Summary: Chapter XIII — I Sow My Grain
After planting his grain in the dry season when it cannot
sprout, Crusoe learns from his mistake, and afterward makes a table
of the dry and rainy months to facilitate his farming. He also discovers that
the wooden stakes he drove into the ground when building his “bower,”
or country house, have sprouted and grown. Over the course of several
years they grow into a kind of sheltering hedge providing cool shade.
Crusoe also teaches himself to make wicker baskets, imitating the
basket makers he remembers from his childhood. By this time he lacks
only tobacco pipes, glassware, and a kettle.
Summary: Chapter XIV — I Travel Quite Across
the Island
Finally carrying out his earlier wish to survey the island
thoroughly, Crusoe proceeds to the western end, where he finds he
can make out land in the distance. He concludes it belongs to Spanish
America. Crusoe is reluctant to explore it for fear of cannibals.
He catches a parrot that he teaches to speak, and discovers a penguin
colony. He takes a goat kid as a pet, keeping it in his bower where
it nearly starves until Crusoe remembers it. By this point, Crusoe
has been on the island two years, and his moments of satisfaction
alternate with despairing moods. He continues to read the Bible
and is consoled by the verse that tells him God will never forsake
him.
Summary: Chapter XV — I Am Very Seldom Idle
Crusoe spends months making a shelf for his abode. During
the rainy months he plants his crop of rice and grain but is angered
to discover that birds damage it. He shoots several of the birds
and hangs them as scarecrows over the plants, and the birds never return.
Crusoe finally harvests the grain and slowly learns the complex
process of flour grinding and bread making. Determined to make earthenware
pots, Crusoe attempts to shape vessels out of clay, failing miserably
at first. Eventually he learns to shape, fire, and even glaze his
pots. Thinking again of sailing to the mainland, Crusoe returns
to the place where the ship’s boat has been left upturned by the
storm. He tries for weeks to put it right side up but is not strong
enough.
Summary: Chapter XVI — I Make Myself a Canoe
“Poor Robin Crusoe! Where are you? Where
have you been? How come you here?”
See Important Quotations Explained
Resolving to make a canoe, Crusoe selects and cuts down
an enormous cedar. He spends many months hacking off the branches, shaping
the exterior, and hollowing out the insides. The result is a far
larger canoe than he has ever seen before. He now realizes the mistake
of not previously considering its transport, since for him alone
it is immovable. He considers building a canal to bring the water
to the canoe, but he calculates it would take too long and abandons
the idea. By this point, four years have passed. He reflects that
all his wants are satisfied, since he already has everything that he
can possibly use on his island. He feels gratitude imagining how much
worse off he could be now. He also reflects on several calendar coincidences
that he finds remarkable: he left his family on the same day he
was enslaved by the Moor; he escaped from the ship near Yarmouth
on the same day that he escaped from Sallee; and he was born on
the same day he was cast ashore on the island. Crusoe undertakes
to make himself some new clothing out of animal skins, and he also
constructs an umbrella. Building a smaller canoe, he sets out on
a tour around the island. He is caught in a dangerous current that
threatens to take him out to sea and away from the island forever,
and when he is saved he falls to the ground in gratitude. Crusoe hears
a voice say his name repeatedly on his return, asking where he has
been, and Crusoe discovers that it is his parrot Poll.
Summary: Chapter XVII — I Improve Myself
in the Mechanic Exercises
Wary of sea journeys, Crusoe spends a quiet year in his
new home, missing nothing but human contact. He is pleased with
his newly developed skills of basket making and pottery making.
Alarmed by his low supply of gunpowder and wondering how he will
feed himself if unable to shoot goats, Crusoe decides he must learn
animal husbandry and tries to catch a small number of goats. He
builds a pit in which he traps three young kids, and within a year
and a half Crusoe has a flock of twelve goats. He learns to milk
them, setting up a dairy that provides him with cheese and butter.
He is pleased at his “absolute command” over all the subjects of
his island kingdom and enjoys dining like a king surrounded by his
parrot, his senile dog, and his two cats. He provides us with a
brief inventory of his island holdings: he has two “plantations”
on the island, the first his original home or “castle,” the second
his “country seat.” He has a grape arbor, fields under cultivation,
and enclosures for his “cattle,” or goats.
Analysis: Chapters XIII–XVII
With his survival no longer in question, Crusoe begins
to redefine himself not as a poor castaway, but as a successful
landowner. We see again how important his attitude is. He begins
to refer to his island dwelling as his “home” and his “castle,”
and when he constructs a shady retreat inland, he calls it his “bower”
or “country seat,” both references having upper-class connotations.
He refers to the totality of his land as his “plantations” and even
refers to his goats as his “cattle.” All these terms suggest that
his relationship to the island is becoming more proprietary, involving
a much greater sense of proud ownership than before, though of course
the ownership is a fiction, since there is no deed to this land.
Naturally, he still has gloomy moods in which he bemoans his fate
and views the island as a prison. But now the alternation between
his different moods allows us to see how subjective his situation
is and how nearly impossible it is to define Crusoe’s island experience
objectively. Totally dependent on his frame of mind, it is, as he
says, “my reign, or my captivity, which you please.”
