Point out the aspects of realism in Robinson Crusoe

Or, What aspects of Robinson Crusoe make a fictional travelogue into an enduring piece of literature? Discuss.

Or, Write a note on Defoe’s technique in producing the effect of realism in his novel Robinson Crusoe.

Or, Point out the aspects of realism in Robinson Crusoe.

Answer: The story of Robinson Crusoe was written long back in 1719. Around three hundred years after, the book is read with no less aplomb, interest, and enthusiasm than it had been read by the book-loving and book-buying readers during its first appearance. It is Defoe’s technique that produces an effect of realism on the readers’ minds and makes his fictional masterpiece an enduring piece of literature. We feel as if Robinson Crusoe were real when we go through the story. We would be one with Robinson Crusoe, and meditate that we would have come across the same dangers and problems had we fallen into such situations. Defoe writes his story a journal as the ‘real’ Crusoe is recording his life story. This .illusion of a real Crusoe is established by the presence of a preface to the book where Crusoe asserts that he aims to “justify and honor the wisdom of Providence in all variety of our circumstances”- thus giving the story a religious overtone to make it more believable. There lies the success of Defoe that Robinson is often taken to be a real man who suffered a real shipwreck.

Defoe resorted to the first-person narrative to make his hero lifelike and his story authentic. Right from the very beginning, Crusoe can be taken as a real person: dates, circumstances, events, and portrayals are out and out lively, The point needs no laboring; everywhere the particulars of ship life, cargoes, routes, details of work, and daily resource, and renderings of thoughts and moods, are specific and convincing. For a novelist merely listing particulars would not automatically produce so vivid a result; that comes from the way the facts are related through Crusoe’s perceptions. Because Crusoe is co-credible, we sense things as he himself does, through his own responses, whether these are soberly practical, eagerly experimental, or tense with hope or dread. Crusoe not only perceives his circumstances, but he also experiences them the following passage from Crusoe’s scheme for outwitting the mutineers looks entirely like a factual travel-adventure narrative;

“I told him [the Captain] the first thing we had to do was to stave the boat which lay upon the beach so that they (the mutineers] might not carry her off and take everything out of her. leave her so far useless as not to be fit to swim; accordingly, we went on board, took the arms which were left on board out of her, and whatever else we found there, which was a bottle of brandy, and another of ruin, a few basket cakes, a horn of power, and a great lump of sugar in a piece of canvas; the sugar was fine or six pounds; all which was very welcome to use, especially the brandy and sugar, of which I had had none left for many years.’

Now, the above description is so vivid, so lucid and lively, so plain and graphic as if it were happening in a real-life situation. We get to believe that Crusoe is just narrating facts that occurred in his own life. Again when we see Crusoe giving the identity of his own self as well as a description of his family background, the readers are sent to an illusion to take Crusoe as a York citizen having a good parentage like their own.

“I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family,………….”

I had two elder brothers, one of which was lieutenant-colonel ….and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk against the Spaniards; what became of my second brother I never knew.”

The description shows that Crusoe is a creature like us and we cannot help assimilating ourselves with him because it is so plainly factual in its presentation.

In his preface to Robinson Crusoe, Defoe points out that it is a ‘just history of fact, with no ‘appearance of fiction’. Certainly, as we advance from the beginning to the end of the novel, we feel like journeying through a world of real things, a factual world. Storms at sea, realistic dangers, and struggles, variations of fortune, and Crusoe’s attitude to money and property are all facts that can occur in anybody’s real-life situation. What appeals to us more are the facts of Crusoe’s island life, so convincing in their directness and simplicity – his making and furnishing his ‘castle’, his efforts in rearing goats, his craft in making tools and pots, baking bread, and making canoes, his records of island features and ocean currents—all seem narration of real events.

Realism may be found in the journal or the diary that Crusoe kept after his survival after being shipwrecked. In this journal, he records everything: his misery on the island as well as what he is thankful for He also makes a list of pros and cons about his shipwreck, showing the reality of his situation and all he has been o *through. He makes an account of his advantages and accounts in terms of ‘debtor’ and ‘creditor like a real tradesman. He keeps a calendar of all of his daily routines and duties, and his struggle to find food. He records all of his struggles and shortcomings as he searches for the deeper things of life during his time of isolation. This authenticates his story and shows Crusoe in his everyday life and the struggles (both inward and outward) in his new environment. We feel fascinated to watch Crusoe recreate civilization alone. He makes us look at the activities and necessities of everyday life in a new way and “we secretly enjoy loneliness through him” – comments Edward Golden Craig, a modern illustrator.

Crusoe makes mistakes, commits sins, undergoes sufferings and punishments, and achieves salvation through penitence and surrendering himself to God. This is all very much human as we all commit sins and remorse for sin, and seek God’s mercy when we realize our faults. Like common human beings, Crusoe suffers from the illness, experiences bad dreams, is terrified by storms, the earthquake, and the footprint in the sand, and is aided by companions like Friday and other allies to show himself capable of warm feelings. He is amiable and on good terms with friends and business associates proving himself to be a likable and considerate human figure. Coleridge saw Crusoe in universal terms, as “a representative of humanity in general, neither his intellectual nor his moral qualities set him above the middle degree of mankind.” He is “the universal representative, the person for whom every reader could substitute himself. But now nothing is done, thought, or suffered, or desired, but what every man can imagine himself doing, thinking, feeling or wishing for.” He rises only where “in resignation, in dependence on and thankful acknowledgment of the divine mercy and goodness.” Another eminent critic James Beattie comments:

“Robinson Crusoe, though there is nothing of love in it, is one of the most interesting narratives that ever was written; it least in all that part which related to the desert island; being founded on a passion still more prevalent than love, the desire of self-preservation; and therefore likely to engage the curiosity of every class of readers, both old and young, both learned and unlearned.”

To conclude, there is no denying the fact that Crusoe is so real and the happenings in his life are so convincing that he can be taken as an Everyman, The way he puts forward the minutest details of facts that we cannot but take it as real happenings. He does not simply tell us that he spends a long time making his canoe he takes precisely twenty days to fell the tree and fourteen to remove the branches. He does not only say that it is an immense tree, but is “five foot ten inches in diameter at the lower part……… and four foot eleven inches diameter at the end of twenty-two foot. He informs us of all these with the exactitude and precision of a real-life character. Crusoe’s ratiocination, his resilience, his practical, business-like character, and his hands-on approach to life make Robinson Crusoe an enduring piece of literature and this is why innumerable readers throughout the world read it stall today.