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Summary: Chapter 28: We Seize the Ship
Having defeated the mutineers, Crusoe decides that it is time to seize the ship, and he tells the captain of his plans. The captain agrees. Crusoe and the captain intimidate the captive mutineers with a fictitious report that the island’s governor intends to execute them all but would pardon most of them if they help seize the ship. To guarantee the men’s promises, Crusoe keeps five hostages. The plan works: the rebel captain on the ship is killed, and the ship is reclaimed. When Crusoe glimpses the ship, he nearly faints from shock. In gratitude, the captain presents Crusoe with gifts of wine, food, and clothing. The mutineers are offered the chance to remain on the island in order to avoid certain execution for mutiny in England. Gratefully, they accept. On December
Summary: Chapter 29: I Find My Wealth All About Me
It is impossible to express here the flutterings of my very heart . . . when I found all my wealth about me.
See Important Quotations Explained
Arriving in Lisbon, Crusoe looks up his old friend and benefactor, the Portuguese captain who first took him to Brazil. The Portuguese captain tells Crusoe that his Brazilian lands have been placed in trust and have been very profitable. The captain is indebted to Crusoe for a large sum that he partially repays on the spot. Crusoe, moved by the captain’s honesty, returns a portion of the money. Obtaining a notarized letter, Crusoe is able to transfer his Brazilian investments back into his own name. He finds himself in possession of a large fortune. Crusoe sends gifts of money to his widow friend and to his two sisters. Tempted to move to Brazil, Crusoe decides against the idea because he is reluctant to become Catholic. He resolves to return to England, but he is averse to traveling by sea, removing his baggage from three different ships at the last moment. He later learns that two of those ships are either taken by pirates or foundered. Crusoe decides to proceed on land, assembling a traveling group of Europeans and their servants.
Summary: Chapter 30: We Cross the Mountains
Crusoe and his group set out from Lisbon and reach the Spanish town of Pampeluna (Pamplona) in late autumn, and Crusoe finds the cold almost unbearable. The snow is excessive, forcing the group to stay several weeks in Pamplona. On November
Summary: Chapter 31: I Revisit My Island
Crusoe lands safely at Dover, England, on January
Analysis: Chapters 28–31
The last chapters force us to reevaluate the escape from the island of which Crusoe has spent decades dreaming. It is ironic that he has yearned, plotted, and labored to get off the island, but when he finally does, the return home seems curiously unsatisfying. We might imagine that Europe feels safe and comfortable to him after his ordeal, but the opposite is true: in Spain, Crusoe faces inclement weather, a bear, and
Read more about Crusoe’s desire to return to the island.
The religious dimension of Crusoe’s ordeal reaches its climax in his final salvation and reward. Crusoe so easily reclaims his earlier fortune—and, indeed, finds it so immensely multiplied—that the restoration of his possessions seems more like a miraculous windfall—manna from heaven—than mere good luck. We sense that Crusoe imagines God to be rewarding him for his devout patience, especially when he explicitly compares himself to Job: “I might well say now, indeed, that the latter end of Job was better than the beginning.” For Crusoe, the shipwreck, the decades of isolation, and the final rescue have not been merely events in a long adventure story, as children read it today, but elements in a religious or moral tale of instruction. Specifically, it is a Protestant tale, with its emphasis on the virtues of independence, self-examination, and hard work. Crusoe underscores this Protestant aspect by mentioning twice that he does not go to Brazil because he would have to convert and live as a Catholic there. Implicitly, Crusoe makes his survival into proof of God’s approval of his particular faith.
Read more about how Crusoe’s experience illustrates the right and wrong way to live one’s life.
Crusoe’s story is often read in modern times as an allegory of colonialism, and there is much in the last chapters to defend this view. Friday’s subjugation to Crusoe reflects colonial race relations, especially in Crusoe’s unquestioning belief that he is helping Friday by making him a servant. Moreover, colonial terminology appears. When dealing with the hostile mutineers, Crusoe and the captain intimidate them by referring to a fictional “governor” of the island who will punish them severely. This fiction of a governor foreshadows the very real governor who will no doubt be installed on the island eventually, since Crusoe has apparently claimed the territory for England. The prosperity of the island after Crusoe leaves it is emphasized in the last chapter: it is no longer a wasteland, as when he first arrives, but a thriving community with women and children. This notion of triumphantly bringing the blessings of civilization to a desolate and undeveloped locale was a common theme of European colonial thought. Indeed, Crusoe explicitly refers to this community as “my new colony in the island,” which makes us wonder whether he really considers it his own, and whether it is officially a colony or merely figuratively so. In any case, Crusoe has turned his story of one man’s survival into a political tale replete with its own ideas about imperialism.
