s novel
The Life and Adventures of is a deeply religious text and
suggestions of both Original Sin and the Biblical story of the Prodigal Son are both to be
found in the pre-shipwreck chapters. While the notion of a Prodigal Son theme is subject to
interpretation, however, the suggestion of Original Sin is quite explicit. The opening
chapter €“ Chapter I: Start in Life €“ is the narrator, Robinson Crusoes,
memoir of growing up in the city of York anxious to leave the comforts of home for adventure.
Robinson is struggling with his decision to leave home and is encountering considerable
opposition on the part of his parents. The youngest of three sons, one deceased, the other
disappeared, Robinsons parents are protective of him and hope to dissuade him from his dreams of
exploration. His father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellent counsel against
what he foresaw was my design. Appealing to his mother as a potential, if unlikely ally,
Robinson hopes his father will change his mind. In the following passage, Robinson relates his
failed attempt at convincing his parents to acquiesce in his desire to leave home and become a
sailor:
Though my mother refused to move it to my
father, yet I heard afterwards that she reported all the is course to him, and that my father,
after showing a great concern at it, said to her, with a sigh, €˜That boy might be happy if he
would stay at home; but if he goes abroad, he will be the most miserable wretch that ever was
born: I can give no consent to it.
The notions of both
Original Sin and of the Prodigal Son, then, are reinforced when Robinson chooses to ignore his
fathers advice and leave anyway:
I consulted neither
father nor mother any more, nor so much as sent them word of it; but leaving them to hear of it
as they might, without asking Gods blessing or my fathers, without any consideration of
circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God knows, on the 1st of September 1651, I
went on board a ship bound for London.
As the Biblical
Prodigal Son departs in search of a life more to his liking, only to discover the realities of
the world in which he lived, so Robinson discovers the hardships associated with a life at sea
and, subsequently, as a cast-away stranded on a remote island. Acknowledging the dubious nature
of his endeavors, Robinson, at the beginning of Chapter Two cements the notion that Defoes novel
is a Biblical :
THAT EVIL INFLUENCE which carried me
first away from my fathers house €“ which hurried me into the wild and indigested notion of
raising my fortune, and that impressed those conceits so forcibly upon me as to make me deaf to
all good advice, and to the entreaties and even the commands of my father €“ I say, the same
influence, whatever it was, presented the most unfortunate of all enterprises to my view; and I
went on board a vessel bound to the coast of Africa; or, as our sailors vulgarly called it, a
voyage to Guinea.
These quotes support the suggestion
that both the Biblical concept of Original Sin and the story of the Prodigal Son were
deliberately woven into Defoes tale. As noted, however, the notion of Original Sin as a theme
of the novel was made quite explicit, but not before the shipwreck and years spent stranded on
the island. It is in Chapter XIV that Defoesdefinitively concludes that his actions early in
life constituted such a dire and potentially catastrophic error in judgment:
I mean that of not being satisfied with the station wherein God
and Nature hath placed them €“ for, not to look back upon my primitive condition, and the
excellent advice of my father, the opposition to which was, as I may call it, my
original sin, my subsequent mistakes of the same kind had been the means of my
coming into this miserable condition; [Emphasis added]
Robinson is acknowledging that, in rejecting the advice of his father, he has committed
a grave sin commensurate with that described in the Bible. As noted earlier, this is a deeply
religious text in which God and prayer are frequently invoked. Panicky seamen during a storm
are overheard praying to God for their safety. The ships captain likens Robinsons determination
to go to sea despite the dangers they have already faced to the effects of Jonah on his voyage
to Tarshish. The Biblical allegories are there, and were very obviously no
accident.
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