughts about my present condition, I was surprised with the noise of a gun, as I thought, fired at sea
13.11 the wreck of a ship
13.11 what is one man's safety is another man's destruction [aphorism ];
Other times I fancied they [the sailors of the wrecked ship] were all gone off to sea in their boat, and being hurried away by the current that I had been formerly in, were carried out into the great ocean, where there was nothing but misery and perishing: and that, perhaps, they might by this time think of starving, and of being in a condition to eat one another. [cannibalism in survival context]
13.12 more and more cause to give thanks to God
"Oh that there had been but one or two, nay, or but one soul saved out of this ship, to have escaped to me, that I might but have had one companion, one fellow-creature, to have spoken to me and to have conversed with!"
13.13 the corpse of a drowned boy come on shore at the end of the island which was next the shipwreck.. . . tobacco pipe
13.17 Besides the dog, there was nothing left in the ship that had life
14.1 such a load of arms and ammunition as I always carried with me
14.2 my unlucky head, that was always to let me know it was born to make my body miserable, was all these two years filled with projects and designs
not being satisfied with the station wherein God and Nature hath placed them—for, not to look back upon my primitive condition, and the excellent advice of my father, the opposition to which was, as I may call it, my original sin
to turn supercargo to Guinea to fetch negroes, when patience and time would have so increased our stock at home, that we could have bought them at our own door from those whose business it was to fetch them?
14.4 life of anxiety, fear, and care which I had lived in ever since I had seen the print of a foot in the sand
14.5 perhaps nothing but the brow of a hill, a great tree, or the casual approach of night, had been between me and the worst kind of destruction—viz. that of falling into the hands of cannibals and savages, who would have seized on me with the same view as I would on a goat or turtle; and have thought it no more crime to kill and devour me than I did of a pigeon or a curlew
14.6 considering the nature of these wretched creatures, I mean the savages, and how it came to pass in the world that the wise Governor of all things should give up any of His creatures to such inhumanity—nay, to something so much below even brutality itself —as to devour its own kind
14.7 all this was the fruit of a disturbed mind, an impatient temper, made desperate, as it were, by the long continuance of my troubles, and the disappointments I had met in the wreck I had been on board of, and where I had been so near obtaining what I so earnestly longed for—somebody to speak to, and to learn some knowledge from them of the place where I was, and of the probable means of my deliverance.
14.8 I dreamed that as I was going out in the morning as usual from my castle, I saw upon the shore two canoes and eleven savages coming to land, and that they brought with them another savage whom they were going to kill in order to eat him; when, on a sudden, the savage that they were going to kill jumped away, and ran for his life; and I thought in my sleep that he came running into my little thick grove before my fortification, to hide himself; and that I seeing him alone, and not perceiving that the others sought him that way, showed myself to him, and smiling upon him, encouraged him: that he kneeled down to me, seeming to pray me to assist him; upon which I showed him my ladder, made him go up, and carried him into my cave, and he became my servant;
14.10 I resolved, if possible, to get one of these savages into my hands, cost what it would. My next thing was to contrive how
14.12 surprised one morning by seeing no less than five canoes all on shore together on my side the island
no less than thirty in number; that they had a fire kindled, and that they had meat dressed. How they had cooked it I knew not, or what it was; but they were all dancing, in I know not how many barbarous gestures and figures, their own way, round the fire.
14.13 this poor wretch, seeing himself a little at liberty and unbound, Nature inspired him with hopes of life, and he started away from them, and ran with incredible swiftness along the sands, directly towards me;
now I expected that part of my dream was coming to pass, and that he would certainly take shelter in my grove; but I could not depend, by any means, upon my dream
14.14 [good exposition of landscape, action]
now was the time to get me a servant, and, perhaps, a companion or assistant; and that I was plainly called by Providence to save this poor creature's life.
14.15 a bow and arrow, and was fitting it to shoot at me: so I was then obliged to shoot at him first, which I did, and killed him at the first shot. The poor savage who fled, but had stopped, though he saw both his enemies fallen and killed, as he thought, yet was so frightened with the fire and noise of my piece that he stood stock still, and neither came forward nor went backward
at length he came close to me; and then he kneeled down again, kissed the ground, and laid his head upon the ground, and taking me by the foot, set my foot upon his head; this, it seems, was in token of swearing to be my slave for ever. I took him up and made much of him, and encouraged him all I could.
14.16 he spoke some words to me, and though I could not understand them, yet I thought they were pleasant to hear; for they were the first sound of a man's voice that I had heard, my own excepted, for above twenty-five years
But that which astonished him most was to know how I killed the other Indian so far off
14.17 something very manly in his face; and yet he had all the sweetness and softness of a European in his countenance, too, especially when he smiled. His hair was long and black, not curled like wool; his forehead very high and large; and a great vivacity and sparkling sharpness in his eyes. The color of his skin was not quite black, but very tawny; and yet not an ugly, yellow, nauseous tawny, as the Brazilians and Virginians, and other natives of America are, but of a bright kind of a dun [dull brown] olive-color, that had in it something very agreeable, though not very easy to describe. His face was round and plump; his nose small, not flat, like the negroes;
14.18 made all the signs to me of subjection, servitude, and submission imaginable, to let me know how he would serve me so long as he lived. I understood him in many things, and let him know I was very well pleased with him. In a little time I began to speak to him; and teach him to speak to me: and first, I let him know his name should be Friday, which was the day I saved his life: I called him so for the memory of the time. I likewise taught him to say Master; and then let him know that was to be my name:
14.18 making signs to me that we should dig them up again and eat them. [cannibalism] At this I appeared very angry, expressed my abhorrence of it, made as if I would vomit at the thoughts of it, and beckoned with my hand to him to come away, which he did immediately, with great submission
14.20 Friday had still a hankering stomach after some of the flesh, and was still a cannibal in his nature; but I showed so much abhorrence at the very thoughts of it, and at the least appearance of it, that he durst not discover [reveal] it: for I had, by some means, let him know that I would kill him if he offered it.
14.21 I gave him a pair of linen drawer
14.22 never man had a more faithful, loving, sincere servant than Friday was to me: without passions, sullenness, or designs, perfectly obliged and engaged; his very affections were tied to me, like those of a child to a father [paternalism];
14.23 God in His providence, and in the government of the works of His hands, to take from so great a part of the world of His creatures the best uses to which their faculties and the powers of their souls are adapted, yet that He has bestowed upon them the same powers, the same reason, the same affections,
14.24 as we all are the clay in the hand of the potter, no vessel could say to him, "Why hast thou formed me thus?" [Jeremiah 18.6: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter?” says the LORD. “Look, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel!]
14.25 the aptest scholar that ever was
15.1 to bring Friday off from his horrid way of feeding, and from the relish of a cannibal's stomach, I ought to let him taste other flesh
immediately I presented my piece [rifle], shot, and killed one of the kids. The poor creature, who had at a distance, indeed, seen me kill the savage, his enemy, but did not know, nor could imagine how it was done
15.2 while he was wondering, and looking to see how the creature was killed, I loaded my gun again
the more amazed, because he did not see me put anything into the gun, but thought that there must be some wonderful fund of death and destruction in that thing
believe, if I would have let him, he would have worshipped me and my gun
he would speak to it and talk to it, as if it had answered him, when he was by himself; which, as I afterwards learned of him, was to desire it not to kill him
as I had perceived his ignorance about the gun before, I took this advantage to charge the gun again, and not to let him see me do it
boiled or stewed some of the flesh
15.3 at last he told me, as well as he could, he would never eat man's flesh any more
15.4 after that I let him see me make my bread, and bake it too
15.6 the pleasantest year of all the life I led in this place. Friday began to talk pretty well
15.6 a singular satisfaction in the fellow himself: his simple, unfeigned honesty appeared to me more and more every day, and I began really to love the creature; and on his side I believe he loved me more than it was possible for him ever to love anything before.
15.7 dialogue . . . .
15.8 told me he was there once, when they ate up twenty men, two women, and one child
15.9 I afterwards understood it was occasioned by the great draft and reflux of the mighty river Orinoco
the great island Trinidad
there dwelt white bearded men, like me
15.11 lay a foundation of religious knowledge in his mind; particularly I asked him one time, who made him
one Benamuckee, that lived beyond all;"
15.12 instruct him in the knowledge of the true God; I told him that the great Maker of all things lived up there, pointing up towards heaven
received with pleasure the notion of Jesus Christ
priestcraft even among the most blinded, ignorant pagans in the world
15.13 clear up this fraud
it must be with an evil spirit; and then I entered into a long discourse with him about the devil, the origin of him, his rebellion against God, his enmity to man, the reason of it, his setting himself up in the dark parts of the world to be worshipped instead of God, and as God
15.14 there appeared nothing of this kind in the notion of an evil spirit, of his origin, his being, his nature, and above all, of his inclination to do evil, and to draw us in to do so too; and the poor creature puzzled me once in such a manner, by a question merely natural and innocent
15.17 "if God much stronger, much might as the wicked devil, why God no kill the devil, so make him no more do wicked?"
15.21 so you, I, devil, all wicked, all preserve, repent, God pardon all."
15.22 mere notions of nature, . . ., yet nothing but divine revelation can form the knowledge of Jesus Christ,
15.24 now to be made an instrument, under Providence, to save the life, and, for aught I knew, the soul of a poor savage, . . . a secret joy ran through every part of My soul,
15.25 This savage was now a good Christian, a much better than I; though I have reason to hope
his serious inquiries and questionings, made me, as I said before, a much better scholar in the Scripture knowledge than I should ever have been by my own mere private reading
15.27 I let him into the mystery, for such it was to him, of gunpowder and bullet, and taught him how to shoot
15.28 I showed him the ruins of our boat, . . . At last says he, "Me see such boat like come to place at my nation."
15.29 We save the white mans from drown." . . . I asked him then what became of them. He told me, "They live, they dwell at my nation."
15.30 they lived still there; that they had been there about four years; that the savages left them alone, and gave them victuals to live on. I asked him how it came to pass they did not kill them and eat them. He said, "No, they make brother with them;" that is, as I understood him, a truce; and then he added, "They no eat mans but when make the war fight;" that is to say, they never eat any men but such as come to fight with them and are taken in battle. [i.e., “ritual cannibalism” as opposed anthropophagy for sustenance]
15.31 "Oh, joy!" says he; "Oh, glad! there see my country, there my nation!" I observed an extraordinary sense of pleasure appeared in his face, and his eyes sparkled, and his countenance discovered a strange eagerness, as if he had a mind to be in his own country again. This observation of mine put a great many thoughts into me, which made me at first not so easy about my new man Friday as I was before
[15.34] "Yes," he said, "I be much O glad to be at my own nation."
15.35 "Would you turn wild again, eat men's flesh again,
15.36 Friday tell them to live good; tell them to pray God; tell them to eat corn—bread, cattle flesh, milk; no eat man again."
15.38 they willing love learn." He meant by this, they would be willing to learn. He added, they learned much of the bearded mans that came in the boat.
[15.41] He meant, he would tell them how I had killed his enemies, and saved his life, and so he would make them love me. Then he told me, as well as he could, how kind they were to seventeen white men, or bearded men, as he called them who came on shore there in distress. [dialogue = Bakhtin’s “interanimation,” in which one world, voice, or view enters another—in this case Crusoe and readers learn to see as colonized see and learn.]
15.42 "Well, now, Friday, shall we go to your nation?"
"much enough vittle, drink, bread"; this was his way of talking.
16.8 "you teach wild mans be good, sober, tame mans; you tell them know God, pray God, and live new life." [modernity / tradition]
16.16 all the foundation of his desire to go to his own country was laid in his ardent affection to the people, and his hopes of my doing them good
16.16 Friday wished to burn the hollow or cavity of this tree out, to make it for a boat, but I showed him how to cut it with tools; which, after I had showed him how to use, he did very handily
16.19 he became an expert sailor, except that of the compass I could make him understand very little [more techno-shock]
16.22 "one, two, three canoes; . . . nothing ran in his head but that they were come to look for him, and would cut him in pieces and eat him
16.23 pistols, guns, rum, compass
16.24 what occasion, much less what necessity I was in to go and dip my hands in blood, to attack people who had neither done or intended me any wrong? who, as to me, were innocent, and whose barbarous customs were their own disaster, being in them a token, indeed, of God's having left them, with the other nations of that part of the world, to such stupidity, and to such inhuman courses, but did not call me to take upon me to be a judge of their actions, much less an executioner of His justice
I would act then as God should direct; but that unless something offered that was more a call to me than yet I knew of, I would not meddle with them.
16.25 I saw plainly by my glass a white man . . . he was an European, and had clothes on.
16.28 they knew not from whence their destruction came
16.30 asked him in the Portuguese tongue what he was. He answered in Latin, Christianus . . . Espagniole
16.32 twenty-one in all.
16.34 told me that it was his father.
[16.42] My island was now peopled, and I thought myself very rich in subjects; and it was a merry reflection, which I frequently made, how like a king I looked. First of all, the whole country was my own property, so that I had an undoubted right of dominion. Secondly, my people were perfectly subjected—I was absolutely lord and lawgiver—they all owed their lives to me, and were ready to lay down their lives, if there had been occasion for it, for me. It was remarkable, too, I had but three subjects, and they were of three different religions—my man Friday was a Protestant, his father was a Pagan and a cannibal, and the Spaniard was a Papist. However, I allowed liberty of conscience throughout my dominions. But this is by the way.
16.43 Friday was my interpreter, especially to his father, and, indeed, to the Spaniard too; for the Spaniard spoke the language of the savages pretty well. [Colonized is multilingual; colonizer speaks King’s English]
16.44 effaced the very appearance of the savages being there
16.45 they would tell the people they were all killed by thunder and lightning, not by the hand of man; and that the two which appeared —viz. Friday and I—were two heavenly spirits, or furies
17.1 a serious discourse with the Spaniard
arrived, almost starved, on the cannibal coast, where they expected to have been devoured every moment
17.2 I told him with freedom, I feared mostly their treachery and ill-usage of me, if I put my life in their hands; for that gratitude was no inherent virtue in the nature of man
I had rather be delivered up to the savages, and be devoured alive, than fall into the merciless claws of the priests, and be carried into the Inquisition.
17.3 they should swear upon the holy sacraments and gospel to be true to me, and go to such Christian country as I should agree to, and no other; and to be directed wholly and absolutely by my orders till they were landed safely in such country
he would bring a contract from them, under their hands, for that purpose.
he would never stir from me as long as he lived till I gave him orders [compare to Friday's pledges in chapters 14, 15]
17.4 more advisable to let him and the other two dig and cultivate some more land, as much as I could spare seed to sow, and that we should wait another harvest, that we might have a supply of corn for his countrymen
"the children of Israel, though they rejoiced at first for their being delivered out of Egypt, yet rebelled even against God Himself, that delivered them, when they came to want bread in the wilderness."
17.5 barley, rice
17.6 set Friday and his father to cut them down; and then I caused the Spaniard, to whom I imparted my thoughts on that affair, to oversee and direct their work.
what prodigious labor it took up any one may imagine.
17.8 our magazine of corn
17.9 wherever they went would be entirely under and subjected to his command; and that this should be put in writing, and signed in their hands.
17.11 it appeared plainly to be an English ship
17.12 if they were really English it was most probable that they were here upon no good design
17.13 secret hints and notices of danger which sometimes are given
17.14 "O master! you see English mans eat prisoner as well as savage mans."
17.15 they sat down all three upon the ground, very pensive, and looked like men in despair. This put me in mind of the first time when I came on shore
17.16 My figure, indeed, was very fierce; I had my formidable goat-skin coat on, with the great cap I have mentioned, a naked sword by my side, two pistols in my belt, and a gun upon each shoulder.
17.18 "Am I talking to God or man? Is it a real man or an angel?"
[17.19] "Look you, sir," said I, "if I venture upon your deliverance, are you willing to make two conditions with me?" He anticipated my proposals by telling me that both he and the ship, if recovered, should be wholly directed and commanded by me in everything; and if the ship was not recovered, he would live and die with me in what part of the world soever I would send him; and the two other men said the same. "Well," says I, "my conditions are but two; first, that while you stay in this island with me, you will not pretend to any authority here; and if I put arms in your hands, you will, upon all occasions, give them up to me, and do no prejudice to me or mine upon this island, and in the meantime be governed by my orders; secondly, that if the ship is or may be recovered, you will carry me and my man to England passage free." [example of modern contract governing human behavior]
18.6 no remedy but to wait and see what the issue of things might present.
18.10 We could hear them call one to another in a most lamentable manner, telling one another they were got into an enchanted island
18.11 my whole army, which was now eight men, viz. myself, generalissimo; Friday, my lieutenant-general; the captain and his two men, and the three prisoners of war whom we had trusted with arms.
18.12 he must lay down his arms at discretion, and trust to the governor's mercy: by which he meant me, for they all called me governor.
18.14 all but a fiction of his own, yet it had its desired effect
18.17 they would own him as a father to them as long as they lived
18.22 I saw my deliverance, indeed, visibly put into my hands, all things easy, and a large ship just ready to carry me away whither I pleased to go
such was the flood of joy in my breast, that it put all my spirits into confusion: at last it broke out into tears
18.23 never was anything in the world of that kind so unpleasant, awkward, and uneasy as it was to me to wear such clothes at first.
18.24 I came thither dressed in my new habit [clothing]; and now I was called governor again
18.25 said they would much rather venture to stay there than be carried to England to be hanged.
18.29 I gave them the bag of peas which the captain had brought me to eat, and bade them be sure to sow and increase them
Jamaica Kincaid, from A Small Place (1988)
92
Antigua . . . . That Antigua no longer exists. [millennialism]
you, a tourist
the English . . . such a pitiful lot these days
this empire business was all wrong . . . wearing sackcloth in penance
no natural disaster imaginable could equal the harm they did
they should never have left their home, their precious England, a place they loved somuch . . . everywhere they went they turned it into England; and everybody they met they turned English. But no place could ever really be England, and nobody who did not look exactly like them would ever be English
you can imagine the destruction
a street named after an English maritime criminal, Horatio Nelso . . . other English maritime criminals
flamboyant trees and mahogany trees
93
high white wall, no one ever wrote bad things
remained clean and white and high
putty-faced Princess from England
library, Dept of Treasury, colonial government business
law against using abusive language
people for whom making a spectacle of yourself through speech is everything
passport
Barclays Bank, slave traders > banking
borrowing from descendants of slaves and then lending back to them
black person hired as cashier
Do you ever wonder why some people blow things up?
understand why people like me cannot get over the past, cannot forgive and cannot forget?
heaven or hell not enough
taught the names of the Kings of England
how angry it makes me to hear people from North America tell me how much they love England, how beautifu . . . traditions
some frumpy, wrinkled-up person
94
millions of people made orphans, no motherland, no fatherland, no gods, . . . .
the only language I have . . . of the criminal
I met the world through England
not a political perception: English ill-mannered, not racists
You loved knowledge
the debacle in which I now exist, the utter ruin that I say is my life
people like me cannot run things, grasp idea of Gross National Product, rule by law, abstractions, objective, so personal
forget your part in the whole setup . . . your inventions
all the laws that you know mysteriously favour you . . . .
As for what we were like before we met you, I no longer care
better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you.
Colonial: app. 1500s-1900s, but reaching its peak in the late 19th, early 20th centuries; period(s) of history in which the developed world of Europe (and/or USA) colonized and revolutionized the undeveloped world
[+ earlier empires? Ottoman, Mughal, Mayan, Japanese, Roman, Ming?]
demographically, surplus population of Europe migrates for land, economic and social advancement
Postcolonial: 20th century, but especially post-World War 2, 1940s-1960s
Colonized countries eject colonial armies, administrations--most colonizers return to European countries
"Third Wave": late 20th century
population explosion in Third World / underdeveloped nations
excess population goes to cities + overseas opportunities
Meanwhile Europe & other developed lands undergo "birth dearth"
Europe increasingly Muslim
USA increasingly Hispanic + other New-World immigrants + East Asian + Middle Eastern
Dehumanizing: self-other > subject-object, master-slave, human-inhuman
Crusoe: In what ways do Crusoe and Friday exemplify the "self and other?" How may an equalizing, humanizing dialogue begin?
Why the obsession with cannibalism?
What does cannibalism signify for self-other?
What race is Friday? Why does it matter? Recall popular images.
If Crusoe is "the first English novel," how does it exemplify the genre or leave your expectations frustrated?
What attitudes does Crusoe show toward home, family, career? How are these modern or traditional?
How does Crusoe's individual life correspond to England's history as an imperial-colonial nation?
62 devoured by savages
122 cannibals
136 cannibals
158 color so moletta-like
162 print of a man's naked foot
171 being all cannibals
172 cannibals and cultural distinction / relativism
172 bones of human bodies . . . . gave God thanks that had cast my first lot in a part of the world where I was distinguished from such dreadful creatures as these
When I came a little out of that part of the island I stood still awhile, as amazed, and then, recovering myself, I looked up with the utmost affection of my soul, and, with a flood of tears in my eyes, gave God thanks, that had cast my first lot in a part of the world where I was distinguished from such dreadful creatures as these [Crusoe verges on moral relativism, implying that, if born among cannibals, he would be one]; and that, though I had esteemed my present condition very miserable, had yet given me so many comforts in it that I had still more to give thanks for than to complain of: and this, above all, that I had, even in this miserable condition, been comforted with the knowledge of Himself, and the hope of His blessing: which was a felicity more than sufficiently equivalent to all the misery which I had suffered, or could suffer.
As long as I kept my daily tour to the hill, to look out, so long also I kept up the vigor of my design, and my spirits seemed to be all the while in a suitable frame for so outrageous an execution as the killing twenty or thirty naked savages, for an offence which I had not at all entered into any discussion of in my thoughts, any farther than my passions were at first fired by the horror I conceived at the unnatural custom of the people of that country, who, it seems, had been suffered by Providence, in His wise disposition of the world, to have no other guide than that of their own abominable and vitiated passions; and consequently were left, and perhaps had been so for some ages, to act such horrid things, and receive such dreadful customs, as nothing but nature, entirely abandoned by Heaven, and actuated by some hellish degeneracy, could have run them into. But now, when, as I have said, I began to be weary of the fruitless excursion which I had made so long and so far every morning in vain, so my opinion of the action itself began to alter; and I began, with cooler and calmer thoughts, to consider what I was going to engage in; what authority or call I had to pretend to be judge and executioner upon these men as criminals, whom Heaven had thought fit for so many ages to suffer unpunished to go on, and to be as it were the executioners of His judgments one upon another; how far these people were offenders against me, and what right I had to engage in the quarrel of that blood which they shed promiscuously upon one another. I debated this very often with myself thus: "How do I know what God Himself judges in this particular case? It is certain these people do not commit this as a crime; it is not against their own consciences reproving, or their light reproaching them; they do not know it to be an offence, and then commit it in defiance of divine justice, as we do in almost all the sins we commit. They think it no more a crime to kill a captive taken in war than we do to kill an ox; or to eat human flesh than we do to eat mutton."
When I considered this a little, it followed necessarily that I was certainly in the wrong; that these people were not murderers, in the sense that I had before condemned them in my thoughts, any more than those Christians were murderers who often put to death the prisoners taken in battle; or more frequently, upon many occasions, put whole troops of men to the sword, without giving quarter, though they threw down their arms and submitted. In the next place, it occurred to me that although the usage they gave one another was thus brutish and inhuman, yet it was really nothing to me: these people had done me no injury: that if they attempted, or I saw it necessary, for my immediate preservation, to fall upon them, something might be said for it: but that I was yet out of their power, and they really had no knowledge of me, and consequently no design upon me; and therefore it could not be just for me to fall upon them; that this would justify the conduct of the Spaniards in all their barbarities practiced in America, where they destroyed millions of these people; who, however they were idolators and barbarians, and had several bloody and barbarous rites in their customs, such as sacrificing human bodies to their idols, were yet, as to the Spaniards, very innocent people; and that the rooting them out of the country is spoken of with the utmost abhorrence and detestation by even the Spaniards themselves at this time, and by all other Christian nations of Europe, as a mere butchery, a bloody and unnatural piece of cruelty, unjustifiable either to God or man; and for which the very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible, to all people of humanity or of Christian compassion; as if the kingdom of Spain were particularly eminent for the produce of a race of men who were without principles of tenderness, or the common bowels of pity to the miserable, which is reckoned to be a mark of generous temper in the mind.
As to the crimes they were guilty of towards one another, I had nothing to do with them; they were national, and I ought to leave them to the justice of God, who is the Governor of nations, and knows how, by national punishments, to make a just retribution for national offences, and to bring public judgments upon those who offend in a public manner, by such ways as best please Him.
175 could think of nothing [but] destroy, save
177 cannibals & cultural difference / relativism
177-8 not murderers
178 nothing to me
178 Spaniards destroyed millions
179 [sins] were national--innocent as to me
181 obey the secret dictate
188 naked savages
189 murdering humor
215 x-eat man's flesh
217 Caribs
I have told this passage, because it introduces what follows: that after this discourse I had with him, I asked him how far it was from our island to the shore, and whether the canoes were not often lost. He told me there was no danger, no canoes ever lost: but that after a little way out to sea, there was a current and wind, always one way in the morning, the other in the afternoon. This I understood to be no more than the sets of the tide, as going out or coming in; but I afterwards understood it was occasioned by the great draft and reflux of the mighty river Orinoco, in the mouth or gulf of which river, as I found afterwards, our island lay; and that this land, which I perceived to be W. and NW., was the great island Trinidad, on the north point of the mouth of the river. I asked Friday a thousand questions about the country, the inhabitants, the sea, the coast, and what nations were near; he told me all he knew with the greatest openness imaginable. I asked him the names of the several nations of his sort of people, but could get no other name than Caribs [see note above maps below]; from whence I easily understood that these were the Caribbees, which our maps place on the part of America which reaches from the mouth of the river Orinoco to Guiana, and onwards to St. Martha. He told me that up a great way beyond the moon, that was beyond the setting of the moon, which must be west from their country, there dwelt white bearded men, like me, and pointed to my great whiskers, which I mentioned before; and that they had killed much mans, that was his word: by all which I understood he meant the Spaniards, whose cruelties in America [see note above maps below] had been spread over the whole country, and were remembered by all the nations from father to son. . . . [Chapter 15 continues below]
[Instructor's notes: Caribs . . . the Caribbees: the word "cannibal" is derived from the "Carib" or "Caribee" Indians (+ Caribbean Sea). The association is controversial, most recently in the depiction of Carib Indians as cannibals in Pirates of the Caribbean.
[Spaniards, whose cruelties in America . . . : part of "The Black Legend" or La Leyenda Negra that ascribes unusual cruelty to the Spanish colonization of the Americas. This mix of legend and fact must also remain controversial, but the Black Legend is often told from the selective view of the British Empire, rival of the Spanish.]
232-3 x-judge
He was a comely [pleasant-looking], handsome fellow, perfectly well made, with straight, strong limbs, not too large; tall, and well-shaped; and, as I reckon, about twenty-six years of age. He had a very good countenance, not a fierce and surly aspect, but seemed to have something very manly in his face; and yet he had all the sweetness and softness of a European in his countenance, too, especially when he smiled. His hair was long and black, not curled like wool; his forehead very high and large; and a great vivacity and sparkling sharpness in his eyes. The color of his skin was not quite black, but very tawny; and yet not an ugly, yellow, nauseous tawny, as the Brazilians and Virginians, and other natives of America are, but of a bright kind of a dun olive-color, that had in it something very agreeable, though not very easy to describe. His face was round and plump; his nose small, not flat, like the negroes; a very good mouth, thin lips, and his fine teeth well set, and as white as ivory.
Cannibalism, repression of women, infanticide . . .
At what point does cultural dialogue become threatening?--and imperialism permissible?
questions about style
Defoe's sentences
not a modern sentence--very little subordination
long sentences, but not like Faulkner's long sentences
typical of 16th-17th century prose: plain speech, but adds and adds, piles up predicates.
difficulties of course < difficulties of postmodern literary studies
incoming students' view: grad school to learn some answers, nail down some positions, confirm interests and master more texts and authors
often influenced by mid-20c literary theory: New Criticism (close reading of individual works regardless of historical contexts; formalism) and Myth Criticism (literature as embodying collective archetypes and universal narratives)
bring both books to class--Robinson Crusoe & Lucy
+ bring Watt article one more time--I'll review
In Lucy, a young Caribbean woman travels alone to northeastern USA as au pair
tight focus of interpretation, but within that focus everything matters--kind of like mental illness, but kind of like genius
Where does this text fit in Colonialism > Postcolonialism > "Third Wave"
immigrant story--what see about 1st world?
what role or identity for 1st world after colonialism?
Instructor's questions:
reading: Dawlat Yassin
Robinson Crusoe is a colonial figure in many aspects. He colonizes a land, claims it as his own and assumes both the legislative and executive authorities in his kingdom. He is an absolute sovereign who possesses both the land and the people. He refers to himself as king three times in the novel, in pages:115, 133, 217.
On page 115 :
“I was lord of the whole manor, or if I pleased, I might call myself king, or emperor over the whole country which I had possession of.”
Then on page 133 he says:
“there was my majesty, the prince and lord of the whole island; I had the lives of all my subjects at my absolute command. I could hang, draw, give liberty and take it away, and no rebels among all my subjects”.
This explains to us what kind of human relationship he is capable of having, especially after selling Xury into slavery, and at the same time it prepares us for the enslavement of Friday.
Robinson Crusoe does not only represent secular authorities, but he is a religious authority as well. In page 197:
“I seriously prayed to God that he would enable me to instruct saving this poor ignorant creature to receive the light of the knowledge of God in Christ , reconciling him to himself , and would guide me to speak so to him from the Word of God as his conscience might be convinced, his eyes opened and his soul saved”.
After saving Friday’s life, he wants to save his soul. He thinks of himself as a missionary with a message to educate, enlighten, and Christianize the non- Christians.
Then in p185:
“” I made him know his name is Friday”
Here he imposes a name on this guy.
P.187
“ even though we have these powers enlightened by the great lamp of instruction , the spirit of God, and by the knowledge of His Word, added to our understanding”.(187)
His sentence “add to our understanding”(188) recalls the theory of evolution which was held by many philosophers through history.
1.Was Robinson Crusoe’s colonialism based on the fact that the Island is unpopulated and his enslavement of Friday based on the fact that he saved him from death?
2. With all his self-determination to colonize and to change his destiny, plus his assuming the rule of a missionary in converting non-Christians into Christianity, what do you think Robinson Crusoe would do if the Island was populated? Would he give up, be prosecuted and devoured, or would he turn into a “Kurtz” figure by the power of his gun and powder? Would he still claim the island as his and its population as his slaves, or would he just convert them, enlighten them, and be spiritually satisfied leaving the island for its indigenous people?
3. Living in this age of human rights and supposed equality, do you think humanity is still capable of going back to slavery? If yes, what is the barrier that preserve us today and might be removed tomorrow in order for humanity to regress back into that savage use of one another?
instructor: Island Eden
“Crusoe’s Island” (68-72)
Question about what to do with Crusoe and slavery:
One of biggest challenges: What about presence of slavery? How does that affect the popular image of Robinson Crusoe?
problem continued with poem by Walcott
+ contrast b/w speaker as Adam without Eve and "Friday's progeny"
Broadly speaking, hard to interpret Robinson Crusoe b/c the book is still so alive, still open to reading
Partly how it's written--Defoe tells a great story, but little depth of reflection or self-consciousness of symbolism
hard to apply criticism--need larger category of theory
"Myth Criticism"--popular in mid-20c, but still hangs on
Appeal: Totalizing allegory + intertextuality: you read one text in terms of another as a means of imposing order or closure
Downside: It's still only one way of reading, but pretends to finality b/c of grandeur of myth
Myth defined
Does not mean something untrue, as in "myth and reality"
Rather, something truer than facts . . . Supposedly we like facts, but . . .
Facts / data lie around in bits and pieces, not satisfying in themselves except as they fit into a larger structure or meaning, or a story, or narrative
Return to "Crusoe's Island"
p. 69 hermit built / His Eden
The second Adam since the fall, / His germinal corruption . . . congenital heresy [that is, "original sin"]
European conquest of New World often associated with return to Eden
Indians as innocent or demonic
Unspoiled natural environment (really just sustainable population numbers)
113 cf. Planted garden [Adam, Eden; cf. Walcott]
72 first gun since creation
198 original sin: x-satisfied with station
original sin(s):
1. dispossession of Native America
2. African slavery / African diaspora
p. 72 Now Friday's progeny, / The brood of Crusoe's slave, / Black little girls . . .
Now Crusoe (as European American) is dispossessed: dwindling population of European America (life enhancement and extension, birth control) displaced or at least outnumbered by peoples they enslaved or conquered.
Variations on this myth / narrative continue next week: Lucy
Lucy = Lucifer
Watt article on Crusoe
What distinguishes Robinson Crusoe as "first novel?"
Short answer: realism in 2 dimensions
psychology of character (e. g., evolving attitude toward cannibals)
verisimilitude of everyday experience
p. 66
I walk'd about on the Shore, lifting up my Hands, and my whole Being, as I may say, wrapt up in the Contemplation of my Deliverance, making a Thousand Gestures and Motions which I cannot describe, reflecting upon all my Comerades that were drown'd, and that there should not be one Soul sav'd but my self; for, as for them, I never saw them afterwards, or any Sign of them, except three of their Hats, one Cap, and two Shoes that were not Fellows.
data-reality resists truth-narrative > "just one d--n thing after another"
Problem: realism of the novel resists theorizing or narrative
Humans as "story-telling creatures" organize reality via narratives: people acting / talking in space-time
Last week, "myth criticism"--imposition of familiar myth or collective narrative on individual experience
"Myth Criticism"--popular in mid-20c, but still hangs on
Appeal: Totalizing allegory + intertextuality: read one text in terms of another as a means of imposing order or closure
Downside: It's still only one way of reading, but pretends to finality b/c of grandeur of myth
Myth does not mean something untrue, as in "myth and reality"
Rather, something truer than facts . . . Supposedly we like facts, but . . .
Facts / data lie around in bits and pieces, not satisfying in themselves except as they fit into a larger structure or meaning, or a story, or narrative
Walcott, "Crusoe's Island"
The second Adam since the fall, / His germinal corruption . . . congenital heresy [that is, "original sin"]
European discovery / conquest of New World often associated with return to Eden
Indians as innocent or demonic
Unspoiled natural environment (really just sustainable population numbers)
Americans as reborn / remade / born again / ultimate makeover
113 cf. Planted garden [Adam, Eden; cf. Walcott]
72 first gun since creation
198 original sin: x-satisfied with station
original sin(s):
1. dispossession of Native America
2. African slavery / African diaspora
Variations on this myth / narrative continue in Lucy
Lucy = Lucifer
Sibling theory to myth criticism is "Historicism" or "New Historicism"
Reading literary texts against or within historical backgrounds or events (e. g., colonial and postcolonial novels)
Using literary texts as opportunity to discuss our own history (obj. 3 +)
Historicism also tends to be totalizing, grand-scale, like myth, but instead of myth's emphasis on narrative, history's emphasis on movements, trends like capitalism, colonialism, liberation movements, tradition / modernity
Fiction and history converge
bottom p. 60: Crusoe as individual + rise of modern industrial capitalism, spread of Protestantism
bottom p. 61 + politics
p. 63, "Our civilization as a whole is based on individual contractual relationships, as opposed to the unwritten, traditional and collective relationships of previous societies . . . ."
65 Crusoe's original sin > really the dynamic tendency of capitalism itself, whose aim is never merely to maintain the status quo, but to transform it incessantly
Conclusions:
2. To theorize the novel as the defining genre of modernity, both for early-modern imperial culture and for late-modern postcolonial culture.
Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981.
“Epic and Novel”
3 the novel is the sole genre that continues to develop, that is as yet uncompleted.
39 . . . a genre that structures itself in a zone of direct contact with developing reality.
40 Such a reorientation [the concept of a future] occurred for the first time during the Renaissance. . . . It was in the Renaissance that the present first began to feel with great clarity and awareness an incomparably closer proximity and kinship to the future than to the past.
For Watt too, the novel constantly renews our relationship with a reality that always evolves, maintaining some memory of the past but opening to a radically different future.
Essentially the narrative of modernity, with varied scales and tones:
liberation from past--individual or ethnic / national group
apocalypse / millennium (Things Fall Apart)
partly mythic, but also recognizable as history then and now