What is the title and who is the author of the book? What is the genre? How many pages.
I began reading Robinson Crusoe last year as the English classes were doing independent reading. I had long been interested in reading it because it is considered one of the very earliest English novels. But its length put me off. It is, after all, 254 pages long in my edition, and the type is small. But nevertheless, I began.
Summary of the part read so far. How many pages read in this reading?
I am now on page 147 having read about 4 today. Robinson after living a life of fun and adventure caring little about anything else, has been shipwrecked on an island in the Caribbean. The time period is the 1600s. The Spaniards and the Portuguese have settle in the Americas. But there is little development of civilization and certainly none on the remote islands of the Caribbean. So Robinson is alone and with little hope of ever seeing another civilized man.
He does have a lot of materials, which he rescued from the broken up ship, however. So he begins to build a home for himself in a cave. He plants some vegetables. He has a gun and powder, so he hunts, finding a herd of wild goats on the island which provide him with ample food.
Along the way with time for contemplation he begins to think about what Providence might have brought him here and cast him away. He recognizes the carelessness of his life, and reading in a Bible he salvaged from the wrecked ship, he discovers God's mercy for him and becomes a believer.
It is of note that Daniel Defoe, the author, is obviously intending this novel to be a morality play or story. There is a great deal of mention of spiritual things and lessons learned by Robinson.
In the few pages I read Friday Robinson is contemplating whether he should attack and kill the savage Indians who come regularly to the island. His reasoning is that they are violating God's laws by murdering their own kind. But after thinking about it some, he decides that they have not harmed him and that he should give them over to God for His judgment if there is to be any.
What do you think about the book so far?
That is a serious observation for an Englishman in the mid-1600s. The English were at that time encountering Indians in their settlement of North America. How should they treat these people who seemed all too savage and without morality to them? Defoe is recommending tolerance. Let God be the judge if He chooses to be.
This is one of many moral and spiritual lessons Defoe has to illustrate in the book. They are good lessons for us as well as his original readers.
