Reviews with content warning for Racism - Robinson Crusoe

History wise it's an interesting look at the mindset of the times. It is a slog to get through. Lots of repetition in plot and not for the faint of heart

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nikolas_kolinski's review against another edition

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adventurous informative reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.25

Robinson Crusoe - review

"Robinson Crusoe" is, according to the opinion of many academics and experts, the 1st English novel and an important archetype for both travel and adventure literature. This is certainly true; however, the novel results completely ineffective in entertaining the modern reader and is a classic that has aged incredibly poorly.

The introduction to the book is beautifully written and noteworthy, but at the same time feels a bit misleading, because it is definitely far more enjoyable than the book itself.

Defoe's writing style is completely terrible: the language used is not only old, but definitely boring, repetitive and at times even annoying. The long description of the main character's actions and of the places he visits (especially when he is not into the island, so not for the majority of the story) could be enjoyable, but end up being tedious as well, or at least surely not entertaining, mainly because of their excessive longevity; not to talk about everything that happens on the island, which always looks incredibly dull, monotonous and insufferable. The huge space given to religion and the lack of emotion and pathos for most of the time inside the narrative, also contribute to make the writing style dull and uninteresting.
Nevertheless, it is still a little bit interesting to see how the book embodies, as the founding father of the genre, the typical structure that adventure/travel novels used during the centuries and that is still often used nowadays within the genre. Everything does also look completely realistic and the writing still is at least effective under this aspect (even if it is maybe too realistic for a novel).
Apart from that though, Defoe does not seem to ever write anything else really notable.
And again, all in all there is really too much (too much) repetition.

The main themes are those listed in the introduction to the book: religion, search for god; empirical and rational (outer and inner) exploration of the world; human need for order and search for meaning vs. nature's changeability and randomness; development of an imperialistic, colonialist and individualist personality, self-growth and learning.
There's not much to say about them, Defoe does make a few attempts to expose some moral reflections on God and on colonialism and imperialism, yet he never gives satisfying arguments and everything ends up being pretty bland.

One of the most insufferable elements of the whole narrative though is the protagonist himself, Robinson Crusoe.
He always behaves like a narcissist, egocentric, racist, utilitarian man, acting like a colonialist, an imperialist (and displaying many times cultural appropriation, racism and religious bigotry) just because he is the one lucky enough to carry some weapons. Apart from that, however, not any reason is given to enforce his terrible personality.
You can make a protagonist with evil traits (even if probably DeFoe didn't think at all of Crusoe as "evil"), but please give him at least some reasons to behave in that way or at least don't make the fact that he thinks he's better than everyone else the only trait of his personality.
If it is true that other books from centuries ago contain offensive or retrograde elements, it is equally true that in Robinson Crusoe these are an integral part of the plot and the only characterizing cornerstone of the protagonist (whose only traits are literally colonialism, imperialism, racism and the belief that he is superior to others just because he is a Christian); this makes the protagonist utterly disgusting and unbearable and it seems impossible for the reader to emphatise with him.

In the end, "Robinson Crusoe" is a classic just because it represents the 1st English novel, but apart from that it does not have anything special. Defoe presents himself as a terrible writer (with many biases) and his literary work results uninteresting, passionless and monotonous, both in the style and the content. Had it been published in more recent times probably very few people would have read it; it is a book worth to be remembered only as an historical testimony but, from a literary point of view, it is surely a bad novel, that I would not ever recommend to anyone.
It is certainly hard to write a book like this, but it is likewise a terrible fatigue going through it and reading it.

Thus we never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries, nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.

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