Robinson Crusoe Essays (Examples)

Robinson Crusoe and Individualism

The adage "no man is an island" always holds true because humankind has always been a social being. y belonging to a group or society, individuals are expected to abide by the collective norms and behaviors thereto. Although individuals are assumed to follow the standards of the group, there are those who chose otherwise and demonstrate individualism, believing in the core importance of the individual and having self-reliant and independent behavior. To some groups or societies, individualism is shunned and members who show this trait are considered pariahs. Others though value individualism because it promotes innovation and creativity. Several great works of arts, scientific inventions, marvels of technology and engineering, and breakthroughs in other endeavors were the result of individualism; thus, heralded by collective society that benefitted from these. Daniel Defoe's The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, would not have been one…

Not all of the Europeans that went to America had been persecuted in their home countries, and there had been several reasons for why people chose to leave. hile some merely wanted a life of adventure on an unknown continent, others searched to take the word of God further by Christianizing the Native Americans. Religion is also present in Robinson Crusoe, as Crusoe converts Friday to Christianity and teaches him about God and faith.

Along with exploring the American continent, Europeans frequently interacted with the natives. The Native Americans firstly regarded white people as being Gods coming to save them after ages of misfortune. Most colonists took advantage of the kindness showed by the Indians and robbed them of their fortunes and of their land.

Similar to Crusoe, white people came and imposed their rule over the natives, as the latter did not initially show any resistance. Later on, natives…

The only real politics that the book deals with is the one promoted by Defoe, as he is obviously focused on supporting the image of England as one of the most important colonial forces.

orks cited:

Clowes, Edith . "The Robinson Myth Reread in Postcolonial and Postcommunist Modes," Critique36.2 (1995): 145

Crosby, Ray, "Robinson Crusoe's Anti-Pilgrimage," Retrieved June 29, 2011, from the University of California ebsite: http://ucriverside.academia.edu/RayCrosby/Talks/37311/Robinson_Crusoes_Anti-Pilgrimage

Defoe, Daniel, "Robinson Crusoe," Arc Manor LLC, 2008.

Donoghue, Frank, "Inevitable Politics: Rulership and Identity in Robinson Crusoe," Studies in the Novel27.1 (1995)

Mcinelly, Brett C. "Expanding Empires, Expanding Selves: Colonialism, the Novel, and Robinson Crusoe," Studies in the Novel 35.1 (2003)

Severin, Tim In Search of Robinson Crusoe (New York: Basic Books, 2002)

erner, Louis "En Route to the Real Robinson Crusoe: A Simple Story That Started on Chile's Juan Fernandez Archipelago Spawned a Legend That Has Inspired Numerous Books and Films…

He doesn't really need the company of other people and this shows that he was essentially a materialistic person- someone who was happier with money alone and didn't care much about people. "It was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy this life I now led was than the wicked, cursed, abominable life I led all the past part of my days"(Defoe 113). Out of fear essentially, Crusoe starts working on the island by using whatever resources were available and by producing them for his use. He works hard to produce some corn and barley on the island that he sees as a "prodigy of Nature" (Defoe 80). These grains provide the sole livelihood for Crusoe and serve as the only real source of food. It is at this time that he realizes that all he needs to do is depend on himself for survival and…

Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Jane Austen's Mansfield Park actually share a number of themes relating to the centrality of land in the formation of eighteenth and nineteenth century conceptions of rural virtue, politics, and property. Crusoe's South American island could not be farther from the staid environs of Mansfield Park, but the same tension between rural virtue and worldly interests permeates both stories, particularly in regards to Crusoe's wanderlust and Edmund's relationship with Mary. Both Crusoe and Edmund are lured by the seeming adventure and excitement of the world outside their rural homes, but ultimately find that the promises offered by this world are unmoored from any genuine moral or ethical system; at different times Crusoe finds himself both slave and slaver, and only begins to develop a moral compass after his shipwreck forces him to relate to the land in a way he has previously never considered. Similarly,…

setting for a book is as important, if not more important, than the depiction of characters. A detailed depiction of the architecture in a scene often adds to the credibility of the story. In the books Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, architecture is used not only as a scene setter but also as a testament to socio-economic values and cultural beliefs.

Robinson Crusoe, Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart all deal with so called "primitive" conditions as their subject matter. The stories do not take place in a thriving modern metropolis, but in areas well removed from the western eye. This being the case, much of the architecture described belongs to the indigenous people of the stories or the Caucasians who were forced to act as if they were natives because of the lack of "modern"…

Colonial America: Questions

Puritans

Unlike previous European settlers who came to the New World primarily to make a profit, the Puritans arrived with a commitment to create a new society and genuinely 'settle' on the land. They had no plans to return to England, given that they had been cast out of the Old World because of their religious beliefs. Unlike the settlers at Jamestown, they came prepared to work hard, and did not hope to simply make a quick profit and return to England rich, having done little labor. They believed in the value of hard work as part of their religious philosophy. They believed God had quite literally 'chosen' them to know the truth, which sustained them during times of suffering. During the first years, however, like previous colonists, they did struggle to stay alive. The winter was harsh, and they were forced to adapt their crops and…

' Either way, things can never be as they 'once were.' Chuck is filled with a great sense of loss, as he feels as if he has lost Kelly twice in his life, which is almost too much to bear. The worst struggle, emotionally, for Chuck is that he knows that he could actually be a better husband to Kelly now, after the crash, than he could have been before he was stranded. Before he nearly lost his life and spent so many years alone, he took human relationships for granted. He was always focused on the next task the next thing he had to do for his job. Now Chuck realizes that the most important things in life are not things, but people. He also has a new-found appreciation for the natural world that sustained him for four years, alone on the island.

Chuck, uncertain as to what do,…

Though they can cooperatively work well with other people, they would rather spend time for learning by themselves.

Distant teacher. If traditional education teachers act as directors of learning - telling learners what, when, and how is it to be learned - distant teachers act as resource to the learners. As in traditional education where learners respond to the teachers, in Independent Learning and Teaching it is the teachers who respond to the learners. Teaching is seen as helping and the teacher as helper. They do not instruct students what to do; rather, they guide the learners in making independent decisions by opening their minds to various possibilities. Distinction between help and control are highlighted in the learner-teacher relationship. Their relationship shows that help vs. control trade-off is not necessary; a learner may receive help from the teacher without losing control or responsibility over the conduct of his or her…

" In the process, one learns to see oneself as strong and resilient, courageous, and empowered. Whether the individual can get up and go on and have a happy life after the loss depends on how the person views self

Is he or she a victim or a survivor? A strong person making spiritual progress or weak and debilitated? Whiting & Bradley (2007) argue that there must be an outcome for every loss. Whether the outcome is "reconciliation" or "vulnerability" or "victimization" depends on successful and positive identity reconstruction.

It used to be believed that the grieving individual had to achieve detachment from the person who had died. This was Freud's theory, that "grieving people need to break free from the deceased, let go of the past and reassert their individualism by charting a new course for life.

A healthy grief experience, according to Freud [was] one in which the…

Diversity

Exercise 5: Population Survey

It was in October 1997 that the Office of Management and Budget or the OMB announced that the standards for the gathering of federal data on race and ethnicity in the United States of America would be changed from thenceforth, and that the minimum categories for race would be form then onwards, divided into the following categories: American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian; Black or African-American; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; and White. This meant that any individual, when choosing to self-identify himself, would not have to place himself according to the multi-racial perspective that had been in use earlier, but rather; he could select one or more races when he would have to identify himself for any purpose. In addition, the OMB has today made an added provision, which is known as the 'Some Other ace'. (acial and Ethnic classifications used in Census…

and, as no two individuals can have had completely identical experiences, it follows that no two individuals can view events in exactly the same way. Thus, they will make different choices, and choose different course of action.

So important to Michener are all the minute events that go to make up a life, that prior to undertaking a new narrative, he sets himself the enormous task of finding out everything he possibly can about his subject.

The causal relationship between the characters and the social milieu is complex. In Michener's... novels, this complex interaction between characters and their environment is typically portrayed in finely detailed sketches that beg the question of which causes which. Michener, for example, goes so far as to provide incredible details about the land and environment, reflecting a Montesquieu-like interest in the causal nexus between geography, climate, and history. However, there can be little doubt that…

Moonstone," a cornerstone in English literature that marks the birth of detective novels

Wilkie Collins published his novel "The Moonstone" in 1868, after a series of novels that had already consecrated him as a genius in the art of sensational fiction. The genre became popular, at that time, in England and abroad, thorough the translations of Collins' novels. "The Moonstone" is written in a narrative form of a detective novel that leads thorough the complicated but well constructed plot built around the theft of a diamond of Indian origin from "a quiet English house" (The Moonstone, p. 46).

In the preface to his novel, Collins emphasizes the fact that the narrative form took over in the construction of The Moonstone, as compared to his previous works: "In some of my former novels, the object proposed had been to trace the influence of circumstances upon character. In the present story I…

Moll Flanders

The eighteenth century is often thought of a time of pure reason; after all, the eighteenth century saw the Enlightenment, a time when people believed fervently in rationality, objectivity and progress. However, Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe also shows an era of chaos, depicted by a sort of wildness inside of people. Moll Flanders, the protagonist of Defoe's story, has been an orphan, a wife, mother, prostitute and a thief. Paula Backscheider (65) urges that Moll Flanders symbolizes the vicissitudes that were frequently experienced by many people in what was supposed to be an enlightened age. This is an obvious juxtaposition in Defoe's work. Defoe depicts a world that is not very compassionate, despite it being the Enlightenment period. Moll should have been better taken care of as an orphan, but she wasn't and this shows a complete lack of social responsibility on the government's side. There seems…

English Literature

The medieval period in English history spans across some 800 years. The Anglo-Saxon period consisted of literature that was retained in memory. The major influence of the literature up until the Norman Conquest was mainly of the religious kind. "Distinguished, highly literate churchmen (Abrams 4) the Ecclesiastical History of England remains our "most important source of knowledge about the Anglo-Saxon period" (4).

The Anglo-Saxons were primarily known for their contribution to poetry. Their alliterative form was, of course, how poetry survived. Sine they wrote nothing down until they were "Christianized," Abrams suggest that that Christian ideals influenced how things were recorded and it would also explain why some non-Christian literature did not survive. Beowulf is what Abrams refers to as the "greatest" German epic, even though it appears to many pre-Christian ideas. (4) Another example of the Anglo-Saxon writing movement would be Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Chaucer brilliantly weaves…

Failure of Family: The Irony of the Vicar of akefield

Tolstoy states that every happy family is the same (Tolstoy 1). He says this because happiness is the effect of a life well lived and not of any other cause, which is also the philosophy of Plato (Plato 47). Unhappy families, however, are unhappy mainly because they have failed to live well, or virtuously. That is the case of the Primrose family in The Vicar of akefield: the family undergoes terrible misfortunes mainly because it fails to live for the good or to understand its own place in the world. The primary responsibility for the misfortune falls on the parents who fail to recognize their own faults and do not raise their children correctly. The parents also fail to realize who they are in social terms and thus deceive themselves as to their actual social value. This paper will show…

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A round character has multiple dimensions as a human being, and strikes more than one 'note' in the text -- for instance, the snobbish Mrs. Elton of Emma is a one-dimensional presence in that novel, while Hardy's Bathsheba is contradictory as a real human being, and one cannot predict her likely actions.

Retrospective narration is narrated from the point-of-view of a present day narrator, looking into the far-off past of a long-ago world, like Hardy's third person omniscient narrator of Far from the Madding Crowd, or a narrator looking back on his own life, like Dickens' David Copperfield.

Didactic literature teaches an explicit lesson of how one ought to behave, like Jane Austen's Emma, or how human life evolves in strange ways in the point-of-view of the narrator, as in Joseph Andrews by Fielding.

A novel of manners is plot-driven in terms of questions about how its characters should…

STYLE OF RITING AND TEACHING METHODS IN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

Teaching and preaching have always been considered cornerstones of Christian beliefs. For devout Christians, teaching others about various things of value is what their entire religion is based upon as Gospel of Matthew mentions that Jesus is believed to have instructed his disciples to "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the orld" (Matthew 28: 19-20). Teaching has thus been considered an important part of religious beliefs and it is one responsibility that Christians must shoulder. For this prominent Christian figures with authority over the subject have also upheld the responsibility of teaching. Saint Augustine for example maintained that it was…