Doing Robinson Crusoe some justice

If anybody remembers my first post it was basically that I played a demo of a Robinson Crusoe pc game and gave a very short description of it.  I had planned on saying something about Defoe’s work but became too frustrated with trying to put pictures up on this blog that I decided to call it a night and just ended up never doing it ( I still have no idea how to put them up).  Robinson Crusoe was one of the most difficult reads of my life.  The lack of chapters and paragraphs made it difficult, I guess that is why “prose” and the “novel” are different beasts.  Although it was difficult to read I do remember enjoying certain parts a lot.  I mostly enjoyed the parts where Crusoe would recount his inventory.  I’m just kidding, his inventory updates made me want to throw the book across the room.  I did admire Crusoe’s wilderness survival skills, he seemed like a lesser Les Stroud (Survivorman) and that is how I preferred to envision him.  If I remember correctly Crusoe didn’t express any interest in any female characters (I can’t remember if he got married and had kids at the end), but he spent 27 years with nothing but savages and wild animals for company and there was hardly any expressed desire for female companionship after he got back to civilization.  His underground tunnels and hideouts were neat but nothing beats the canoe that he spent months on in the middle of the jungle only to finish it and not be able to move it to shore.  What I loved most about Robinson Crusoe were the spin-offs that I enjoyed as a kid.  There was something about being stranded on an island and making something of yourself (ideally like the tree house of the Swiss Family Robinson).

Advertisement