PLOT

Robinson Cruse is a young man who goes to sea, against his father's advice. He starts a sugar plantation in Brazil. During an expedition to Africa, he is shipwrecked on a desert island. He is the only survivor.
He builds himself a shelter, becomes a farmer and makes useful tools. All alone, he starts to talk to God. He rescues a prisoner from some cannibals who use the island for their killings: he names him Friday, teaches him English and converts him to Christianity. After 28 years, a ship comes in sight.
He returns to England where he learns he has become a wealthy man thanks to his plantation in Brazil.

THEMES
🚩 Middle-class is the best condition in English society
🚩 Virtues of a colonist
🚩 Economic view of the world
🚩 Development of faith and morality
🚩 God's providence :
🚩 Isolation/ idividulism

ROBINSON AS THE PROTOTYPE OF THE ENGLISH COLONISER: Robinson Crusoe is the perfect example of a colonist, because during his life he was a merchant, planter and a slave owner. He also had all the caracteristics of an 18th century colonist, he had in him the whole Anglo-Saxon spirit: The manly independence,the unconcious cruelty, the persistence, the practical and efficient intelligence, the calculating taciturnity. Last but not least, since he got stranded on the island he started to dominate, exploit and civilize it, essentially transforming it into his own little empire, and he did all this because he felt culturally and morally superior.