He was the complete professional, dipped in ink. Which brings me to Defoe’s final quality as a writer. Doubles in English literature will regularly recur in this list: Jekyll and Hyde, Holmes and Watson, Jeeves and Wooster. Friday is to Crusoe what Sancho Panza is to Quixote. Defoe, like Cervantes, also opts to give his protagonist a sidekick.

Friday and his famous footstep in the sand, one of the four great moments in English fiction, according to Robert Louis Stevenson Crusoe with his parrot and his umbrella: these have become part of English myth. In storytelling terms, this is pure gold.Īnd third, how can we forget Defoe’s characters? The pioneer novelist understood the importance of attaching memorably concrete images to his narrative and its characters. He comes up with a tale, often said to be modelled on the story of the castaway Alexander Selkirk, that, like Bunyan’s, follows an almost biblical pattern of transgression (youthful rebellion), retribution (successive shipwrecks), repentance (the painful lessons of isolation) and finally redemption (Crusoe’s return home). Readers often become especially entranced by Crusoe’s great journal, the central passage of his enforced sequestration.Īnd here is Defoe’s second great inspiration. His adventures become our adventures and we experience them inside out, viscerally, for ourselves. This harmonious mix of tone puts the reader deep into the mind of the castaway and his predicament. It’s also often quasi-journalistic, which suits Defoe’s style. It’s exciting, unhurried, conversational and capable of high and low sentiments. First, the narrative voice of the castaway is Defoe’s stroke of genius. So what do we find in this “History” ? Robinson Crusoe has three elements that make it irresistible.

Robinson crusoe by daniel defoe