Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

I decided to read Robinson Crusoe because it was the favourite book of Gabriel Betteredge, the first narrator in Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone. Betteredge often found passages from this book particularly relevant to occurrences in his own life, and providentially so.

I first read Robinson Crusoe when I was a child.  The copy I had was a slender, green canvas-bound edition.  I suspect it had been heavily redacted to make it more suitable for children. What I read, I enjoyed at the time.

Now, all these years later, I have read a complete edition of the story.  There was a lot in it that I did not remember from my earlier reading.  I was surprised at how much narrative there is covering events before and after the main character is marooned on his island. Crusoe has many adventures,  showing he is a resourceful, wary and wily individual, all traits that stand him in good stead after he is castaway and alone.

In the course of the narrative, we see Crusoe become convinced that the things that happen to him are the result of divine providence, in much the same manner as Gabriel Betteredge did when he read the novel.  And this is the main theme of the book: reconciling oneself with the divine in order to find meaning.  In Crusoe's case, it is with the Christian God.

There is a lot of repetition in the book, and this tended to make it overly long.  On the other hand, Defoe's prose style is masterful and beguiling.  Having been written in the early 18th century and set it the mid-17th century, there are attitudes and sentiments in the book that may be offensive to the modern reader.  Still, we can forgive the author for being a product of his own times.

I can't say I was smitten with the book.  One can admire the treatment of the main theme without being moved by it.  Perhaps a more powerful, more pleasing and shorter work dealing with the much same theme is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.