Study Questions & Essay Topics
Study Questions
1. Defoe has
his hero practice two different types of writing in the novel. One
type is the journal that Crusoe keeps for a few chapters until his
ink runs out. The other is the fuller type of storytelling that
makes up the bulk of the novel. Both are in the first-person voice,
but they produce different effects. Why does Defoe include both types?
What does a comparison between them tell us about the overall purpose
of the novel?
2. Crusoe expresses
very little appreciation of beauty in the novel. He describes the
valley where he builds his bower as pleasant, recognizes that some
of his early attempts at pottery making are unattractive, and acknowledges
that Friday is good-looking. But overall, he shows little interest
in aesthetics. Is this lack of interest in beauty
an important aspect of the character of Crusoe, or of
the novel?
3. Crusoe spends
much time on the island devising ways to escape it. But when he
finally does escape, his return to Europe is anticlimactic. Nothing
he finds there, not even friends or family, is described with the
same interest evoked earlier by his fortress or farm. Indeed, at the
end of the novel Crusoe returns to the island. Why does Defoe portray
the island originally as a place of captivity and then later as
a desired destination?
Suggested Essay Topics
1. Although he is happy to watch
his goat and cat population multiply on his island, Crusoe never
expresses any regret for not having a wife or children. He refers
to his pets as his family, but never mentions any wish for a real
human family. While he is sad that his dog never has a mate, he
never seems saddened by his own thirty-five years of bachelor existence. Does
Crusoe’s indifference to mating and reproduction tell us anything
about his view of life, or about the novel?
2. Although Crusoe proudly reports
that he allows freedom of religion on his island, giving his Catholic
and pagan subjects the right to practice their own faiths, he describes
Friday as a Protestant. He attempts to rid his servant of his belief
in the pagan god Benamuckee. Why does Crusoe generally show religious
tolerance, but insist on Friday’s Protestantism?
3. During the return voyage to
England from Lisbon at the end of the novel, Crusoe and his traveling
party encounter a bear that is frightening until Friday turns it
into an amusing spectacle. His teasing of the bear, which prompts
the group’s laughter, is the first example of live entertainment
in the novel. There is no mention of Friday trying to amuse Crusoe
on the island. Does this episode foreshadow a new role for Friday after
he moves to Europe from the Caribbean? What is Defoe trying to symbolize
in having Crusoe bring Friday with him to Europe at all?
4. In many ways Crusoe appears
to be the same sort of person at the end of the novel as he is at
the beginning. Despite decades of solitude and exile, wars with
cannibals, and the subjugation of a mutiny, Crusoe hardly seems
to grow or develop. Is Crusoe an unchanging character, or does he change
in subtle ways as a result of his ordeal?
5. Crusoe’s religious illumination,
in which he beholds an angelic figure descending on a flame, ordering
him to repent or die, is extremely vivid. Afterward he does repent,
and his faith seems sincere. Yet Defoe complicates this religious experience
by making us wonder whether it is instead a result of Crusoe’s fever,
or of the tobacco and rum he has consumed. We wonder whether the
vision may be health- or drug-related rather than supernatural and
divine. Why does Defoe mix the divine and the medical in this scene?
Does he want us to question Crusoe’s turn to religion?
