Is Robinson Crusoe a Novel of the “Individual”? – 3

Edward Said, in Culture and Imperialism, notes that Robinson Crusoe tells the story of “a European who creates a home for himself on a distant island outside Europe.” He interprets the emergence, or “rise,” of the novel in England within this context: “In England, the novel begins with Robinson Crusoe, whose protagonist establishes a new world under his own rule while asserting a claim to rights in the name of Christianity and England” (pp. 12 and 110). Nevertheless, as a genre, the novel will lead to the erasure—almost as if it had been sifted through a sieve—of the very part in which the hero “asserts a claim to rights in the name of Christianity and England.” This erasure begins with the claim that, with Robinson Crusoe, a “realistic” narrative form gradually comes to dominate.

One of those who exhibits the most extreme example of this erasure, Akşit Göktürk, in his encyclopedically valuable book Ada, in which he recounts the trajectory of the “island” in English literature, although he counts sea and adventure narratives among the sources of Robinson Crusoe, and although he states that “Robinson Crusoe bears traces of the Puritan worldview of Defoe’s time, of middle-class life, of trade—the principal occupation of this class—and of social and political currents. Defoe is a man of the middle class which, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, established itself through revolutions both in England and in other European countries, gained a voice in social life, implemented its own system of values in every field, and exerted weight upon the governance of nations,”—thus in fact assigning an identity to “everyone”—cannot refrain from casting him into the mould of a ‘total Western man’ as perceived in the Republican era: “Especially in interpretations made from an economic perspective, Defoe’s creativity and artistic personality have always been overlooked. Robinson Crusoe has become an inseparable part of European literature and has been accepted as one of the myths underlying the European mind and civilisation, yet its meaning has been limited by being interpreted as ‘a myth that expresses the ideals of the successful bourgeois, the materialist Puritan businessman…’. It may indeed be true that Robinson Crusoe is a myth, but it is the myth of a human being who struggles to survive in a merciless universe, grapples with dead-end situations, and explores all the possibilities of his own strength” (pp. 87–88).Başka bir ifadeyle, Göktürk Robinson’un ekonomik birey olarak da, Avrupa uygarlığının içinden süzülüp gelmiş bir mitos olarak da sunulmasını kısmi bulur. Çünkü Robinson, “acımak bilmez bir evrende sağ kalmaya çalışan, çıkmaz durumlarla pençeleşen, kendi gücünün bütün olanaklarını araştıran insanın mitosu”dur ve bu anlamda evrenseldir.

What is more interesting, however, is Göktürk’s oscillation between the “Calvinist principle” and the universal “human.” Göktürk mentions, albeit as a possibility, that the novel may rest on a Calvinist tradition; that it may bear traces of the Puritan understanding of Defoe’s time, of the middle-class way of life that emerged from this understanding, of trade—the principal occupation of this way of life—and even of social and political currents. Yet he is troubled by the possibility that such interpretations—as well as those that evaluate the novel as the adventure of a blindly “individualist capitalist”—would reduce Robinson Crusoe to “a dry historical document in our time”; moreover, he is concerned that the “great interest” and “affection” it receives “in every kind of society today, regardless of its form of government” would become “meaningless.” However, Robinson’s endeavour is not directed solely toward the acquisition of goods; it is also directed toward “creating values.” Therefore, goods are vanity, property is vanity, and “Robinson is presented as a so-called ‘universal’ figure who, ‘through the illuminating power of labour, strives to realise and bring forth the human values lying dormant within him’; a universal figure who “does not content himself with goods and property, but finds happiness only in frenzied labour.” Robinson Crusoe is “a tribute to civilisation, to humankind that always seeks to advance further” (pp. 89–90). From this perspective, Göktürk’s Robinson is without a homeland.

Can Robinson— as a pirate, as a European who engages in colonial activities in the name of Christianity and England, as a “Robinsonian” figure, and most importantly as a Puritan—truly be without a homeland? Does a Robinson Crusoe who may be said to have somehow amalgamated all of these have no place, no home, no country, no homeland?

The image of Robinson drawn by Ian Watt in The Rise of the Novel rests on a rather simple proposition. Watt evaluates Robinson as “the embodiment of homo economicus”: “That Robinson Crusoe … is the incarnation of economic individualism is almost beyond dispute” (p. 71); admittedly, in The Myths of Modern Individualism he cannot express his proposition in such a clear and rigid manner and revises this point, which had seemed almost beyond dispute; here he accepts that Crusoe should not be “assumed to be an ideal-type homo economicus”; because the Watt of The Myths of Modern Individualism has noticed certain things that the Watt of The Rise of the Novel had previously failed to perceive, and has observed that on the island Crusoe does not merely work as a representative of homo economicus, but also invents small amusements, plays with his parrot, and even has cats (!). Thus, the new Robinson now “stands somewhere between homo economicus and the simple human” (p. 199). What, then, is Crusoe as homo economicus?

In fact, Watt’s image of Robinson is Weberian; although he occasionally refers to Locke or Marx, he takes as his model Weber’s “Protestant ethic,” which Weber claims began with a Puritan impulse but later became independent of it. Yet is there not, in these and similar interpretations, a perspective that regards Protestantism not as a “religion” that emerged as a reaction to Catholicism, nor as a “religion” possessing a political mentality that, while opposing a particular conception of sovereignty shaped under the determinative role of the Papacy, developed its own distinct understanding of sovereignty, but rather as an (economic) ethic and an (economic) culture—and that sees literature as a field which, within such a culture, has formed its own autonomous domain and carries its own stylistic concerns? Even if it does not fully encompass the issue presented as “economic individualism,” the importance of this question becomes evident when we consider Watt’s three theses: The first is that Robinson is so self-interested that even his “original sin” leads him to make money; the second is that, in the absence of economic virtues, he is xenophobic, whereas otherwise his praise of foreigners is “boundless”; and the third is that, although he has “religious concerns,” these “possess no particular priority.”

Watt associates the first point—which may almost be seen as connected to the third—with an impulse that compels Robinson to abandon not only his home but also his homeland; and, at other times as well, particularly when he is cast onto the “desert island,” with the “ungovernable passions” within him that surface as he questions himself, and with his “dissatisfaction with the position that God and nature deemed him worthy of.” According to him, Robinson’s “original sin” is not his failure to heed his father’s advice not to abandon the middle station of life and embark on adventures, nor his irresponsibility toward his family, nor his religious sentiments, but rather his calculation of whether “leaving or staying would be more advantageous in material terms.” From this perspective, Robinson “profits by his ‘original sin’ and becomes richer than his father” (p. 74). In short, according to Watt, “original sin” takes the form of abandoning one’s home and father’s house for the sake of gain. Yet this can only mean either that one has never read Robinson Crusoe at all, or, even if it has been read, that one suppresses the meaning of the text.

In fact, the theme of “sin” in Robinson Crusoe first begins to appear in the journal he starts writing after he is cast onto the island. Robinson has fallen onto the island, has encountered various hardships, and has undertaken certain efforts to overcome them. Nevertheless, since the religious knowledge he had acquired during his father’s upbringing had been erased during his time among sailors, he says that he has no “knowledge of the things of God.” Yet he does have a knowledge of the things of God: “If I were to say that I never once thought that all the painful events that befell me in the adventures I have recounted so far were a command of God, the consequence of a sin I committed, the punishment for rebelling against my father’s wishes, of my numerous present sins, or of the wrong path I have followed throughout my life, then this disrespect toward God would be easier to understand” (pp. 108–109). Indeed, this state of disrespect becomes so overwhelming that he asks God to deliver him from the heavy burden of the sins that have deprived him of all comfort and peace, and from this seemingly dreadful condition. Even his loneliness does not weigh more heavily upon him than his sins. In his solitude, by himself, he even makes confession, and by declaring the anniversary of the day he was cast onto the island a religious day, he keeps a fast: “I counted this day as a feast day distinct from other religious days; with all my heart I humbled myself and prostrated before God, openly listing and pouring out my sins, accepting the righteousness of His judgments concerning me, and begging Him to forgive me through the exalted Jesus. I put nothing in my mouth for twelve hours until sunset; then I ate a biscuit and a bunch of grapes, and, ending my day as I had begun it, I went to bed” (p. 123). He begins to read the Holy Scriptures three times a day and to practise ‘tefeül’ (bibliomancy), making prophecies (p. 134). [A parenthetical note: Akşit Göktürk’s translation choices here and in similar passages are, in a manner consistent with his calling Robinson the myth of humanity, almost neutral. For instance, he translates Robinson’s fasting (“I kept this Day as a Solemn Fast”) as “feast day.” He renders all Sabbaths as “Sunday,” producing such unclear sentences as: “Throughout this entire period, I had not distinguished Sundays from other days; for at first there was no thought relating to religion in my mind” (p. 123). Here, the Turkish reader cannot grasp the religious significance of Sunday. Yet Sunday has been the Sabbath for Robinson since the day he was cast onto the island; however, until now, he had done nothing for the Sabbath and had worked even though he was not supposed to. Now, by fasting as an act of repentance, he also observes the Sabbath.]

On the anniversary of the fourth year since he was cast onto the island, he now looks at the world as if from the “other world” and states that he no longer has any desire for it: “I now look upon the world as something distant from me, from which I expect nothing, with which I have no further dealings; I harboured no desire regarding worldly affairs. In short, I had nothing left to do with it, nor did I desire anything from it; to me, in this state, the world seemed like a place I once lived in but have now left—perhaps as it would appear when viewed from the other world.” He now regards the world exactly as it is written in the First Epistle of John 2:16: “At first, I was far removed from all the baseness of the world. I felt no desire of the flesh, nor of the eyes; nor was there any cause for pride in my way of life” (p. 149). Yet, unless we attempt to understand the text through Protestant references, he speaks of something else that may seem strange to us: “There was nothing I could desire; for in my present condition I had everything that could satisfy me. I possessed a vast domain; if I wished, I could call myself the king or the emperor of all the lands I owned. There was no one who would dare to rival me; neither an adversary nor anyone who would interfere with my sovereignty or meddle with my commands. If I had wanted to, I could have produced shiploads of goods; but since I had no use for them, I produced only as much as was sufficient for myself” (pp. 149–159).

Thus, despite being a sinner, he begins to feel that he has been “chosen” by God, that God has treated him generously, and that He has forgiven his wrongdoings. Noting that the day he was born and the day he was cast onto the island fall on the same date (30 September), he states that his life of “solitude,” in which he began to repent of his sinful life, also began on that very same day (p. 154). He then turns to the matter of “original sin.” Although such repetitions may not pose much difficulty for the readers of his own time, given their effect as a kind of “sermon,” they appear rather excessive to the modern reader. In yet another of these repetitions, Robinson, once again reviewing his life, says—according to Akşit Göktürk’s translation: “With all these circumstances, I may be regarded as an example from which a lesson should be drawn for those afflicted with a condition that is the source of half of humanity’s sufferings; by the word ‘plague,’ I mean to indicate a refusal to be content with the condition that God and Nature have deemed appropriate for man; for my failure to look back and my disregard of my original condition, my refusal to heed my father’s wise counsel, my acting against those counsels—these constituted my original sin; and when other similar sins followed, I fell into this miserable state; for Almighty God had settled me in Brazil as a happy colonial planter and had granted me my desires; had I been content to proceed gradually, today—indeed, during the time I spent on the island—I would have become one of the leading planters of Brazil; considering the progress I made while living there and the gains I might have achieved had I remained, I could, at that rate, have amassed a fortune of a hundred thousand gold pieces. What business had I to leave a settled, well-established, thriving slave-based plantation and go to Guinea as the ship’s cargo officer to bring back slaves? In time, with patience, our earnings would have increased right where we were; we could have purchased the slaves we desired from those engaged in that trade at our very doorstep; perhaps this would have cost a little more; but the profit I would have gained by the other route was not worth undertaking so much danger” (pp. 216–217).

First of all, it must be noted that among the words we have underlined here, the word rendered as “disease” is not “disease” but “plague,” and that for Robinson this is a word carrying far deeper and more spiritual connotations than an ordinary ailment such as a sore throat; that the word translated as “farmer” does not refer to a simple cultivator working his fields and vineyards, but to a colonial “Planter” who establishes plantations; that the word rendered as “farm” likewise corresponds to “Plantation,” a colonial enterprise dependent on slave labour; and that the word rendered (in a racially distorted manner) as “Arab” in fact corresponds to “Negro.” However, when considered together with the word “Arab,” the choice of the expression “original sin” also reflects the nature of the humanist culture (and translation practice) that is being promoted in Turkey. This word is “ORIGINAL SIN”—“ASLİ GÜNAH”—one of the foundational doctrines of Christianity, whose importance is further underscored by its capitalization in the English edition of Robinson Crusoe. Here, Robinson Crusoe expresses that, alongside other things, through reflecting on his “sins” and on “original sin” on the island, he is “reborn”; and this meaning is perfectly clear both to readers of Defoe’s time and to modern readers. Naturally, this is also clear to Göktürk and Watt—who detach it from its context and behave as though “everyone” were reading entirely different texts.

Yet Watt is not alone in this kind of interpretation. Indeed, it is worth recalling that Thomas Keymer and James Kelly, who also append a note to the term in the Oxford World’s Classics edition, offer an explanation that not only removes the doctrinal context of the word but also universalises the meaning it signifies, making it apply to “everyone”: “ORIGINAL SIN: literally, a state of corruption and sinfulness innate in all human beings as a consequence of being expelled from Paradise, but a term frequently applied by Defoe to specific individual faults” (p. 295).

From this perspective, the principal problem in Watt’s reduction of the “original sin” in Robinson Crusoe to economic individualism is that, despite—or together with—Robinson’s “original sin,” despite his drive for gain and even his having gained, Watt entirely fails to take into account what the free interpretation—so to speak—of a specific Christian doctrine, namely the doctrine of “original sin,” by Robinson or Defoe transforms that doctrine into, and whether this transformation is “individual” or “social” in character. If such an understanding of “original sin” is unique to Robinson alone, then Watt is right; however, if it is a doctrine of a particular “religion”—of Protestantism, which constitutes itself not merely as a sect but as a “religion,” or of its various branches—then Watt leads us astray, concealing a specific Christian understanding of “religion” under an economic, cultural, or literary guise. [A parenthetical note for the curious: Watt’s interpretation of “original sin” has been critiqued from another angle in Maximillian E. Novak’s article “Robinson Crusoe’s ‘Original Sin’,” published in the journal Studies in English Literature.]

The second point—concerning Robinson’s (in Watt’s terms) xenophobia in the absence of “economic virtues,” and his lavish praise of foreigners otherwise— should be understood as relating to another issue concealed beneath economic activity, namely the issue of sovereignty. However, Watt constructs this as an economic morality as well and states: “Crusoe is essentially xenophobic in situations where economic virtues are absent … Where economic motives are present—for instance, in his relations with the Spanish Governor, the French Catholic priest, or the devout Portuguese broker— his praise knows no bounds. On the other hand, he reproaches many Englishmen, such as the English settlers who come to the island, for their laziness. One has the impression that Crusoe’s emotional attachment to his country is no greater than his attachment to his family. Regardless of nationality, he has no quarrel with those who can do good business … He thinks along the lines of ‘wherever one has money in one’s pocket, that is one’s home’” (p. 75).

However, the Englishmen who come to Robinson’s island are not, as Watt claims, “settlers”; they are brigands who mutinied against the captain of the ship that was to rescue Robinson from the island and who abandoned the captain and some other sailors—who did not join the mutiny—to die on the deserted island. After rescuing the captain and the ship on the condition that they remain under his “command” while they are on the island, Robinson leaves them there—as the sovereign of the island—on the condition that they recognize his sovereignty, obey the laws he has established, and, if they cause trouble, be punished according to his own standards or example even in his absence; moreover, he does so considering that if they were taken aboard the ship and brought to England, they would be hanged for their mutiny (pp. 275–302). In these scenes, while Robinson refers to himself as “king,” “prince,” and even “commander of the army,” the captain and the other Englishmen refer to him as “governor.”

Moreover, contrary to Watt’s claim, Robinson’s attachment both to his family and to his country is far more than merely emotional. He may establish relations—albeit sombre and reluctant—with a Spaniard or a Portuguese, as in Brazil; yet he curses the colonial policies of Spain or Portugal—not because he himself is not a coloniser, but because they adhere to different conceptions of colonialism—whenever the occasion demands. Most important, however, is his manner of dealing with the cannibal savages he encounters on his island. At first, he wishes to punish them for the abominable act they have committed; yet later, asking himself by what authority he could oppose this will if “Providence” intended them to be thus, he leaves them to their own devices and regards the shores of his island—where the savages frequently come to practise cannibalism—as if they were a zone lying beyond his sovereignty. For to punish the savages for their cannibalism would amount to justifying “the Spaniards’ barbarous slaughter of millions of the natives in America, who, though they practised idolatrous and barbarous customs such as offering human sacrifices to their idols, were nevertheless considered innocent in comparison to the Spaniards; whereas the massacre undertaken by the Spaniards to drive these people out of the country had been received by all the Christian nations of Europe as a horrifying tyranny incompatible with both humanity and the fear of God—nothing short of butchery—and the Spaniards had come to be known as the most dreadful of all peoples, while the Kingdom of Spain had acquired a notorious reputation as a land that bred people devoid of compassion, ignorant of the rules of kindness, and utterly intolerant” (pp. 193–194). These passages, which recall figures such as Francisco de Vitoria, and which—when we also consider his remark that ‘before the Spaniards came, the Indians of Peru could not make use of their own existence’ (p. 217)—suggest a kind of ‘Spanish exceptionalism,’ whereby Spain is rendered the exception to a European practice, allowing Europe as a whole to absolve itself.

Driven by this animosity, and setting aside all precautions toward the savages he had previously decided to leave to their own devices, he resolves to attack—thus revealing his presence on the island—when he notices that among the captives brought by the savages to the shore of his island to be cooked there is a European and a Christian. When Friday arrives and tells him that among the captives on the shore where the savages had landed there is “one of the bearded white men” who had taken refuge among his tribe after a shipwreck, he is “horrified,” he “rages with fury,” and he rescues the Christian European—whom he later learns is Spanish—from the hands of the savages. In the process, albeit by chance, he also rescues Friday’s father, who is among the captives of the savages (pp. 253–261).

Now the population of his island has increased, and one of the turning points in the novel occurs here: “My island was now populated; I felt rich in terms of my subjects; from time to time, imagining myself to be a king was one of the things I enjoyed most. First of all, all this land was my own property, and I had an undisputed right of dominion over these territories. Secondly, my subjects were entirely docile people. I was the absolute master; I made the laws; they all owed their lives to me and were ready to die for me if necessary. It was also a very striking point that my three subjects belonged to different religions. Friday was a Protestant, his father a pagan cannibal, and the Spaniard a Catholic. Nevertheless, in my country I had granted freedom of religion” (p. 265).

When he learns from the Spaniard they rescued that there are sixteen more of his companions on another nearby island, he agrees to rescue them on one condition: he first moralises his sovereignty by telling the Spaniard that they may work to rescue his companions, but that “if I were to place everything I possess in their hands, I am very much afraid that they might turn traitor and treat me badly; for gratitude is not one of the immutable and deeply rooted virtues of human nature; people’s actions are governed, more often than not, not by the sense of obligation they feel in return for a good deed, but by the interests they pursue.” He then strikes a blow at Spain from this position of moralised sovereignty: “After having been the means of their deliverance, it would be most grievous to me if they were to make me their slave in New Spain; that any Englishman who sets foot there, whatever his purpose may be, can be disposed of at once; and that, rather than falling into the merciless clutches of the priests and languishing in the Inquisition, I would prefer to be torn to pieces alive by savages.” Thereupon, when the Spaniard declares that they will swear upon the Holy Scriptures that they will accept Robinson’s captaincy and command, obey his every order, obtain firm pledges from each of his companions, and do whatever he says “until they safely reach a Christian country” that Robinson deems appropriate, Robinson is persuaded (pp. 268–269). In short, although he may find the Spaniard or the Portuguese oppressive as individuals, he has no fundamental issue with them; however, he does have a political and theological problem with the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, and with New Spain.

[A parenthetical note: In his second adventure, while disparaging the Chinese and the Japanese with whom he trades as much as possible, Robinson—who does not object to the cannibals’ consumption of human flesh on the grounds that “Providence” has deemed it so—attacks and destroys, one night, the ‘shamanistic’ idol erected by the “Tartars” for worship during the caravan journey between Peking and Moscow, in a manner more bitter than Don Quixote’s assault on windmills; that is, he does not treat “infidels” outside his own understanding of sovereignty with the same tolerance he shows to the savages (pp. 601–604). This may appear as a comic scene in the novel, yet it reflects a deeply iconoclastic situation and cannot be separated from Robinson’s doctrine. Most importantly, Defoe also attempts to situate Robinson’s ‘salvation’ within a context in which it is employed in the intense theological debates of his own time. Apart from Catholicism, to which he is already opposed from the outset, iconoclasm also constitutes a reaction against deist and atheist tendencies in his own country, as well as against practices that might be described as idolatry within rival Puritan understandings. As Clark notes in Daniel Defoe: The Whole Frame of Nature, Time and Providence, “Defoe’s main concern was to defend an eschatological order grounded in revelation and salvation by breaking a few false idols and attempting to repair the culture of his emerging island” (p. 113). Moreover, Robinson’s views on the Russian Orthodox Church are also highly doctrinal: “The Muscovites, in my view, are not worthy of the name Christian, though they strive to be Christians and believe in this path,” or “The Christianity of the Muscovites is a strange kind of Christianity” (p. 594).]

In light of all this, Watt’s view that Robinson is a homo economicus who is xenophobic when he does not find economic virtues and unreservedly full of praise when he does must be fundamentally revised. Robinson behaves toward a country in the same way that his own country would behave toward another country—or as he himself is within his own country.

(To be continued)